This will not happen. If it did, Army and Navy would be the most likely and maybe the only possibilities given the history and structure.
But it won’t happen. The conference, presidents, ADs, are operating from a different paradigm and don’t face the same incentives/pressures driving current realignments.
There are some very good athletes at the D3 schools mentioned but those schools are not capable of fielding a wide range of athletic teams at the level of the Ivy League. The difference is enormous.
There is zero chance the LACs mentioned on this thread could possibly compete in the ivy league! Come on people, just look at the numbers (of students)! These institutions are entirely different beasts. Their athletic budget would have to increase by orders of magnitude.
The feeling here in the Bay Area seems to be the ACC is just a temporary parking place for Cal and Stanford while further CFB realignments take place. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part since I’m a USC grad who lives in the Bay Area near Cal and Stanford, but I expect all four schools to be back together in a conference within a few years.
Why are people actually thinking that any DIII college, like the NESCACs, would join a DI conference. Makes no sense.
Virginia would LOVE to join. They already like pretending that they’re an Ivy, and sam for W&M. Rutgers already turned them down, and no Big 10 would even dream of stepping down. So no Michigan, no Northwestern.
UChicago does not have the history of athletic obsession that the Ivies do, so they likely won’t join.
I can’t see the Ivy league asking any college which is less than 200 years old to join - I alway felt that they still regret adding Cornell. I mean, how can a college truly claim to have traditions, unless they have been doing it for at least 200 years?
As for the old ones who ruined their reputation by becoming truly public, like Delaware, U Pitt, and Rutgers, perish the thought. I mean, U Pitt has almost half of their students from the bottom 80% by income? Where are their standards? Rutgers is even worse! MORE than half come from the bottom 80%! How are they supposed to maintain the elevated cultural standards of the Ivy League if the majority of their students don’t even know what Lacrosse is?
At least Virginia and W&M kept up the old traditions of legacy admissions and such. They even keep the number of the commoners to below 1/3. So despite being PUBLIC (shudder), they may be possible additions.
I live in Virginia. UVA and W & M are doing quite well on their own as public universities. They are not pretending. They are very well established universities with their own traditions.
To me MIT is just not good enough at athletics, and probably does not want to be good at athletics.
Stanford is too far away. I do not think that student athletes at academically challenging universities really should be spending all that much time on airplanes trying to get from coast to coast to play a football game, and then travel back, all while keeping up with their class work. (Yes, I do know about the ACC thing, and I am do not fully understand it).
How about two wild ideas that might be appropriate in terms of academics, athletics, and travel: McGill and Toronto? Why does the Ivy League need to be limited to the USA? Montreal and Toronto are not all that far away. One of the first football games every played was between McGill and Harvard, so there is even some historical precedent.
Hopkins is just as selective and strong academically IMO. Plenty of money for well funded programs. There athletic programs seem to be half way there already. Of the D3s we visited (for a sport) it seemed the closest to an Ivy program. Dedicated trainers, laundry, etc. The coach said the school feels a certain obligation to “share the love” they give to the very successful already D1 Lax program.
Some of criteria I’d expect to make a good fit to include;
Located in/near northeast
Offers teams in a large number of Ivy League sports, such as ice hockey, including many that do not generate revenue
Is competitive at Ivy League level (Div 1) and wants to compete at Ivy League level
Is okay with not giving athletic scholarships and will remain competitive without scholarships (using competitive admission as substitute)
Is okay with not participating in post season football bowls and national championship, per Ivy League rules
Is okay with limited number of games and limited practice hours, per Ivy League rules
Academically competitive with existing Ivy League schools
Good cultural/historical fit with existing Ivy League schools
I initially listed a few colleges that checked many of these boxes, but as I expanded in more detail, it became clear that the college is going to have some severe limitations that is going to prevent joining. I can’t think of any non-Ivy college that meets the above criteria well.
Meant to say not sure where [Hopkins] is athletically now. Yeah, I know it’s a good school - probably fits in with the Ivies academically - at least the second tier.
Traditions like legacy admissions? Both UVA and W&M give preference in admission to Virginia residents whose parents attended that college. Oh, and UVA legacies get special meetings with AOs who help them put together their applications. Sounds like an Ivy tradition to me. Also UVA and W&M have 67% and 73% respectively from the top 20% by income, and only 2.8% and 2%, respectively from the bottom 2%. So that is pretty Ivy-like as well.
On the other hand, in keeping with the theme of the thread, UVA has athletic scholarships, so that will likely keep them from joining the Ivy League…
Why not? D3 colleges can and have transitioned to D1. Generally they’ve taken the intermediate step to go to D2 first (NCAA rules). U St Thomas just transitioned from D3 to D1 within the last year or two. About 12 schools are currently transitioning to D1.
Another 100 or so D3 schools, including many, if not all, of the NESCACs, have at least one sport that already plays at the D1 level.
Size of undergrad population isn’t necessarily determinative of the decision to play D1, with several D1 schools having fewer than 2K undergrads like Presbyterian, Wofford, and Davidson. Plenty of D1 schools have between 2k and 7K undergrads. Relatively, the NESCACs have higher endowments than the non-Ivy D1 schools of those sizes too.
I don’t necessarily think any of the NESCACs should move to D1, but it’s not their enrollment or financial resources stopping them.
I took your original post as somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I do think it is interesting how UVA and W&M ended up positioned quite differently from Rutgers, Delaware, and Pitt.
For those who don’t know, Rutgers was actually founded before Dartmouth as Queen’s College, and therefore is one of the nine “colonial colleges”. Delaware was actually in existence even early, as Newark Academy, but was only chartered as a college after the colonial period (but well before, say, Cornell). And Pitt was also founded before the Revolution, although only became an academy after, and then became a university in the same general period Delaware became a college.
Pitt is actually relatively late to becoming state-related–1966. Delaware had gotten state support since becoming a college, and became Delaware’s land-grant university after the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862 (Delaware State, an HBCU, is also a land-grant university). Rutgers similarly became New Jersey’s land-grant university. But Penn State, not Pitt, is Pennsylvania’s land-grant university.
Anyway, I think most people today just sort of think of Delaware, Rutgers, and Pitt as normalish public universities, despite their very old history. But UVA and William & Mary do have demonstrably different student demographics, and I think perception (at least in certain circles). Which, of course, is kinda a regional thing, as universities like Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina are also very old and have a long history of educating certain elites.
In terms of perennial national competitiveness in a single sport, the best example of this may be Trinity (men’s and women’s squash). However, other Bantam teams are much more representative of D3 level of play.
Agree about Trinity squash, a great case study in hiring the best possible coach and giving them latitude to build a program.
I don’t disagree, but for many sports though, there is significant overlap in talent level across the 3 NCAA divisions, especially if one doesn’t consider the Power 5, now Power 4, schools.
Appreciating that this is all theory… If I were in charge of expanding the Ivy League, I’d focus on academic institutions that fall between Hanover/Boston and Philly. I would add MIT, Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore. Expansion is usually 2 to 4 schools…so…
First thing…I’d end football. Just because I think sooner or later they will…for health and admission reasons.
Next, I’d split the league into divisions (that’s what they all do).
IVY NORTH
Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Amherst, MIT, Williams.
IVY SOUTH
Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Swat
I make it this way so that Harvard and Yale can play for the Ivy title every once in a while. Home and home in most sports within your division, with once a year against the other division. 16 games/matches/meets per year… plus playoffs.