Ivy League: lolwut?

[modestmelody]

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It may be a sports league, but that’s really only one product of the tie that binds the schools (at least seven of the eight; Cornell is both a historical and geographic outlier). The other seven Ivy League schools are the seven oldest private universities in America, and along with William & Mary and Rutgers (both public), seven of the nine universities in existence in Colonial America. They’ve been associated with one another for hundreds of years, grew athletic programs to prominence at roughly the same time, and then de-emphasized athletics around the same time once big-time athletics outgrew the Ivies’ mission. That’s why they’re all in the same athletic conference - schools with similar histories, values, and academic standards sought one another out as appropriate sports rivals. The Ivies’ affiliation begat the sports league - not the other way around.

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<p>That’s true. It should be noted that Rutgers was invited when the league was formed, btw.</p>

<p>It really is just a long-standing tradition of cooperation amongst the institutions that grew from their location and age, nothing else.</p>

<p>Most of us who are in the Ivy League don’t think we’re better because of it-- I know I don’t I know that the “Ivy League” thing had nothing to do with me choosing Brown (it was the only Ivy I ultimately applied to). I don’t know anyone who walks around saying they go to an Ivy League school, we say we go to Brown.</p>

<p>I don’t think Stanford, MIT, CalTech, Duke, Mich, Cal, JHU, etc are getting the short shrift because of the lack of “Ivy”, and I’d think the students there would take offense to that and probably should.</p>