Hey, that’s not fair! Many people at the schools don’t care about the rivalries either.
I just go for the tailgates!
It also means schools that are big enough to have good, interesting teams, with all of the foofarah that makes the college football scene so much fun, but with essentially none of the big-industry bullshit and corruption that infests football in the schools with “programs” large enough to control the schools.
I remember in the late 1970s the U of R men’s basketball team played North Carolina down in Chapel Hill. The Yellowjackets coach said he turned to talk to his players after the national anthem and four of the starters were at the Tar Heel bench getting Phil Ford’s autograph.
You mean like Bucknell and Holly Cross?
Totally coincidentally, this came up as an example in my stats class. Basically, there’s an agreement between the Ivies that athletes must be representative of the student body. That’s actually codified, such that the average “academic index” of athletes must be no less than one standard deviation below the average of the rest of the students. And there are other standards and mechanisms in place to enforce that – something like scaling back the teams that fall below the line. (That’s where we moved into the math, so we didn’t discuss the enforcement mechanisms in detail).
They’re in the second tier of 1-AA conferences, below the scholarship ones and with less of the fun foofarah, but yes. Why the smiley?
Got a cite on that one?
“Fight fiercely Harvard! Fight, fight, fight! Demonstrate to them our skill!
Albeit they possess the might, nonetheless we have the will!”
I must take issue with this. All of the schools named by the OP are excellent, but to say categorically that ALL of those schools are better at ALL types of engineering, math and science than ANY Ivy League school is a gross overstatement. As a Cornell engineering grad, I’d say my education and job prospects were at least as good as those acquired by graduates of those other programs. It got me into MIT for graduate school, for instance.
More generally, the tendency to rank schools and say that School A is better than School B because it ranked 5th instead of 8th in some area is pointless and detrimental to higher education in general. Each school offers a unique combination of attributes which, ideally, matches the students’ interests and values. For example, some engineering schools’ curricula are more theoretical, while others are more practical. At some institutions, this distinction could even be made between, say, the mechanical engineering department and the civil engineering department. Does this make one institution (or department) ‘better’ than the other? Of course not.
I know that Dopers are smart and probably didn’t take the OP at face value, but felt it warranted a response. <steps off soap box.>
Actually, the Patriot League, in which Bucknell and Holy Cross compete (as well as Lehigh, Georgetown, Lafayette, Colgate, and Fordham) also do not offer athletic scholarships for football, though Fordham now does, and as such, they’re ineligible for the league title (which won’t happen this year, at least, as they’re the doormat). The Ivies and the Patriot league will have some games against each other every year.
I can’t find a cite for this, but I remember Penn playing one 1-A team a year when I was there in the mid 80’s. Navy and Ga Tech, if I remember.
And Penn has been playing Villanova for the last several years - they are a big time 1-AA program.
Right, that’s what I said.
There’s some speculation about New Hampshire and Maine joining, or perhaps forming a new league with the upstarts from the Patriot and Northeastern, once UMass’ departure for 1-A (and maybe Villanova’s too) separates them geographically from the rest of the Colonial.
The top (scholarship) tier of 1-AA teams routinely play a “guarantee game” every year at a 1-A team - they get guaranteed a 6-figure cut of the gate, and the 1-A team gets a win that (now) counts toward bowl eligibility. Except that it isn’t necessarily a win - the lower 1-A schools often get embarrassed when they take the guarantee opponent too lightly. Appalachian State’s win at Michigan a couple of years ago should not have been a surprise, for instance.
I should also have clarified, Villanova is in 1-AA too, like Penn, although they have an offer from the Big East if they move to 1-A (they’re already in the conference for every other sport). But the Ivy League is not really on the same level as the Colonial Athletic Association any more than the Sunbelt Conference is on the same level as the Pac-12.