Football

Yale Dubbed League Favorite in 2018 Football Preseason Poll

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PRINCETON, N.J. -- Yale was picked to defend its Ivy League crown in the 2018 Ivy League Football Preseason Media Poll. 

The Bulldogs, who are coming off their first outright League title since 1980, received 11-of-17 first-place votes and accumulated 129 points. Yale will be searching for back-to-back Ivy League titles for the first time since a run of three-straight from 1979-81. To do so, the Bulldogs will rely heavily on sophomore running back Zane Dudek, who earned Ivy League Rookie of the Year honors in 2017 after becoming the first true freshman to lead the Ivy League in rushing with 1,133 yards. 
 
The reigning League champions got the nod over Princeton, which returns 2016 Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year senior quarterback John Lovett and finished with three first-place votes and 104 points, and rival Harvard, which received a first-place vote and tallied 99 points. 
 
Perennial contenders Princeton and Harvard finished in unfamiliar territory in the bottom half of the Ivy League standings in 2017, but each looks to rebound behind a pair of STATS FCS Preseason All-Americans in 2018. 

Columbia and Penn tied for fourth place in the poll with one first-place vote and 76 points each. The Ivy League runner-up in 2017, Columbia is returning from its best League finish since 1996, while Penn is one year removed from back-to-back Ivy League titles. 
 
The bottom half of the poll featured Dartmouth with 65 points, Cornell with 37 points and Brown with 26 points. 

Over the past three seasons, 5-of-8 teams have captured an Ivy League championship—Dartmouth (2015), Harvard (2015), Penn (2015, 2016), Princeton (2016) and Yale (2017). 

The 2018 Ivy League football season kicks off on Friday, Sept. 14, with six games to appear on ESPN linear networks throughout the 2018 season. The Ivy League is coming off a 2017 campaign in which it led the FCS and ranked fourth overall in NCAA Division I with a .750 non-conference winning percentage, trailing only the SEC (.825), Pac 12 (.771) and Big Ten (.762).