Why isn’t Stanford in the Ivy league. I always thought it was.
The Ivy League is s sports conference. Stanford is in the Pac12
Wow! I did not know that was how they were classified lol
Ivy League is a historical grouping of elite colleges that share location in the northeast, long history, academic and admissions selectivity, and they happened to have played each other in sports for many years. Although it may have become codified with the establishment of the Ivy League conference, the sports league was an outgrowth of the established historical grouping, rather than the reverse. To say it is simply a sports league is very misleading and incorrect view. The term Ivy League encompasses the entire academic and cultural grouping (which does indeed include some sports). We all understand this, because we commonly throw around terms like hidden ivies, potted ivies, little ivies, southern ivies, public ivies, etc... We understand what people mean... it's not actually about the sports.
In university sports leagues, the athletes are also students. It would not be practical to be a student at a tough university such as Stanford on a Friday, fly to the east coast to play a football game on Saturday, and then get back to California in time to get your homework done and show up at classes Monday morning.
Therefore university athletic leagues are regional. The Ivy Athletic League is entirely in the northeast of the US.
Yes. The Ivy’s, or the Ancient Eight are in the Northeast and Stanford is in California, 3000 miles away. Thank you for confirming that. But again, the athletic conference arose from the long pre-existing history together when there were few colleges, especially before the American Revolution (with Cornell being the only Non-Colonial college in the Ivy’s). This shared history includes similar academic goals, length of existence, prestige, wealth as well as geographical proximity. The NCAA came about in the early 1900’s and the Ivy schools formed the formal Ivy League Athletic Conference in the 1950’s, because of their shared history, academic goals, etc. There is the “Ivy League” and there is the “Ivy League Athletic Conference.” The first is what people care about, and not the latter. Reletively few people would have more than a passing interest in who wins which Ivy Athletic championship.
Stanford is not one of the Ivy’s because it has no shared history with the others, including being all the way out west which by definition makes all schools out there younger, has had relatively recent ascendency over the last 50 years (in terms of prestige and endowment) and also it competes at much higher NCAA athletic level since Stanford is in a Power Five Conferences. So I would agree that we will not be seeing Stanford student-athletes flying back and forth to play the Ivy League schools.