<p>Chicago abandoned its athletic program because its president and trustees thought it was distracting from the university’s academic mission. It revived its athletic program (on a much-reduced, D-III level) because a later generation thought that it would contribute positively to student spirit and wellbeing.</p>
<p>The first controlled nuclear fission in the US was performed in a facility on what used to be Chicago’s football field, but the football had been discontinued before anyone decided to build nukes there.</p>
<p>As an earlier poster pointed out, the University Athletic Association is a D-III league of pretty high-quality academic universities: Chicago, Carnegie-Mellon, NYU, WUStL, Emory, Brandeis, Case Western, and Rochester. Lotta expensive travel there, though – Boston to St. Louis, or Atlanta to Chicago, are not small trips. </p>
<p>Another athletic league that is increasingly serving as a brand for academic quality is NESCAC (which I think stands for New England Small College Athletic Conference), that includes Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, Tufts, Middlebury, Hamilton, Trinity, Connecticut College, and the three Maine LACs. It is modeled on the Ivy League, and its rules include various restrictions on recruiting to preserve the members’ academic standards.</p>