There's no quality more essential to Dartmouth's identity than its membership in the Ivy League. In fact, I would bet that a shockingly high number of students apply here solely because of its association with seven other elite schools. Today, the Ivy League is known for its exclusivity, highly selective admissions and perceived social elitism, but few know the entire history of Dartmouth in the athletic conference that is the Ivy League. Here's a brief history of the league we all know and love.
Though the Ivy League as it is known today did not officially form until 1954, the tradition of intercollegiate sports originated in 1869 when Princeton University played its first football game against Rutgers University, according to Mark Bernstein, the author of "Football: The Ivy League Origin of an American Obsession." While many of us probably didn't come to Dartmouth solely because of its competitive athletic spirit, it's a pretty well-known fact that our current academic competitiveness actually originates in deep-seated athletic rivalry.
This level of competition was brought to Dartmouth only a few years later when its rowing team attended its first regatta in 1872, according to "Origins of the Ivy League' Remain Mysterious," a 2003 article published in The Badger Herald, a Wisconsin newspaper. However, there was no organized sense of competition with other schools.
Before there was the eight-school Ivy League that exists today, there was the Big Three, which comprised Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale University. In 1876, the three schools met at the Massasoit Convention in Massachusetts to decide on uniform rules for the newly invented game of football, which rapidly spread to other northeastern schools.
These schools ultimately played such an important role in the development of the game of football that Bernstein credits the Big Three with eventually "creating the All-America team, producing the first coaches, devising the basic rules, inventing many of the strategies, developing much of the equipment and even naming the positions."
With standardized rules implemented, athletic officials organized the first formal league comprising current Ivy League schools in 1902 when Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard, Yale and Princeton formed the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League.
While Dartmouth, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania were not yet affiliated with the League, the three schools competed with their eventual Ivy peers and were united "in common interest in academics as well as athletics," Alex Leich wrote in a 1978 edition of "A Princeton Companion."
In 1886, Dartmouth along with Amherst College, Trinity College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed the Northern League, a now-defunct quartet of athletic competitors.
Also in 1886, the College joined its first all-sports alliance, and along with Williams College and Amherst, joined the Triangular League.
Dartmouth soon grew into a football powerhouse. By 1902, Dartmouth was one of the top 10 teams in the nation, and in 1925, Dartmouth was named the champion of the Triangular League. At the height of its glory, Dartmouth football was invited to the 1937 Rose Bowl but declined, therefore setting a precedent that would later preclude other Ivy League schools from participating in bowl games.
As its football dominance grew, Dartmouth became subject to pressure from the smaller colleges in its league to move into an athletic conference more appropriate to its size. As such, Dartmouth looked into joining the Big Three.
In 1936, the undergraduate newspapers of the Ancient Eight all ran editorials advocating the formation of an "Ivy League" comprising its current eight schools, according to Leich.
This plan was superseded in 1954 when each of the Ivy League presidents announced the adoption of a yearly round-robin schedule in football and approved the establishment of similar schedules in other sports, thereby officially forming the Ivy League as we know it today, according to Leich. The formation of the Ivy League elicited considerable controversy for its inclusion of very different types of schools.
"What is common to little Dartmouth College, remote in the White Mountains, and giant Harvard University in busy Boston?" questioned a 1954 editorial in The New York Times.
The Times article also pointed out that age and tradition were "obviously not" necessary qualifications for membership in the Ivy League, otherwise the conference would have expanded to include several other institutions, like the College of William and Mary. In fact, the editorial argued that no uniform characteristics united the eight schools beyond their membership in the same athletic conference.
"Dartmouth is more akin to Amherst and Williams and Colgate [University] than it is to Harvard or Columbia or the University of Pennsylvania," the editorial said.
Although the Ivy League initially applied only to football, it affirmed the observance among the eight institutions of common practices in eligibility requirements, the maintenance of high academic standards and the absence of athletic scholarships, which the schools adopted for other sports in subsequent revisions of the agreement in the 1950s.
Then-College president John Sloan Dickey was a guiding force in the development of the Ivy League. During the 1960s, Dickey promoted a plan for equitable distribution of income from football telecasts among all the Ivy League members, according to a Fall 2007 Dartmouth newsletter addressed to parents and grandparents.
Nowadays, the Ivy League has become much more than just an athletic conference.
"It is a state of mind in which intercollegiate sports competition is a completely integrated phase of the undergraduate liberal arts," a reporter for the New York Times wrote in a 1954 article.
This sentiment undeniably holds true over 50 years later, as Ivy League students continue to enjoy both high-quality academics and high-quality athletics, thereby fulfilling the purpose of the agreements proposed so long ago. Here's to maintaining traditions!
