Ivy League

The Ivy League is an athletics association, founded in 1954, of eight universities located in the eastern United States. The term has connotations of academic excellence, as well as a certain amount of elitism.

Competition

Ivy champions are crowned in 33 men's and women's sports. In some sports, Ivy teams actually compete as members of another league, the Ivy championship being decided by isolating the members' records in play against each other. (For example, the six league members who participate in ice hockey do so as members of the ECAC Hockey League; but an Ivy champion is extrapolated each year.) Unlike all other Division I basketball conferences, the Ivy League has no tournament for the league title; the school with the best conference record represents the conference in the Division I NCAA Basketball Tournament (with a one-game playoff in the case of a tie).

Related Topics:
Ice hockey - ECAC Hockey League - Basketball

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On average, each Ivy school has more than 35 varsity teams. All eight are in the top 20 for number of sports offered for both men and women among Division I schools. In some sports, notably baseball and tennis, the Ivy League teams also frequently compete against Army and Navy.

Related Topics:
Army - Navy

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Harvard and Yale are celebrated football and crew rivals. Princeton and Penn are mainly basketball rivals. Cornell and Harvard are hockey rivals. Unlike most Division I athletic conferences, the Ivy League prohibits the granting of athletic scholarships; all scholarships awarded are need-based (financial aid) http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/whatisivy/index.asp. Since there is no outright athletic scholarship program, the schools are typically less competitive in football and basketball, even when compared to universities with comparably rigorous academic standards.

Related Topics:
Football - Crew - Financial aid

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In the time before recruiting for college sports became dominated by those offering athletic scholarships, the Ivy League was successful in many sports relative to other universities in the country. In particular, Princeton won 24 recognized national championships in college football, and Yale won 19. Both of these totals are considerably higher than those of other historically strong programs such as Notre Dame, which has won 12, and USC, which has won 10. Yale, whose coach Walter Camp was the "Father of American Football," held on to its place as the all-time wins leader in college football throughout the entire 20th century, but was finally passed by Michigan on November 10, 2001.

Related Topics:
College football - Notre Dame - USC - Walter Camp - 20th century - Michigan - November 10 - 2001

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Although no longer as successful nationally as they once were in many of the more popular college sports, the Ivy League still dominates others. One such example is rowing. Harvard, for example, has more National Rowing Championships than any other school in the country and most recently has won the IRA Championships the last three years in a row (2003, 2004, 2005). The other seven Ivies have historically been, and continue to be, among the top crews in the nation. This excellence dates back to 1852 when students from Harvard and Yale competed in the original Harvard-Yale Regatta, the first intercollegiate sporting event in the United States. Only recently have teams outside of the Ivy League, such as the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Washington, gained national titles.

Related Topics:
Rowing - 1852 - Harvard-Yale Regatta - University of California, Berkeley - University of Washington

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Although the Ivy League is usually regarded as a cohesive group from the outside, there is a considerable amount of internal academic rivalry and competition among its eight members. Among these elite universities, there is a heated competition for students. In 2002, admissions officers at Princeton logged into the Yale admissions website to view the admissions status of cross-applicants, using the names, birthdates, and social security numbers indicated on their Princeton applications http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/05/17/news/5201.shtml. Yale's administration notified the FBI about the actions after conducting its own investigation. Princeton moved one admissions official to another position over the incident and the school's Dean of Admissions retired soon thereafter.

Related Topics:
2002 - FBI

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