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Username Post: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football        (Topic#25697)
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
12-03-21 09:32 AM - Post#330478    

Holy Cross plays in the FCS playoffs tonight here in Philadelphia against Villanova. They were 11-2 and squeaked by Yale and got whalloped by Harvard. Yet we do not play in the FCS playoffs---unique among all Ivy sports--because the 2 teams in those games against Holy Cross somehow think it will take away from their season ending game against each other. Frankly, that is ridiculous, as is every argument against playing in the FCS playoffs. The Ivies are very competitive at the 1AA level and could potentially win a national championship. The Harvard-Yale game will always maintain its mystique even if the Ivy champion plays on. Why is this continuing to happen???

 
Go Green 
PhD Student
Posts: 1124

Age: 52
Reg: 04-22-10
12-03-21 09:57 AM - Post#330479    
    In response to palestra38


In H-Y's defense, there's opposition coming from other presidents as well.

Cornell's president, for example opposes playoffs because she does not want Ivy teams playing Alabama.

https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/13/pollack-sa ys-gre...

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
12-03-21 10:03 AM - Post#330480    
    In response to Go Green

You think she would get a memo from the AD if the proposal to play in the playoffs actually was made so she wouldn't look as stupid as she did here.

I don't know if this is an "official" declaration of position, but it indeed is true that Ivy Presidents mostly don't care about sports.

As I understand it, all the ADs except H-Y want to play.

 
Naismith 
Sophomore
Posts: 148

Loc: RI
Reg: 11-11-18
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 11:49 AM - Post#330488    
    In response to palestra38

Ivy sports compete for REAL NATIONAL Championships in every sport except Football, where Ivy Colleges are not permitted to compete for FBS honors. And if it were allowed, it's competition level would erase any chance of earning any FBS Championship bid.

FCS exists only to keep well over 50% of the other college teams from grabbing money controlled by the Power Five Conferences. It is not a REAL NATIONAL Championship

Edited by Naismith on 12-03-21 11:51 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.

 
Streamers 
Professor
Posts: 8141
Streamers
Loc: NW Philadelphia
Reg: 11-21-04
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 12:22 PM - Post#330490    
    In response to Naismith

I know I'm reaching here a bit, but I find it curious that we have this rule about Ivy football, and yet the league is OK with this NCAA cop out:
Penn swimming

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 12:24 PM - Post#330492    
    In response to Naismith

The Ivies voluntarily moved down to FCS (then 1-AA) when they qualified to remain in BCS football. Your point is simply wrong. The Ivies have chosen to play in the division because of their refusal to play pro football, which is what BCS has become (and the top programs don't share revenue, so maybe 20 of the 130 BCS programs make money). The notion that we don't play in the tournament because we were shoved into a lesser division is ridiculous.

With all due respect....

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 12:26 PM - Post#330493    
    In response to Streamers

Cancellation coming in 5-4-3-2-1....

Let's leave that in another topic. Don't know what it has to do with my rant. But it's worth discussing.

 
Streamers 
Professor
Posts: 8141
Streamers
Loc: NW Philadelphia
Reg: 11-21-04
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 12:34 PM - Post#330495    
    In response to palestra38

It applies only in the sense that it confirms the capricious nature of the league. Super stodgy with regard to football, scholarships, grad student eligibility, and progressive, perhaps to a fault, on this issue. Defying logic in all instances.

 
Naismith 
Sophomore
Posts: 148

Loc: RI
Reg: 11-11-18
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 02:15 PM - Post#330504    
    In response to palestra38

Thank you for comments

Memory on all this is 40 years old. I recall the Ivy League "volunteered" to drop football into the lower echelons thanks to creative rules like mandated stadium sizes and attendance figures. That would have broken up Ivy League in any case --Yale, Harvard, Penn, and probably Princeton qualified, but the other 4 would have been thrown under the bus had the others not chosen Ivy first.

As its highest priority, The big powers wanted an influential Ivy League out of their way.

You're probably right about only 20 of the big boys making big money. Amazing the IRS hasn't declared them as actual tax liable entities.

 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 02:26 PM - Post#330505    
    In response to Naismith

Well, that raises an entirely different issue. And do you know how much Penn has made from the mRNA vaccines? Tax policies regarding nonprofit entities are why there are so many nonprofits.

 
Go Green 
PhD Student
Posts: 1124

Age: 52
Reg: 04-22-10
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 03:06 PM - Post#330507    
    In response to Naismith

  • Naismith Said:
Thank you for comments

Memory on all this is 40 years old. I recall the Ivy League "volunteered" to drop football into the lower echelons thanks to creative rules like mandated stadium sizes and attendance figures. That would have broken up Ivy League in any case --Yale, Harvard, Penn, and probably Princeton qualified, but the other 4 would have been thrown under the bus had the others not chosen Ivy first.





Technically, only Yale qualified for I-A membership at the time. They elected to join the rest of us in I-AA.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/03/sports/yal e-tru...

One could make a good case that Harvard and the Ps could have qualified for I-A membership if they tried a little harder. But that beings the interesting question... and then what?

Dartmouth, Brown and the C's probably would have ended up forming the eventual Patriot League with Holy Cross, Fordham, Colgate, and one of Bucknell, Lafayette and Lehigh (the latter three not being as logical geographic partners). Ok, great.

What do HYPP do? I suppose Army and Navy could have been persuaded to join them in a football conference. But who else? I can't think of any other natural fit, and you know that HYP were going to insist on some sort of academic minimums for athletics (i.e., the eventual AI).

So... how does it play out then?


 
palestra38 
Professor
Posts: 32680

Reg: 11-21-04
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 03:49 PM - Post#330513    
    In response to Go Green

Ya think Temple and a good number of other 1-A schools really meet that attendance requirement? The only thing the NCAA ever enforced was the stadium requirement. And there was time in which the Ivies could have met that requirement.

But in any event, the point is that the move to 1-AA has absolutely nothing to do with the refusal to play in the playoffs.

 
dperry 
Postdoc
Posts: 2211
dperry
Loc: Houston, TX
Reg: 11-24-04
Re: My Yearly Rant about Ivy Football
12-03-21 10:25 PM - Post#330537    
    In response to palestra38

  • palestra38 Said:
Ya think Temple and a good number of other 1-A schools really meet that attendance requirement? The only thing the NCAA ever enforced was the stadium requirement. And there was time in which the Ivies could have met that requirement.

But in any event, the point is that the move to 1-AA has absolutely nothing to do with the refusal to play in the playoffs.



The Ivies (and some others) were expelled from I-A because at the time, the NCAA had complete control over football TV money, and the big schools didn't want to share with us. That regime started falling apart literally within two years; nowadays, the behemoths like the SEC and the Big 10 keep their revenue streams all to themselves and therefore don't feel as much resentment against the smaller guys. If the previous system was still in place, I'm pretty sure the MAC's, Sun Belts, Temples, and UConn's of the world would have been demoted long ago. That being said, our reasons for being in I-AA are not an excuse for failing to participate fully in it. Once again, the academic argument is hooey: spring practice, the basketball tournament, and the lacrosse tournament all individually cost the league as a whole more academic time than the football playoffs ever will, much less with all of them put together; there are plenty of sports in both the fall and spring that bleed into exams; if the Patriot League can do it, so can we. It's a combination of arrogance and fear of both football in general and of looking bad to allegedly inferior schools.
David Perry
Penn '92
"Hail, Alma Mater/Thy sons cheer thee now
To thee, Pennsylvania/All rivals must bow!!!"


 
Chip Bayers 
Professor
Posts: 6997
Chip Bayers
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
12-04-21 08:47 AM - Post#330548    
    In response to dperry

Ironic in retrospect that Penn in particular was dropped for attendance reasons following the ‘81 season, given what happened in the fall of ‘82 and for several years thereafter. Over 30K for the immortal Harvard game when the goalposts went in the Schuylkill, and as I recall at least one with over 40K in a subsequent season.


 
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