What made me grimace wasn't the Times' analysis but rather this quote from Jeff Orleans, executive director of the Ivy League:
“For those who wonder why we didn’t stay in Division I-A as Duke, Stanford and Northwestern did, I would ask, what do you think of their football experience this year?”The quote bothers me for two reasons. First, while I know Jeff well enough to realize it comes across differently in print than it probably did when he said it, he should have known how smug and self-congratulatory that would read. It only serves to confirm the preconceived notions so much of the rest of the nation has about the Ivy League. And second, I might argue that if you were to poll players across the Ivy League and ask them if they would take a full scholarship to a Northwestern or a Stanford or a Duke over playing before 8,000 people in the Ivy League, a good number of them would leap at the chance.
The Times story also includes this from interim Harvard President Derek Bok in yet another attempted defense of the Ivy League's prohibition against the I-AA football playoffs: "Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship. And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes. That’s how even responsible institutions end up doing things they don’t like doing.”
In other words, let's punish the student-athletes who play football because we don't trust the coaches, the athletic departments, the admissions directors and the colleges themselves to do what they are supposed to do. The key words there: we don't trust.
And while I'm venting, I'm not at all sure football programs would be worrying very much about what they need to do to win the national championship. A game or two in the playoffs is all anyone really wants.
Of course, there are a few Ivy sports that really do have a legitimate shot at winning nation titles. Perhaps most prominent among them are men's and women's ice hockey and men's and women's lacrosse. It's ironic that not only are those sports allowed to go to the national playoffs but they are celebrated by the Ivy League and the individual schools for how they do there.
The Times article also includes this from Jeff Orleans: “One could argue that the Ivy League has had the better football experience than those institutions (Stanford, Duke, Northwestern) have had for the last 25 years. You might want to ask why they didn’t do what we did."
They're gonna love that around the country. ...
Princeton coach Roger Hughes, quoted in the Princeton Packet newspaper, talking about Dartmouth:
"I've seen them improve as the year's gone on. I think the quarterback does things that have hurt us the last couple weeks. He's a very athletic quarterback, he's their leading rusher, does a great job of scrambling when protection breaks down. We need to do the things we didn't in the second half of the Yale game and be disciplined in our pass rushes and make sure we have all the gaps covered. They're not going to come in here and lay down by any means. They're going to come in here with a chance to win the game and I know what that program stands for and how tough a kid they get."There's a preview in the Daily Princetonian and a column imploring Princeton students to attend tomorrow's game.
The Daily Dartmouth preview is here.
The Harvard Crimson has a well-done piece in advance of The Game that begins this way: "I’ll make this quiz real simple for the Yale kids reading. Something of the multiple-choice variety should be more familiar to you guys." ... The Yale Daily notes that The Game: "...features the league's top rushing offense for Yale against the league's preeminent run-stopping defense for Harvard ..."
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