Colm
April 23, 2011, 10:46am
25
<p>Cornell was not the last to join the Ivy League. If you include the precursor league, then Cornell was amongst the first five to join; but the official Ivy League involved all current eight schools in tandem.</p>
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The first formal league involving Ivy League teams was formed in 1902, when Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Yale and Princeton formed the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League. They were later joined by Penn, Dartmouth and Brown.
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…on December 3, 1936, the idea of “the formation of an Ivy League” gained enough traction among the undergraduate bodies of the universities that the Columbia Daily Spectator, The Cornell Daily Sun, The Dartmouth, The Harvard Crimson, The Daily Pennsylvanian, The Daily Princetonian and the Yale Daily News would simultaneously run an editorial entitled “Now Is the Time”, encouraging the seven universities to form the league in an effort to preserve the ideals of athletics.
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In 1945 the presidents of the eight schools signed the first Ivy Group Agreement, which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for the football teams.
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