In my mind, we really shouldn't even be having this debate. If we are considering all Dartmouth fall sports, both club and varsity, it's pretty obvious that the Dartmouth men's rugby team is by far the most dominant. They absolutely destroy everybody else they play, and are undefeated in the Ivy League this year. Arguing that men's rugby isn't the most dominant fall sports team is like when Mets fans try arguing that the Yankees aren't the best baseball team in New York it's just naive.
All it takes is a quick look at the Dartmouth rugby web site to realize why this is the case. A recent headline reads, "Big Green Overcome Slow Start to Beat Penn." The game's final score was 55-3. Name one other sport where a "slow start," by that team's standards, could possibly lead to anything close to a 55-3 victory.
If headlines don't sway you, perhaps some of these statistics will. This fall, the rugby team has outscored its Ivy League opponents 436-32 in just seven games. In two of those games, the team held opponents scoreless, and in three others gave up just three points. What's particularly impressive about these numbers is that the team is pretty good about letting backups play when the victory is already firmly in their grasp. So even against the second 15, opponents have not been able to score.
The obvious reaction to this argument is that rugby cannot be compared to varsity sports because the level of competition is not even close to comparable. Yes, this is true way more Americans play football than rugby growing up, so obviously, the athletic skill required to play a Division I Dartmouth sport like football is way higher than the skill level club rugby requires. But just because more people play a given sport, doesn't mean a team in another sport like Big Green rugby can't be the more dominant team. For instance, nobody argues that Michael Phelps isn't one of the most dominant athletes in the world on the basis that swimming isn't a very popular sport.
Furthermore, rugby is enough of a commitment that it arguably can be compared to other Division I sports in that regard. The team has weekly lifts, preseason, travels to tournaments all across the country, plays in both the fall and spring and practices on a consistent basis. The team also recruits and has a legitimate coaching staff led by Alexander Magleby, a former national team player. I know the level of commitment is still not quite the same as a varsity sport, but it's also not as far off as some people may think.
As good as some of the other fall sports teams are, no team comes close to beating opponents the way men's rugby does. Year after year, Dartmouth rugby blows out all of its Ivy League competition, and usually goes on to do surprisingly well at national tournaments against schools with tens of thousands of students.
Let's say hypothetically that someone came to visit you at Dartmouth and said, "I'd like to see the best Dartmouth team, and I'd like to see them win." If you wanted to be certain that you could show the visitor a victory, what team would you take him to see? If you wouldn't say rugby, you're either lying or an idiot.
