It will never happen. The schools in the Ivy are bonded together by not only a large degree of snobbiness and elitism (which as many here have noted is an attitude shared by a number of other schools), but by a collective decision by several schools now in the League to consciously turn away from big time college sports as it began to grow into the system we see today. This history of voluntarily walking away, which to one degree or another is shared by all the schools (excepting maybe Brown), is a huge piece of the ethos of the League and in my opinion is the salient distinguishing factor between the eight Ivys and other highly selective schools.
This was a very different choice from that made by other elite academic institutions like Vandy, Duke, Northwestern, Stanford, and Notre Dame, all of whom to one degree or another have made concessions to their general academic rigor in order to remain or become competitive in big time athletics. Other academic peers, like JHU, MIT, Amherst, Williams, Cal Tech, etc, never really participated in college athletics at the highest level and as such are similarly distinct from the Ivy model. UChicago is maybe the only school that has both the academic chops/rep and the shared athletic history to fit within the Ivy league.
As far as @Muchtolearn’s supposition about the percentage of people who can name half of the schools in the Ivy, there is an old joke that goes there are four schools which make the Ivy famous, and four schools which are famous for being in the Ivy League. The four schools are Harvard, Yale, Princeton and whichever school the teller happened to attend. For that reason, I would be willing to bet that a fair percentage of people would get to 50% of the Ivy, if by no other means than hitting the “big three” and then guessing right on the fourth. The interesting question is whether more people would name MIT as the fourth school than any other.
@saillakeerie The comparison has to do with using a network to raise the profile and band of the group. In that way, it is valid. The network could be used for a lot more than just sports.
The benefit for the outside schools is that the Ivy brand has value, they could be more involved in sharing information across schools, and become involved in group discussions. For example, if the Ivies as a group decided to prioritize facilities, faculty, and research for engineering, MIT might want to be involved in that discussing the best way to do that, rather than read about it in the paper.
The $100+ billion (and growing) in endowment funding these 8 schools have can have a big impact.
@Much2learn People will pack 100k stadiums/pay for cable channel subscriptions to watch college football. They will not do that to watch research being conducted. There is mass appeal to what is largely a sports network. There won’t be for the Ivy league. It wouldn’t be worth the money. They can (and do) spend money in other ways to better enhance their respective brands.
^ “Let me know when they can get 100,000 people to come and watch a math test” - Bo Schembechler, being questioned about a professor’s statement that football was bad for the University of Michigan.
Also, there is an Ivy League network, just like the BIG network or the SEC network. It’s just that the games are broadcast on regional network affiliates and places like Omni Sports and One rather than ESPN and Fox Sports. Pretty sure the payout per school is a little different too, lol.
I’m a subscriber to ILN (formerly ILDN) to watch my son’s sport for Heps; they don’t televise every one of his meets. I really watch to support the team, but if I get a glimpse of my son then that’s just icing on the cake. You’ll mainly get parents and alumni as subscribers but hopefully more fans outside of these two groups will become supporters. I’ve caught a couple of exciting football games on the network. I’m happy that the league is improving the quality of the live streams and I’m looking forward to real time statistics as I watch the events.
The thing that sucks about the Ivy League network is that games which are broadcast on one of the tv networks (this year, regional NBC, Comcast and a network called Eleven) are not streamed on the Ivy network. Which sucks, since we are out of region and do not get the east coast version of NBC regional or Comcast. So in my son’s case, that means that six of his ten games will not be available on the Ivy league network (making the $50 price tag that much more appealing) and it is unlikely I will be able to find some way to stream them.
Hopkins lacrosse is part of the B1G (which of course isn’t 10 but 15 teams in most sports). There are about 10 schools that have 2 D1 teams (one men’s, one women’s or they can’t offer athletic scholarships) but are DIII schools for all other teams. This is mainly because of the 4 original exceptions for hockey.
Many schools are in different conferences for different sports. WCHA hockey had teams from many leagues, including the B1G. I think ND hockey is WCHA. Look at DU. Lacrosse is in the Big East - and it is the western-most lacrosse school. Hockey is WCHA. gymnastics Big 12, most other sports Summit league.
Many conference affiliations are determined by football and basketball. And TV money. The B1G let in Hopkins for one sport because it is good for the B1G, not because they needed Hopkins for academics. I’m not sure the B1G would let Hopkins in for all sports as they just aren’t they same type of teams the B1G has.
Regularly traveling between Princeton and Cornell (or Penn and Dartmouth) is already time consuming enough for student-athletes for whom academics are the first priority. Imagine adding in regular trips to UChicago.
Academically, UChicago may “belong” in the Ivy League, but as a practical matter, there is no reason to expand any sports league to make it that geographically large, unless you are doing it for the money and have students whose priority is athletics rather than academics. No one would make any money from this and academics would suffer.
@gearmom " I think the real reason for suggesting expanding the Ivy League is so that more people can get social mileage from the status. But when Louis Vuitton starts selling bags at Walmart, when it loses it’s exclusivity…"
rotflmao
I can’t imagine that adding Chicago, MIT and/or Johns Hopkins to the Ivy League would be so detrimental to the brand as to make it the Walmart of education. lol Are they really that bad? lol
The actual Ivy League is a college sports conference that pretty much no one cares about.
But the Ivy League as a college brand is incredibly strong and valuable worldwide. Which brand has almost nothing to do with sports. Everyone knows the Ivy League schools; few know or care that it is a sports conference.
The Ivy League schools would never want to dilute their brand. It is the gold standard. And being the club that no one can get into is basically what the Ivy brand means.
The Ivies would be happy to play Stanford, Duke, NW, MIT, Chicago if those schools ever chose (highly unlikely) to downgrade/upgrade their sports programs to the Ivy level. But nobody is ever getting into the Ivy League. The Patriot League is similar in set-up to the Ivy League – D1 but non-scholarship. So plenty of games/schools that can be appropriately scheduled outside of the Ivy members.
Back in the late 1950s, there was an effort to form a southern Ivy-like athletic league – Vandy, Duke, Tulane, Rice, etc. – called the Magnolia Conference. Would have made a lot of sense. But it didn’t happen and that ship has long since sailed.
@Much2learn I didn’t say MIT/Stanford were the Walmart of education. I said they were the best. No reason at all for them to join the Ivy League even if they could. The Ivy League is valuable because it’s exclusive. A very easy point to understand. If they included the actual ten best colleges in all fields, lower level Ivies would lose marketing value. Now WHY in the world to would they want to do that??? What part of exclusive and limited is a difficult concept?
You are right – that’s a relatively new thing. Although outside of football and hoops, my guess is that most PL schools don’t offer the full number of schollies allowed in NCAA D1.
Maybe you could call the PL a scholarship-lite league.
@Ohiodad51 perhaps the Firestick might give you a way to stream the regional broadcast.
And I agree with the crowd, it doesn’t make sense to expand the Ivy League. Although it is the name of the athletic league, it’s much more than that as Northwesty pointed out. It’s different from other power conferences that shift schools in and out of their conferences
The Ivy League schools talk a good game when it comes to diversity. If they wanted to put their money where their mouths are, they would admit a public (William & Mary) & a religious school (Georgetown). Both are D1 & both are among the oldest colleges in the country.
