Another Reason For The Playoff Ban

I know Jeff Orleans, executive director of the Ivy League for the past 23 years, and I've asked him in the past about Ivy football and the league's I-AA playoff ban. I've found it awkward even to bring the touchy subject up with him because he doesn't make the policy that keeps football from the postseason while every other sport in the league can go on. It is the Ivy presidents who make the policy and Orleans who faces the music. Having to explain the unexplainable and justify what seems unjustifiable, isn't easy.

So once more with feeling, Why doesn't the Ivy League participate in the I-AA playoffs? In this answer in the Cornell Sun Orleans adds something I'd not seen him mention before:

(The Ivy Presidents have) also seen in some other sports ... changes in scheduling, changes in post-season activities, that they’re not entirely happy with. Football is the one where they feel that it’s kind of easiest to lose control, so that’s where they are most conservative.

I understand what he's saying, but the natural response would be to counter, So because of things that are wrong in other sports you punish football rather than make adjustments to the policy in those sports?

For those looking for hope, Orleans' started his answer to the question this way:

Well, there’s always a possibility. The presidents talked about this last in 2005, and they seem to review it every three, four or five years.

From a Boston Globe story built around The Game, Harvard's chances for the Ivy title, and the necessity that Dartmouth beat Princeton to give the Crimson a chance: "Dartmouth's 19-13 OT victory over Brown last Saturday served notice that it's no pushover."

Just when you think you have the Ivy League figured out ... . Penn tailback Joe Sandberg told the Daily Pennsylvanian he is planning to return for a fifth year next fall, although nothing has been finalized with the Ivy League. I don't know all the details, obviously, but it was always my understanding that the Ivy redshirt rule required petitioning for the extra year based on medical or extreme personal issues. The DP story, at least, makes it sound as if Sandberg missed his season of football because of football, if that makes any sense. From the story:

The Pittsburgh native came to Penn three years ago in 2003 and then transferred to Rutgers following his freshman season after carrying the ball just once. But after the requisite year off following a transfer, Sandberg decided that he wasn't meant to be a Scarlet Knight and transferred back to Penn last year.

The story includes this quote from Sandberg about wanting to return: "It's another year to play the game I love to play."

Princeton and Rutgers, where the game started, are learning all over about college football according to this story in the Princetonian. From the story: "So chalk it up to our college football innocence that we Princetonians charged the field at the Yale Bowl. For we too are innocent, just like Rutgers fans, to all this excitement over college football."

Princeton fans, like Harvard fans, have a long, long way to go according to this column in the Harvard Crimson. Of the tailgating scene before The Game, the writer suggests, "Even Harvard’s attempts at debauchery are served up with silver spoons."

Speaking of The Game, I hope there's another prank this weekend. Tough to outdo the last one, though. Check out this site, watch the video and laugh away. The video runs 1:55 and it's well done.

From the Yale Daily regarding The Game: "Yale has never lost to Harvard six times in a row. Well, they'd never lost to them four or five times in a row, either, but that's in the past."

Finally, the New England Patriots are getting FieldTurf before their next game and Dartmouth gets a mention for having the same surface in this story. It certainly isn't taking the NFL team as long to put the surface down as it took in Hanover ;-)