Ivy League Should Reconsider Playoff Position
By Kyle Kensing
The pinnacle for an Ivy League football team today is winning the conference championship. More so than any other program, victories are more about pride than a pursuit of something more.
In college football’s formative years, the Ivy League was comparable to what the SEC is now. Obviously the sport was much different in the late 19th century up to World War II, which was the Ancient Eight’s heyday. However in context, the Ivy League was as dominate nationally, piling up national championships.
Much has changed in the 62 years since an Ivy League member, Princeton, last won a share of the title. The championship was No. 28 for Princeton, which still stands as the most among all Division I football programs, and the Tiger roster featured three All-Americas. One was Dick Kazmaier, 1951 Heisman Trophy winner. But after Kazmaier brought the bronze stiff-arm back to New Jersey, there weren’t lucrative sponsorship deals awaiting him. He recently donated his Heisman to his Ohio high school.
Later that same decade, some of the game’s first superstars emerged and the landscape was forever altered. Football had had stars, but players like Alan Ameche, Paul Hornung, Jim Brown, Ernie Davis and Roger Staubach became household names that still resonate today. USC, Texas, Notre Dame, Penn State and Oklahoma built Goliathes through the 1960s and into the ’70s whose exploits were broadcast around the nation. The game was changing; the Ivy League wasn’t.
It would be easy to lament the state of college football as counterproductive to a university’s, but it also be egregious. The Ivy League passes on the postseason for two reasons: academics, citing final exams in December, and tradition. The
; the former is overly simplistic. Pundits like Malcolm Gladwell and Buzz Bissinger decry the bastardization of “student-athlete,” while the Ivy League seemingly honors the characterization.
How easily neglected is Stanford, an Ivy League-caliber academic institution that has played football at the sport’s highest level the past few seasons. What of Northwestern, which has achieved consistency in the Big Ten? Vanderbilt is coming into its own as a quality program in the treacherous SEC. Notre Dame may be the most synonymous name with the sport, its roots planted in the same era the Ivy League dominated. UND is also among the nation’s best academic universities, despite the athletic department adapting with changes in the sport decades later.
When Division I split into two sub-sections in the late ’70s, I-AA opted to crown its champion with a playoff. The Ivy League has not taken part in the postseason, leaving football championships as relics of a time before cable, and satellites, and billion dollar TV contracts, and merchandise licensing, and all the rest of the extracurricular activity that shapes the sport.
In 2012, Harvard has — to use language perhaps too colloquial for the Ivy League — a pretty damn good football team. The Crimson ranks No. 23 in Phil Steele’s preseason poll, and No. 16 in the Sports Network Top 25. The latter is particularly noteworthy, as ranking via the Sports Network is factored into at-large playoff opportunities for those programs in conferences without automatic bids. Not that it matters — even if Harvard were to finish a perfect 10-0 and break into the top 10, it could not accept an at-large bid.
The pool of non-automatic bid conferences has dwindled to three since the Big South and NEC were offered berths in 2010. It’s now the Pioneer and Ivy Leagues and the SWAC, though the Pioneer champion will be rewarded with playoff entry when the field expands to 24 next season.
This season’s Pioneer favorite is San Diego. The Toreros make the cross country trek from the West Coast to Cambridge on Sept. 15 for Harvard’s opener. The match-up is quietly one of the most exciting non-conference tilts in the FCS, featuring two talented quarterback in Mason Mills and Colton Chapple. Chapple has the keys to an offense that last season scored more than any team in the subdivision but Stony Brook.
Harvard put up an average of 37.4 points per game. He had a 6:1 touchdown-to-interception ratio in nine appearances, sharing quarterbacking duties with Collier Winters. Winters is gone, leaving the team to Chapple. The Crimson offense is unlikely to take much dip, if any, returning rushing leaders Treaver Scales and Zach Boden as well as tight end Kyle Juszczyk to serve as primary receiving target.
The Crimson have two more challenges in the early portion of the schedule, hosting Holy Cross in a Friday night tilt on Sept. 28. HC handed Harvard its sole loss of 2011. Harvard then draws Cornell the following Saturday. The Cornell match-up is noteworthy for pairing Chapple opposite Jeff Matthews. The Big Red quarterback is one of, if not the best quarterback in the FCS. Already on 2014 NFL draft boards, Matthews threw for 25 touchdowns last season, over 3400 yards and completed 68 percent of his attempts. He’s a special talent who could join other Ivy Leaguers like Ryan Fitzpatrick on Sundays.
Matthews twice eclipsed 500 yards passing in a single game last season, and Chapple went over 400 once. The prospect of the two squaring off is very intriguing indeed. While it’s extremely rare for an Ivy Leaguer to garner Walter Payton Award attention, one getting the best of the other is worthy of some attention. More realistically though, the Cornell-Harvard winner has a decided leg up in the Ivy League championship hunt, a crown the Crimson has worn the last two seasons. Harvard had to topple Penn for the top spot. The Quakers were League champions in 2009, employing a stingy defense that allowed fewer than 10 points per game.
It would be easy to dismiss the success of Harvard’s offense last season and the Penn defense in 2009 based on competition. The Ivy League schools play each other, while the remainder of their 10-game schedules is comprised mostly of Patriot League opponents. Others will slip in, like PFL member USD on Harvard’s, or CAA representative Rhode Island facing Brown. But before discounting the accomplishments, consider one such unusual non-conference pairing.
In 2009, the mighty Penn defense held eventual national champion Villanova to 14 points. The Wildcats won, but those 14 points were tied for fewest ‘Nova mustered in a game all season (the Wildcats beat William & Mary 14-13 in the national semifinal).
The Ivy League is playing a high quality of football. There are future NFL’ers among the Ancient Eight. Moreover, recent years have shown something of an athletic renaissance for the League. Harvard basketball cracked the Top 25 in basketball, and Cornell played in the Sweet 16 just two seasons ago. Football should have the opportunity to playing on its own national stage.
The ship’s unfortunately sailed for Tim Murphy’s loaded 2012 Crimson, but with the expansion of the playoffs in 2013, the time is right for the Ancient Eight to get a little more modern.