Ivy League

[renigademaster]

What I learned about the Ivy League was that it was composed of the first 4 colleges in the US. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and William and Mary. Hence IV. My history teacher was a graduate of Princeton and he had a book that refered to those 4 schools as the IV leauge that was printed in the 1870s. He blamed the sportswriters of the 30s and 40s for confusing and somewhat hiding the real orign of the IV league.

[Arnold_Winkelried]

Welcome to the SDMB, and thank you for posting your comment.
Please include a link to the appropriate article if it’s on the straight dope web site.
To include a link, it can be as simple as including the web page location in your post (make sure there is a space before and after the text of the URL).

The article to which you refer can be found on-line at this link:
Why do they call it the Ivy League? (28-Jun-2001)

Since the article is a Staff Report, not a Straight Dope column, this thread is leaving the «Comments on Cecil’s Columns» forum and going to visit my colleague C K Dexter Haven in the «Comments on Staff Reports» forum.

---

moderator, «Comments on Cecil’s Columns»

[andros]

*Originally posted by renigademaster *
**What I learned about the Ivy League was that it was composed of the first 4 colleges in the US. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and William and Mary. Hence IV. My history teacher was a graduate of Princeton and he had a book that refered to those 4 schools as the IV leauge that was printed in the 1870s. He blamed the sportswriters of the 30s and 40s for confusing and somewhat hiding the real orign of the IV league. **

While they are considered a “Public Ivy” (a public school that offers an education on par with or above those provided by the Ivy League schools), as near as I can tell William and Mary has never been considered a part of the Ivy League, nor an “Ivy League school.” But I have an information request in to them to find out more.

I’d love to see that book–is there any way at all you could find out its name and/or author? Or even your History teacher’s contact information would be helpful . . .

-andros-

[bibliophage]

it was composed of the first 4 colleges in the US. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and William and Mary

The University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) is six years older than Princeton, and Moravian College (Bethlehem, Penna.) is 4 years older.

That said, it does not seem totally crazy to wonder why W&M isn’t considered part of the Ivy League. Although it is now a state school, it was merely state-supported before 1906. Dartmouth was also state-supported before the University of New Hampshire was created.

[Northern_Piper]

That said, it does not seem totally crazy to wonder why W&M isn’t considered part of the Ivy League.

Wouldn’t it simply be a matter of geography? The 8 Ivies are located pretty close together: Massachussetts (Harvard), Connecticut (Yale), New Hampshire (Dartmouth), Rhode Island (Brown), New York (Columbia, Cornell), New Jersey (Princeton), and Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania).

Maybe Virginia was too far for the teams to travel?

[renigademaster]

I am trying to reach my teacher to find the book that stated the above. He is traveling so I don’t know how long it will take to reach him.

[Kaje]

It’s always funny when people are convinced that a school is Ivy League when it’s really not. I had a friend who tried arguing for hours that Boston College was “going ivy league” and one of my friends from school (Cornell…which IS ivy league) says that his friends that go to University of Delaware are convinced that their school is joining the ranks as well… Further once when I told a distant relative about the schools I was choosing between and the one I ended up at he was not only convinced that Duke was Ivy, but that Cornell wasn’t… Not that it’s a big deal, but for some reason there is much confusion on the issue.

[Chronos]

UDel… Gotta love a school whose mascot is a yellow-bellied chicken.

[DSYoungEsq]

At my alma mater, we took it one step further, claiming that the school had spurned membership offers in the Ivy League, ostensibly because the school wished to remain in Division III and not grant athletic scholarships or some such nonsense. You’d think a school as good as the University of Rochester wouldn’t have to feel that inferior…

[andros]

I haven’t heard back from Wm and Mary yet, but it’s summer.

[The_Ryan]

The way I heard it, the Ivy League got its name from the fact that there were already Division I, Division II, and Division III, so this was considered Division IV, or Ivy. Come to think of it, it does sound like an urban legend.

[wtbates]

I am the guy that asked the question and although there was a lot of good information in the Staff Report, it really did not answer my question.

With all the research that I have done, it is clear to me that the myth of the four schools is just that, a myth. The term Ivy League does not come from the Roman Numeral for 4 (IV). That I am certian of…

I have still been unable to accuratly find the origin of the term.

A couple of FYIs:

The oldest colleges in the U.S. are (in order):

Harvard Univ. Cambridge, Mass. 1636
Coll. of William & Mary Williamsburg, Va. 1693
Yale Univ. New Haven, Conn. 1701
Princeton Univ. Princeton, N.J. 1746
Columbia Univ. New York City 1754
Univ. of Penn. Philadelphia, Penn. 1757
Brown Univ. Providence, R.I. 1764
Rutgers New Brunswick, N.J. 1766
Dartmouth Coll. Hanover, N.H. 1769

Although these may not be the founding date of the institutions, the date listed is the year each institution became a bachelor’s degree-granting institution. This is when a school is officially deemed to be a college.

The second FYI: IVY League schools do not give sports scholarships.

[curwin]

If you go to the source, you’ll find the following:

http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/extras/local/history.html

Whence The Name “Ivy League”?
This article is reprinted from Columbia College Today with the permission of the editors and of the author, Robert Harron, Former New York City newspaperman and more recently assistant to the president of Columbia. Cas Adams, mentioned here, died in 1957.
Have you ever wondered how our American language grows? Sit still for a minute and I’ll give you an example.

The time was Thursday afternoon, October 14, 1937. The setting was the sports department of the New York Herald-Tribune. Assignments were being made for coverage of the leading college football games of the week. The late George Daley, sports editor, and Irving Marsh, assistant sports editor, were making up the list.

To Stanley Woodward, even then a veteran and brilliant football writer, went the Pittsburgh-Fordham game at the Polo Grounds in New York. This was the game New Yorkers wanted most to read about, which was reason enough for Woodward to cover. He was then and is now one of the ablest writers the gridiron has produced in his years; and his years as a sports writer go back to about 1920.

When the other staff men got their assignments, Caswell Adams drew the Columbia-Pennsylvania game at Columbia’s Baker Field in New York.

Now, Mr. Adams, who is in these days the erudite boxing expert of the New York Journal-American [Editor’s note: Remember this was written in 1956], had no quarrel with either Columbia or Pennsylvania. Both, in his considered judgment, were and are splendid old institutions of higher learning. He was, however, able to restrain with relative ease his enthusiasm for football as played in that day by a number of teams representing the more venerable centers of higher education in the East. This was in the heydey of Fordham University as a major football power; and Mr. Adams is a Fordham man.

Briefly, Piquantly, without rancor, he expressed his views to the editor.

“Whyinell,” he inquired, “do I have to watch the ivy grow every Saturday afternoon? How about letting me see some football away from the ivy-covered halls of learning for a change?”

He did not press the point. There was a Friday night boxing match coming up in Madison Square Garden, and he had an advance story to write. He forgot the matter.

But Stanley Woodward, at a nearby typewriter, did not forget. He had heard a new phrase. Ivy-covered? Ivy group? Ivy League?" These old schools of the East did not like leagues. They had long shunned the conference idea. Stanley like to ruffle them occasionally and chuckled when he did so. Why not call these colleges the “Ivy League”?

Woodward wrote the weekly football review for the Herald-Tribune on Monday mornings. It was a review read with care by football men, including and especially football coaches. I recall one coach who was accustomed for several seasons to inquire of Stanley each week what game he was to cover. The coach would then forego scouting arrangements for that game. He knew Woodward’s Sunday story and Monday morning technical analysis would tell him and his strategists all they needed to know about any rival.

So a few days later, though not on the Monday morning immediately following, there crept unobtrusively into a Woodward football essay the phrase “…and in the Ivy League…” as introduction to a discussion of what was happening on the fields of the East’s oldest colleges which, even then and without a semblance of formal grouping, were natural and traditional rivals. Set down alphabetically, they were, of course, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale.

The phrase caught on. Other writers soon picked it up. Then football enthusiasts began to use it in conversation. Before long even some of the academicians began to adopt it. Few who used it knew, or even wondered, about its origin.

Now it has indeed come into the language. To opportunistic advertisers it is a phrase which carries the connotation of smartness in the wearing apparel of young Americans of college age. A national network radio show of some popularity made its own adaptation. To the high school senior choosing the school he hopes he attends there are two groups – The Ivy and the others.

Educationally it has come to be actually a useful phrase, with scope reaching far beyond the confines and the campuses of the eight to which it was first so lightly and so aptly applied. It represents now in the public mind an educational philosophy that is old and established, but modern, too, and independent and unafraid. At first many believed it carried a connotation of smugness, conservatism, wealth. More and more are learning each year that this is not true.

When applied to athletics, Ivy League — I guess the quotation marks can be dropped now — implies a definite state of mind and set of principles, not at all the monopoly of the old Eastern colleges, but certainly the result in large part of their leadership. It is a state of mind in which intercollegiate sports competition is a completely integrated phase of the undergraduate liberal arts education; in which eligibility standards are reasoned, exacting, and honorably observed; in which the so called “athletic scholarship” is non-existent; in which academic officers assume full responsibility for sports administration.

All-American football players may be relatively few in the Ivy League in the future, but competition is rugged and exciting. It will be the competition of boys who play, not of downtown Boosters Clubs and recruiting organizations. It will be competition free of the troubles which still beset many of the younger but strangely more old-fashioned institutions in many parts of the country.

I saw Cas Adams not long ago at Baker Field, where Columbia College, the undergraduate college of 2,300 men in Columbia University; plays the only major football left in New York City.

I asked him if his contribution of an idea and, with Stanley Woodward, of a phrase to the American lexicon has brought him formal scholarly recognition from one or more of the institutions included in the now officially constituted Ivy League.

He said no.
December 1963

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

Interesting, Curwin. I note that the article you have found cites a very specific date of creation of the term (October 14, 1937) by the NY Herald-Tribue, while the article cited in the Staff report says more vaguely that the term was used in 1936 by the school newpapers.

Hard for the Herald-Trib (or Adams/Woodward) to claim they originated a phrase that was used a year earlier?

[andygirl]

One must not blast U Del. Quietgirl is going to go there.

And it’s an extinct yellow-bellied chicken, thanks much.

Hanging in the gym of Dartmouth is a banner proclaiming The Ivy League ™. It always cracks me up.

[amarinth]

*Originally posted by DSYoungEsq *
**At my alma mater, we took it one step further, claiming that the school had spurned membership offers in the Ivy League, ostensibly because the school wished to remain in Division III and not grant athletic scholarships or some such nonsense. You’d think a school as good as the University of Rochester wouldn’t have to feel that inferior… **

My school said the same - we also supposedly turned the league down due to a longstanding hatred of Harvard and anything to do with them. (Actually the interschool communication problems are fairly well documented, the refusal is more ULish.) Still didn’t offer athletic scholarships.

[BobT]

*Originally posted by The Ryan *
**The way I heard it, the Ivy League got its name from the fact that there were already Division I, Division II, and Division III, so this was considered Division IV, or Ivy. Come to think of it, it does sound like an urban legend. **

The NCAA didn’t divide itself up into Division I, II, and III until the 1970s which pretty much scotches that theory. The first division was “University Division” and then “College Division”. Division II is related to the College Division and started in the mid-1950s.