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Ho hum, Stanford has won another Learfield Sports Directors' Cup followed in the top five by Florida, Notre Dame, Virginia and Penn State. A total of 292 schools were ranked. Find the full list here.Ivy League schools finished this way:
44 Princeton
49 Harvard
58 Dartmouth
61 Columbia
63 Cornell
67 Penn
110 Brown
182 Yale
Green Alert Take: No surprise which schools finished 1-2 in the Ivies. Nice showings by Dartmouth and Columbia but Yale should be embarrassed, particularly given where the other half of The Game rivalry finished.
In case you were wondering, Patriot League football schools the Ivy League often plays finished this way:
215 Lehigh
236 Bucknell
259 Lafayette
259 Colgate
n/a Holy Cross
By the way, equally ho-hum is the fact that Williams won the Division III Cup for the 17th time in 19 years, and that the NESCAC (New England Small College Athletic Conference, AKA the Little Ivies) had four schools in the DIII top 10 (Williams, No. 5 Amherst, No. 7 Tufts, No. 10 Middlebury).
Interestingly, Swarthmore, a school that draws from the same general academic profile as the top NESCACs, finished tied for last.
Green Alert (Inside) Take: Perhaps athletic success is "antithetical to the academic missions of colleges" such as Swarthmore.
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It's hard for a Penn Stater to cheer for another Big Ten team, but it's hard not to when you read a story like this one about a touching gesture by the Michigan Wolverine football program. (LINK)