Yale quarterback Kurt Rawlings attempts to get a first down against Harvard during a game in 2019.
Photo: Arnold Gold/Associated PressThe Ivy League hasn’t produced a national football champion since 1927, but the small eight-team conference sometimes serves as a bellwether for the giants of college sports. Which is why everyone is bracing for the prospect that the Ivy League is going to take a pass on football this fall.
Officials from the Ivy League will announce on Wednesday the status of athletics for the 2020-21 academic year. The best-case scenario is that fall sports will shift their competitions to the spring of 2021. At worst, fall sports will be called off with no chance for seniors to recoup their lost year of eligibility.
While the conference may not produce champions at the clip it did in the early 20th century, it often sits on the leading edge of reform and action within college sports. In 2016, the conference was the first in Division I to ban tackling in practice. Back in March, the Ivy League was the first conference to cancel its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. Within 48 hours, college sports in America were called off entirely.
A telling indicator of what will happen to Ivy League football is the fact that not all students at most member institutions will be allowed to return to campus in the fall. Dartmouth, last year’s co-champion in football, will place an emphasis on bringing freshmen to campus, but aims to have no more than 40% of the student body in rural Hanover, N.H. Princeton’s campus will be populated exclusively with incoming freshmen and rising juniors. Harvard will house first years and a select few upperclassmen who must return to “progress academically.”
It’s difficult to field a football team when up to half of the roster is scattered across the country.
Additionally, several universities in the Ivy League have advised against travel or declared outright restrictions on it for those who return to campus. Cornell will prohibit nonessential business travel for employees and encourage students to stay in Ithaca, N.Y. Ditto for students at Penn and Yale.
It’s unclear where athletic travel fits into these limitations. The conference does not charter planes for competitions, meaning that all away games involve a bus ride. And although the conference does not have the same geographic spread as major conferences like the Big Ten or American Athletic Conference, it’s still a six-hour drive from Dartmouth to Princeton on a good day.
“I think the logistics are a supreme challenge,” said Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens. “Then the finances and economics of it don’t make a whole lot of sense either.”
Unlike teams in the top tier of the Football Bowl Subdivision, the Ivy League does not bring in millions from ticket sales or nine-figure television deals. There’s less revenue at stake if games don’t happen. Other small conferences have the same situation.
“We feel the financial pinch but there are not as many zeros attached in our athletics world,” said Patriot League commissioner Jen Heppel. Her seven-team conference, which includes Bucknell, Georgetown and Fordham in football, is in the same Football Championship Subdivision as the Ivy League and last year played 11 games against its teams. She is aware that whatever the likes of Harvard and Yale decide will have a cascading effect on her league, which has already pulled out of a handful of September games due to newly drafted coronavirus protocols.
The football teams in the Ivy League and the Patriot League do share one thing with the Alabamas and Clemsons of the world: they all face the specter of elevated costs that accompany testing athletes frequently. Broad public health guidelines from the NCAA suggest that athletes should be tested at least once per week. Frequent testing is potentially a $100,000 addition to a budget.
“Is cost [of testing] an issue? Of course it is…But it is not a rationale for cutting corners and putting students or communities at risk,” said Heppel before warning that the testing landscape in September could determine the fate of fall sports. “If it’s not affordable, it’s not going to happen.”
The Ivy League is reportedly considering moving competition for fall sports into the spring, which comes with its own set of logistical challenges. While many universities in the Power Five sponsor the NCAA minimum of 16 sports, the Ivies field more than twice as many teams. There are 40 varsity sports at Harvard; Columbia has the fewest with 29. Space during a typical school year is already tight, coaches say, with many teams crammed onto fields and in weight rooms.
East Coast winters bring an added challenge. Dartmouth’s football team has an indoor facility they could use when the temperature hovers around 10 degrees, but they share a practice field with both lacrosse teams and track and field. Deciding which teams would get priority for space and practice times would be a major headache, said Teevens.
Harvard players celebrate a win over Yale at Fenway Park in 2018.
Photo: Charles Krupa/Associated PressThings get complicated for the athletes should their fall seasons get canceled. There are no graduate transfers in the conference and the only way to get an extra year of competition is through a medical redshirt. That means every fall athlete would require a waiver from the NCAA to make up for their lost 2020 season.
When spring sports were suspended, the Ivy League declined to request a blanket waiver on behalf of affected athletes, essentially telling seniors they would not be welcome for a fifth year unless they flunked their classes. Teevens said he assumes the same will happen should fall sports get kiboshed.
“The hard thing is for the graduating seniors,” he said. “The Ivies, they will take the athletic hat off and say, ‘Hey, what is the best thing for the greatest number of people’.”
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Write to Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com
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