“You get to really appreciate the caliber of kid that you get to deal with. They take football extremely seriously and are as committed as anyone in the country but they also can handle the rigors of a world-class institutions. I marvel at what our kids do.”—Al Bagnoli, Penn Head Football Coach, 1992-2014
How many conferences can make this statement? Our League’s best offensive player is also its most recognized scholar-athlete. At Yale, Tyler Varga has achieved a 3.56 GPA while majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology. This year, he was one of 17 finalists for the National Football Foundation’s William V. Campbell Trophy, presented annually to the player who best combines athletic, academic and community-service achievement. The man the trophy is named for just happens to be one of Columbia’s football fixtures, a guard on the Lions’ 1961 championship team and their coach from 1974-79. He is founder and chairman of the board of Intuit and a member of his alma mater’s board of trustees.
And not surprisingly, Campbell is passionate about the Ivy football model. “This is not the University of Chicago or MIT,” he says. “Make it so you can get normal kids from blue-collar environments who have 740 verbals and can still do the work—kids who can wear the colors and go boola boola.”
Jay Fiedler—All-Ivy quarterback at Dartmouth from 1991-93, and the 1992 Bushnell Cup winner—sees those color-bearers as vital to the schools’ lifeblood.
“The Ivy admissions offices look for the best of the best every year and football is a sport which separates the best leaders and most competitive personalities from the average ones,” says Fiedler, who went on to an eight-season NFL career and now operates The Sports Academy at Brookwood Camps in Glen Spey, N.Y.
“Every school is looking for that something special in each of their students and seeks the ones who are willing to take risks to achieve something big," says Fiedler. "If you look at some of the top world leaders in many professional fields, you will find risk takers and you will also find that a large proportion of them passed through the gridirons of the Ivy League, and the League needs to make sure that this breeding ground for future influencers and leaders stays fertile for all who have what it takes to participate.”
George Pyne has a view from the executive suite. “When I’m looking for a person to hire, if I had an Ivy League football player, I’d be highly inclined to look at that person,” he says. Besides being toughened by the rigors of the game, “that kid’s got to go to the library for four hours, look to the left of him and to the right of him, and find the smartest kids in the world”—all of whom are competing with him.
As for those risks…well, the Ivies have a track record in this regard. Back in 1905 Harvard, Princeton and Yale stepped forward at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard Class of 1880) to try to make the game safer. Pyne proudly says that history is repeating itself. “The opportunity is here for the Ivy League to lead, which it already is doing in research with the Big Ten and with concussion rules,” he notes.
The only thing that would have been greater than my Dartmouth teams beating Harvard would have been if my Cincinnati Bengals teams had won the Super Bowl.”—Reggie Williams, All-Ivy linebacker, 1973-75; College Football Hall of Fame (enshrined 2007); vice president, Disney Sports Attractions (retired)
Before Reggie Williams went to his superb 14-year NFL career, he was the spearhead of the Big Green defense when Harvard-Dartmouth was one of New England’s biggest annual sports events. (Back then, Patriots-Bengals was a blip.) Few rivalries anywhere were as exciting.
There is nothing like a big football game to galvanize a school. Nothing. Anyone who was at Harvard Stadium on Nov. 22 can tell you that. Spirit, color, braggin’ rights and battling bands combine in one electric package. A big win temporarily can turn a staid Ivy campus into Tuscaloosa or College Station. At Princeton, “we had the bonfire when we beat Harvard and Yale the same year,” says Quinn Epperly. “The amount that football can bring together the community is far past any other sport.”
“There’s football and everything else,” says Columbia’s Lisa Carnoy who, in addition to myriad other roles, is a member of her school’s board to trustees and its Campaign for Athletics Leadership Committee.
“When we beat Princeton a few years back the chatter and the good will and the high fives were off the charts. We can be number one in the NCAAs in five other sports and it wouldn’t rise to that level of newsworthiness and chatter.”
It’s noteworthy that despite travails that have occasioned a review of the program, no one at Morningside Heights is suggesting that Columbia get out of the football business (as schools such as the University of Alabama at Birmingham have done.) “Everyone’s committed to football,” says Carnoy. “We all get it.” She jokes (we think) that she is “seven games”—a perfect Ivy season—“from getting a Lion tattoo.”
Even as players are hitting one another hard on the field, a spirit of brotherhood prevails. “What made the league special to me were the bonds made and the camaraderie not only with fellow teammates, but also with competitors and past players from all of the schools,” says Jay Fiedler. “There is a special connection that binds all Ivy League football players in knowing that we all played the game with a passionate inner drive to succeed, a competitive spirit to outdo others, and an unrivaled respect for the game and our opponents.”
Yale’s 2014 captain Deon Randall agrees, citing “the quality of the people—teammates and opponents. I had a chance to meet with Norman Hayes, the captain of the Harvard team, and he’s just an all-around great guy.”
It’s not evident when players are trying to beat one another, but Ivy games are de facto networking opportunities. David Healy, who played linebacker on Brown’s 2005 Ivy League champion team, has served as the NFL’s Director, Media Strategy & Business Development and is now at Google as Strategic Partner Lead, Entertainment Partnerships.
“I've been very fortunate to work with former players from Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth in my professional career,” Healy says. “Former Ivy football players are smart, hard working and of high character. It's a special group to be a part of.”
“I would add a playoff system to Ivy League football. It gives a player so much to play for if you’re going into the seventh or eighth week of the season and you’re fighting for a playoff spot.”—Luke Tasker, All-Ivy Wide Receiver, 2011-12; Wide Receiver, Hamilton Tiger-Cats
No Ivy team has played a postseason game since New Year’s Day 1934, when Columbia shocked Stanford in the Rose Bowl 7-0. Ivy presidents have been adamant in their opposition to including Ivy teams in the Football Championship Series playoffs. Some think that stance should be rethought.
Luke Tasker has a radical proposal: a playoff involving the League’s top four teams. “A semifinal and a championship,” he says. “That would greatly increase the competitive nature of the League.”
It’s an intriguing notion. Then again, the current schedule has its own tried-and-true integrity. There is a purity and urgency to each regular season game and a fitting finality to that ultimate Saturday—after which everyone goes back to class.
And just as the folks at Army and ESPN Gameday had their eyes opened, others will give the League’s superb players and coaches their due. “Leagues and sports go in ebbs and flows,” says George Pyne. “I wouldn’t be surprised in the years to come to see a little more of an emergence of the Ivy League [profile]. Over the next 25 years, I think the values and that approach will be better received.”
More important: The games will matter. People will cheer. It will be very competitive. And that will be just fine.
Click here for part 1 of The Value of Ivy League Football
Dick Friedman is a graduate of Harvard College and a contributing editor at Harvard Magazine. From 1994 to 2012 he was an editor at Sports Illustrated. He is finishing a book about the great pre-World War I Crimson teams coached by Percy D. Haughton.