I think two things are in play here. 1. Lacrosse people live in their own small world. In that world you have this ecosystem of early recruiting, rankings guys following little boys around, insular club / prep guys looking to harvest the events gold rush. 2. Lacrosse people have increasingly numbed out a cognitive awareness of the much bigger world around them. In that world there are other stakeholders that matter more who see lacrosse from the outside looking in. Admissions officers, university administrators, the general pool of alums, graduate schools parties, endowment managers/solicitors. Generally speaking, these other stakeholders don't hold minor sports dear in general, and few care more about lacrosse in specific over other sports.
This leads to something else: this minor sport gets attention for all te wrong reasons because of a bad set up. Increasingly this has started to, and will continue to a greater extent, some brushback. I'm a large donor to one Ivy that has been blasted by recent negative attention to 9th graders with no grades committing to UPenn. The coach had to be shamed into at least bearding his early moves last year. I know people in a high capacity at Duke where I have a graduate degree, and Danowski now has a seven year streak of bringing commits through with an average of 2 that failed minimal admissions standards but were still presented to admissions. He puts those kids in boarding schools for a PG year when admissions fails them to repair. I get a strong sense Duke wants a university with better academic profiles in minor sports, most prominently men's lacrosse. The new coach at UVA was told when he was hired that one matter to be fired for cause was committing any 9th grader and 10th graders would have to be vetted and held for approval by admissions where a pre-read is requested beyond the early read which happens after junior year.
The landscape will change soon. It has to. A fellow lacrosse dad mentioned to me yesterday that Princeton...yes, Princeton...publicly committed a 9th grader less than one month into high school. My first private thought was Madalon was the wrong hire. My second thought is forces a lot bigger than Madalon will mark him, and he'll be gone in due course of 1-2 years like Bates (who also had his critics in the administration before the incident last year). My third thought was as obvious as it is that Madalon will look awful internally now, it is highly likely that won't occur to him now or for some time. That's lacrosse.
