The year was 1925 and for Big Green athletics, it was a year to remember as what was known as the "Big Green machine" marched its way through an undefeated football season and first ever national championship for Dartmouth.
The Big Green tallied 140 points during its 8-0 season and pounded the likes of Harvard, Brown, Cornell and the University of Chicago. As best said in an editorial appearing in the Chicago Tribune, "The new game which Dartmouth; so brilliantly played is not football at all in the old meaning of the world."
But Dartmouth's 1925 squad was the last Ivy League team to win a football national championship, and since that time many of the Dartmouth teams that were nationally competitive like baseball, basketball, football and hockey have simply not remained nationally competitive.
While these teams occasionally may be in the national spotlight, (take for example the men's basketball trip to North Carolina) the reality remains that the Ivy League is no longer a "powerhouse."
Athletic Director Dick Jaeger and others concur that there are several reasons why in what one may consider "major sports," the Ivy League no longer has a national position.
The increase of college students in the 1960s, the emergence of athletic scholarships and the addition of the Ivy League academic index are all prominent causes.
Colleges expansion
For years, the Ivy League represented the major source for higher academics. For the limited number of students pursuing a higher education, the East Coast was the place to look.
But in the 1960s, there was much expansion in higher education. According to Jaeger, as the number of students going to college increased, so did the number of athletes participating in college athletics. For the Ivy League, this meant competition from newly expanding colleges and universities.
"One major development was the huge explosion of the number of young men and women going to college," Jaeger said. "Other schools were able to expand on their programs as the number of people going to school increased."
Jaeger also noted that with more opportunities many athletes, who had never before considered higher education began to attend college.
"In many times athletics gave these people a tremendous opportunity to compete and receive an education," Jaeger said. "The strength and talent level at other schools got better and better."
As the number of institutions increased, competition itself began to become more centralized. Ivy League teams concentrated their own season schedules within the League.
For example, in 1956 Ivy League football coaches met and established that they would focus on inter-League play over national play. Football also later decided to prohibit any Ivy League school from playoff or bowl competition.
"The Ivy League settled that it may no longer produce certain sports capable of competing at the national level," Jaeger said.
No scholarships
With the emergence of more colleges and universities and the expansion of athletic departments came the idea of granting students athletic scholarships to aid in tuition costs.
But because such scholarships are prohibited within the Ivy League, coaches face several problems in recruiting student athletes.
With the cost of education increasing yearly, many student athletes find the lure of athletic scholarships more enticing than the prestige of the Ivy League.
"It's just more of an issue every year as the cost of education continues to go up," Demment said. "Now a days, students are looking at paying over $100,000 for four years which is a substantial amount of money."
Jaeger also noted that other top institutions like Stanford and Notre Dame are able to offer great academics combined with scholarships.
"These schools can come along and grant great scholarships but offer a tremendous education at the same time," Jaeger said.
For teams like hockey, which must compete within a league (the ECAC) composed of schools that offer scholarships, the difficulties are even more evident.
"Everything should be based on need for the whole league," Crowe said. "That lets you start with an even base."
But even if League play were even, the fact remains, nationally the Ivy League is a minority in not offering scholarships.
Jaeger noted that for some Dartmouth sports that are more regional like lacrosse or squash, the ability to compete nationally is still viable. But as such sports begin to gain more national recognition, these sports may face the similar difficulties basketball, hockey, football and baseball face.
With limited endowments, an already established academic standard and a devotion to need blind admissions, Ivy League schools continue to reject the idea of adopting scholarships based on performances.
"With the resources stretched, the question is how can you justify giving money to kids who are good athletes but could afford to come here even without the extra money," Jaeger said.
Academic index adopted
In the early 1980s, the Ivy League presidents began to express concern that at other schools, athletes were not meeting up to the standards set forth by the different colleges and universities.
To preserve the reputation of the Ivy League and to prevent this problem from expanding the League, presidents decided to take action.
"Our presidents saw other schools using liberties to let in good athletes, and our presidents got together and said we want our athletes to be representatives of the overall student body," Jaeger said.
With that in mind, the presidents turned to admissions to form a standard that all Ivy League institutions could turn to. Hence, the Ivy League Academic Standard was developed.This index combines a student's grade point average, SAT scores and class rank to give him or her a type of admissions rank. From this rank, coaches are able to determine if the student is eligible for Ivy League acceptance.
"That gave our coaches a much more narrow pool to recruit in than compared to national coaches," Jaeger said. "Other schools have a much wider spectrum and can stretch some. They don't have that academic index to follow."
Dartmouth coaches have commented that this narrower pool has definitely effected the Ivy League.
"Since that time [of the establishment of the index] there has been a real challenge on the ability to recruit top student athletes at the Ivy League," men's hockey Coach Roger Demment said.
For coaches, Demment said the role of recruiting has become even more evident.
"We have to do a lot more recruiting student athletes," Demment said. "We have to spend more time and more effort looking for students who are outstanding hockey players."
For hockey, Demment said the formation of the index led to a split in the traditional ECAC conference which before 1984 was composed of 18 teams. But after 1984, several teams broke from the ECAC to form the Hockey East League.
"A group of teams left the ECAC because they wanted more emphasis on sports," Demment said. "They did not want to be constrained by the philosophy of the as we know it today."
Former men's hockey coach and current women's ice hockey Coach George Crowe said the split in leagues eliminated some of the top competitive games for Dartmouth.
"Even the coaches will admit it was nice when everyone was together," Crowe said. "Some of the old standby rivals are gone. It's just crazy for Dartmouth not to be playing them."
The future
The position of the Ivy League team may never be clearly defined. There are moments of success -- like the University of Pennsylvania's men's basketball team being ranked in the top 25 briefly last season. But such success could be considered a fluke.
"There is just a bigger matrix, a bigger spectrum and we have our own niche," Jaeger said. "In some sports we are just going to have to realize we can't compete."
But at the same time, as cited by Demment, there are instances of success -- like the Harvard 1989 national championship in men's hockey.
"I think it's possible [to compete at the national level]," Demment said. "The first thing we have to do is increase the quality of the players we have, which we have done. In a few years we've gone from being a not so competitive team to one that is very competitive in a tough league."
But for past alumni and current Big Green supporters, the hope of nationally competitive teams in sports like football most likely only are hopes.
"There may be some that wish we could still go to the bowl games and compete for national championships," Jaeger said. "But the fact is that in many sports that is just a remote chance."
However, just because Big Green teams may not be playing in front of 75,000 fans as they compete for a national championship, that does not mean that the Ivy League does not support some of its own excitement.
"Kids like to compete," Jaeger said. "They like to get out there to play. There is a place here for good athletes to have exciting games and go for Ivy League Championships. I don't think it can get much more exciting than that Princeton football game last fall."
Eric Petitt and Erika Tower aided in obtaining information for this story.
