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.

History

The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the U.S. Boat clubs from Harvard and Yale met in the first sporting event held between students of two U.S. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, in 1852. As an informal football league, the Ivy League dates from 1900 when Yale took the conference championship with a 5-0 record. For many years Army (the United States Military Academy), Navy (the United States Naval Academy), and to a lesser extent Rutgers were considered members, but dropped out shortly before formal organization. For instance, Army traditionally had a rivalry with Yale, which some assert is set to resume in the next few years, and Rutgers had rivalries with Princeton and Columbia, which continue today in sports other than football.

Related Topics:
Lake Winnipesaukee - New Hampshire - 1852 - Football - 1900 - Yale - United States Military Academy - United States Naval Academy - Rutgers - Football

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On October 14, 1937, when Caswell Adams, a sports writer for the New York Herald Tribune, was assigned a Columbia-Pennsylvania football game, he remarked, "Do I have to watch the ivy grow every Saturday afternoon? How about letting me see some football away from the ivy-covered halls of learning for a change?" Stanley Woodward, a fellow writer, overheard this and coined the phrase "Ivy League" in a column, informally describing the eight competitive universities in advance of any formal sports conference, and his phrase quickly caught on.

Related Topics:
1937 - Caswell Adams - New York Herald Tribune - Stanley Woodward

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In 1945 the presidents of the eight schools signed the first Ivy Group Agreement, which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for the football teams. The principles established reiterated those put forward in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Presidents' Agreement of 1916.

Related Topics:
1945 - Football

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In 1954, the date generally accepted as the birth of the Ivy League, the presidents extended the Ivy Group Agreement to all intercollegiate sports. Competition began with the 1956 season.

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As late as the 1960s many of the Ivy League universities' undergraduate programs remained open only to men, with Cornell the only one to have been coeducational from its founding (1865) and Columbia being the last (1983) to become coeducational. Before they became coeducational, many of the Ivy schools maintained extensive social ties with nearby Seven Sisters women's colleges, including weekend visits, dances and parties inviting Ivy and Seven Sisters students to mingle. This was the case not only at Barnard College and Radcliffe College, which were situated very near to Columbia and Harvard, but at more distant institutions as well. (The movie Animal House includes a satiric version of the formerly common visits by Dartmouth men to Massachusetts to meet Smith and Mount Holyoke women, a drive of more than two hours.) Some sources suggest that the Seven Sisters group was so named as a parallel to the Ivy League. http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/PLLI/webreprt.html

Related Topics:
1960s - Coeducation - Seven Sisters - Women's college - Barnard College - Radcliffe College - Animal House - Smith - Mount Holyoke

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A fake etymology attributes the name to the Roman numerals for four (IV), incorrectly asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins helped to perpetuate this myth, claiming that over a century ago, Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton formed an athletic league called the "Four League." http://www.chipublib.org/008subject/005genref/faqiv.html

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