CU Gives An Expensive, Rare Gift

Each February, the NFL spends up to $750,000 to adorn the hands of the greatest football players in the world with hunks of gold and diamonds, bestowing upon each gridiron champion his personalized Super Bowl ring. Surprisingly, Columbia University is not far behind.

Okay, so maybe the Athletics Department isn't shelling out three-quarters of a million dollars to decorate the fingers of our championship athletes, but it is certainly not being frugal either.

Next Friday evening, at halftime of the men's basketball game, the 2006 Ivy League champion women's soccer team will receive their championship rings on behalf of Columbia University. As in, the University picked up the tab. As in, the athletes didn't have to pay for them.

In a department that cannot possibly be overrun with an excess amount of cash (long gone are the days of the hot buffet in the Wien Stadium press box), I was pleasantly surprised to learn that not only does Columbia offer its superior student athletes the option of receiving the ever-coveted championship ring, but the University is good enough to pay for the gift as well. And thirty-plus gem-studded championship rings is not exactly a small investment.

There is no NCAA rule that all championship teams must receive a ring. Unlike uniforms or those pre-printed team hats that always seem to magically appear on players' heads seconds after winning a playoff game, these indelible symbols of pride do not come standard with a stellar season.

The rings are supplied by Columbia, not the Ivy League, and the University does not disclose either the company from which they are purchased or the cost thereof. However, a few minutes spent navigating the Jostens company Web site sheds some light on the situation. Jostens is easily the most well-known celebratory ring company in the nation. The Minneapolis-based corporation provides rings not only for graduating university classes, including those at Columbia, but also for every Super Bowl champion since the game's inception.

Easily enough for my research purposes, there is a Columbia University women's Ivy League champions ring currently available for purchase. The ring, which can be personalized with engravings of the athlete's initials, first name, and graduation year, sells for a cool $250. Multiply that by the 26 young women on the team, plus three coaches, plus the handful of administrators who inevitably want a piece of the ring action, and you come up with a figure well upwards of $7,500. Not too shabby for a department that charges its football players for hooded sweatshirts.

No one is really talking about where this mysterious funding comes from, but the players certainly don't have to shell out.

"I think they are donated, I believe by an alum," senior midfielder Megan Hurlbut said. "We have no idea where the rings come from."

It is not often that the Athletics Department gets the opportunity to empty its mysterious ring fund. Championship rings are few and far between on the hands of Columbia athletes, especially female Columbia athletes. Excluding the women's cross country team's 2002-05 reign atop the Ivies, the 2006 women's soccer team is one of only two Columbia women's teams since 1998 to win an Ivy title. And it would seem that the University's generosity towards the soccer players is no fluke-the 2005 women's cross country team also received its championship rings free of charge, and no one was informed of where that money came from, either.

But who's counting?

At the end of the day, the ring means more to these players than the dollar amount spent on it, and the University is going beyond the call of duty by recognizing the achievements of these athletes without tooting its own horn for doing so. The women's soccer players even had the chance to modify the design of the band they plan to wear around their fingers for the rest of their lives.

"We did get to put in a little bit of input," Hurlbut explained. "If we wanted to change anything we were free to express our opinion, but I think the general consensus was to keep it similar."

The women's soccer players played the entire 2006 season with a specific goal stuck on their minds and in their playbooks-they wanted that ring.

"At one of our team meetings we all got together and decided that [getting the ring] was going to be our goal for this year," senior all-Ivy defender Emma Judkins said. "It was on the cover of our team booklets and things like that."

"There was an actual picture of an Ivy League ring on all of the handouts we got, the scouting reports, everything," Hurlbut said.

Other sports looking for tactics to motivate their players might take that front page off of the women's soccer handbook. Calling all athletes: win the championship, get a free ring.

And like the Super Bowl-bound football players who dream of slipping that glitzy Jostens band over their million-dollar finger of choice, I bet Columbia women will fight for jewelry.