Expanding the Ivy League?

Parents Forum
41

I think if they were going to expand, they could probably more easily do it with D1(ish) schools that are not fully entrenched in Big 5 conferences – like Notre Dame, Georgetown, Rice and JHU – or D3 schools like MIT, UChicago, Wash U and Emory.

Let’s see here:

Notre Dame is a partial member of the ACC. They have historically valued their independence. And they are major D1 – probably a “no”.

Georgetown might be more likely than ND – they are an historic program in basketball, but since the Ivy League is D1 in basketball, they can at least still play in the NCAA Tourney. They could probably make the transition. Call it a Yes.

Rice is D1, but they suck in football, so maybe they wouldn’t mind dropping to FCS in that sport. They do have a very good baseball program – not sure if that would be enough to keep them out of the Ivy. Distance and heat could also be an issue. Call it a “no”.

JHU is D1 in lacrosse, currently in the B1G in that sport. The Ivy has some decent lacrosse teams, so the transition might not be too harsh. They would have to up their level in some other sports. Let’s say they do it.

UChicago, MIT, CMU, Wash U and Emory – all are D3 and would really have to bring their recruiting and facilities up to be able to compete in the Ivy League. They would be doormats the first few years, at least. Just for fun, let’s say MIT and UChicago are invited and accept.

So imagine this as the expanded 12-school Ivy League:

Harvard
Yale
Princeton
MIT
UChicago
Columbia
Penn
Brown
Cornell
Dartmouth
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins

Not bad.

Georgetown would be a marquee name to boost the league’s basketball visibility and competitiveness and JHU would do the same for la crosse. All four schools would add their considerable academic quality and reputations to the league, obviously, as well.

42

And those four new schools could add (at least) three natural rivalries to the league:

UChicago vs. Columbia

  • The football game could become a trophy game, the Battle for the Core – a big apple core trophy that the winner gets to hold on to.
  • They could also engage in an all-sports competition for the C Cup. (sensitivity be damned!). Maybe invite Cornell and make it a three-way competition.

JHU vs. Georgetown

  • It’s Baltimore vs. D.C. in this epic showdown of schools known for their IR programs. Maybe call it the International Cup, featuring the flags of all nations etched onto the trophy.

Harvard vs. MIT

  • This one also makes sense for proximity’s sake. Maybe they vie for the Cambridge Cup.

(apologies for consecutive posts)

43

I have a question I really don’t know the answer to, so no sarcasm. Do the Ivies have other collaborations with just other Ivies that they don’t or wouldn’t consider entering with the other elite institutions? Would Harvard have an academic project that it would do with Dartmouth but not MIT? Does Princeton shun joint ventures like sharing telescopes with Maryland or Rutgers because they aren’t elite, or not elite enough?

If so, then I guess those other institution have a beef, but if not, how are they any worse off because they can’t play squash in the Ivy tournament?

44

They collaborate frequently. MIT and Harvard, being so close physically are particularly able to work on joint projects.

Also, despite what may have been implied here, the Ivy League schools play out of league games all the time. In some cases they play against other D1 schools (e.g., Harvard Varsity basketball vs. BU Varsity basketball). Other times they might play their JV against a weaker opponent (e.g., Harvard JV squash vs. MIT Varsity squash) or their Varsity against a strong D3 school (Harvard Varsity squash vs. Trinity Varsity squash.)

45

Is there a demand signal for this expansion or is it just wishful thinking on the part of some people?

46

Havard is playing PC tomorrow @ PC for men’s soccer if anyone wants to go. Also the Ivys compete against all different kinds of schools in ballroom dancing all the time. Brown, Yale and Havard all host ballroom dance competitions like UConn and URI do.

47

I’d call it a parlor game that comes up every once in a while; it’s the adult version of “Chance Me” or else it’s Fantasy Football for the less sports-minded. :slight_smile: Personally, I file the conversation under “Things That Will Never Happen For $1000, Alex.”

No D1 school with a halfway decent football program would ever drop down to FCS, IMO. And that’s before even discussing things like football/basketball coaching salaries/recruiting/scholarships, etc.

48

Post #45. *Harvard

Should not type on my phone.

Wear black for PC if you go to the game, 9/9 at 7pm.

49

^ Or did you mean “Hahvahd”? :wink:

50

I suspected from the outset that this thread would go on for pages! :smiley:

51

@TomSrOfBoston The Ivy League Parlor game.

Now if your Ivy league school were a person, who would they be?

For Brown, I’d suggest Helena Bonham Carter.

52

^^ Ed Helms/Andy Bernard for Cornell :))

53

I’m with @moooop - the most logical candidate to add would be William and Mary. Second-oldest college in the country, already a “public Ivy”, D1 sports, a bit over 6k undergrads (so the right sort of size) and the birthplace of Phi Beta Kappa. The Ivy League would finally have a true Southern school (as opposed to the faint tinge of Southernness at Princeton). This may be a solution in search of a problem, though…not sure who would push this and why…

By the way, I’d also knock out Dartmouth and reclassify it as a super-sized LAC (not entirely fair, I know, given the med and b-schools), where it would dominate the category. Cornell, a much younger, much larger school than the other Ivies, with some un-Ivy-like professional schools attached, also sits uneasily there, it seems to me. It all depends on individuals’ perception of what the Ivy League is, or should be. I think of it as a group of some of the oldest and best research unis in the country, similarly-sized, focused primarily on the liberal arts, based in the Northeast and where athletics take a back seat to academics by design.

54

Why bother???

“I think the percent of Americans who can name 1/2 of the schools in the Ivy League is about 2%. It is a very low number. Most people have no exposure to them.”

Sorry, but who cares? CC is proof enough that plenty know them and are freaking fixated on them.

Who cares about a tv channel? And you can bet the cooperative sorts of researchers don’t need some sports league to continue working together :-t

Saying this, “could provide a convenient platform for the school to showcase itself and its contributions to the country” misses what’s going on. Entirely. And then some.

Sports, sports, sports, ad nauseum?

55

@lookingforward is right, of course - there really is no good reason to bother.

I’m reconsidering my last post - if William and Mary could be in, then Dartmouth shouldn’t be out.

56

I agree the concept is silly - if they want to expand their athletic division go for it, but it is so inconsequential compared to Pac12, Big10, SEC it really doesn’t matter for revenue or public interest. At one time, Chicago was invited into the Big 10 and so was Notre Dame and the Big 10 was comprised and organized around academic and athletic similarities (think of the two statues at the Union at UofM, one facing the (then) athletic fields and one facing the academic quad. But that is so far in the past. Now addition to the Big 10 gets based on increasing revenue from viewership and athletic ability and less-so on academic reputation. So if we did want to talk about athletic and academic similarities in the Ivy League, I’d also vote for William and Mary, but I’d still think “why?” because it has no meaning in the modern world.

57

Georgetown has been more or less openly trying to join the Ivy for awhile now. Lots of people believe that the reason Georgetown did not adopt the Patriot league scholarship model for football several years ago was because they hoped for some type of “associate membership” in the Ivy. It can certainly be considered a peer academic institution, although it would rank as the “weakest” in the league based on rankings, endowment etc. More to the point, and consistent with all of the schools discussed here (again with the maybe exception of UChicago), it shares none of the Ivy schools’ history of primacy in college athletics, nor did it make the collective decision to turn away from the revenue generating sports in the manner of the Ivy instiutions.

Generally speaking, when Ivy sports fans talk about expansion, which is a fairly frequent topic round about this time of year during the annual bemoaning of the ten game football schedule, the schools most frequently mentioned are West Point and Annapolis. I think there is general belief that athletically at least those two schools are a much closer fit to the Ivy model than any others, both historically and currently. They could also certainly be considered academic peers.

And to @twoinanddone’s question, there are certain academic collaborations that are distinct to the Ivy league. In my son’s field, for example, there is a research center in Panama run by Harvard and Princeton. I am pretty sure there is also a program with Columbia as well. But there is wide collaboration among other institutions. Princeton has a research facility in Kenya where my son has spent some time with students from the University of Florida. I know there is joint research currently being conducted in his department with one of the colleges at Oxford, and another project going on with a school in Australia, etc, etc.

58

I will freely admit to being biased, having a son playing in the Ivy and as a former athlete from a school in the not dissimilar Patriot league, but I think the Ivy model for sports has a lot of meaning in the modern world. It may be a tiny island in a sea of ESPN, the BIG network, the SEC channel, etc, but the Ivy inarguably has a much better grasp on the significance of sports vis academia than a whole lot of other schools. To give an idea of what I am talking about, last year during the broadcast of the Patriot League basketball championship game (which was played at Bucknell on a weekday), the announcer on Fox said “You know, these schools take academics seriously. Lehigh’s pre game routine was shortened because they couldn’t leave until their players finished their last class today.” I at least am glad such places exist.

So I personally am glad the Ivy is what it is even if its only purpose today is to serve as a foil for the insanity of pretending that a kid enrolled at Duke who spends his entire winter and spring flying across the country on a freaking Tuesday evening just to feed the beast that is Duke basketball is a “student athlete” rather than just a cog in a multi million dollar business. Every time I see Stanford or Vandy play a weekday football game it makes me want to puke.

59

I’d argue that is not true and much more similar to many Div. II and Div III organizations where academics are emphasized as a “selling” point more than athletics. And other divisions have “shared programs” such as the Great Lakes College Consortium for academic programs which has been around since I was in college in the 70s or did a semester at one of the participating colleges. Many of my friends participated in those wonderful programs like the NY Arts program, NIH programs and others. There’s no doubt that the Ivy League is revered in the NE and all across the country, but they are not “unique” in the sense of what they are trying to accomplish academically or athletically. There are many ways to “expand” but the benefits to all the associated colleges need to be clear and one powerhouse sport probably is not enough to add lustre to the whole of each league.

60

@momofthreeboys The Ivy league is too familiar to be revered in NE. Valued, yes. A feeling of ownership/entitlement for NE kids because it’s in NE, yes.