Halls of Ivy

When its eight members-formed an official conference in 1954 and adopted a "sanity code" to put football in its proper perspective, the Ivy League lapsed wholeheartedly into amateurism. The code reaffirmed longstanding Ivy prohibitions on such standard bigtime conveniences as the athletic scholarship, the fictional job, the specially rigged "gut" course. Coaches were forbidden to hold spring practice and reconciled themselves to starting practice at 5 o'clock on days when key players had afternoon lab periods. Substitute quarterbacks were content to watch the game from the sidelines, never dreamed of such bigtime facilities as huddling before a closed-circuit TV set that televises the same game from a better vantage point high in the stands.

With the accent on de-emphasis, some Ivy alumni find the results deplorable. The Ivies have taken some horrendous beatings when they ventured out of the family. This season Pennsylvania suffered fearsome lickings at the hands of Penn State (43-0) and Navy (50-8), Cornell was dismembered by Syracuse 55-0, and Princeton got bombed by Rutgers 28-0. Even the University of Buffalo beat Columbia and Harvard.

Yet Ivy League administrators are happy. With uniform admission standards, they turn up with teams of roughly equal strength that beat each other with unpredictable irregularity, making up in excitement what they may lack in consistent skill. They even produce a few topflight football players. The likes of Harvard's Tackle Bob ("Shag") Shaunessy, Brown's

Quarterback Frank Finney, Dartmouth's Halfback John Crouthamel and Yale's Center Mike Pyle could make almost any varsity in the U.S. But football players must compete for available financial aid on a strictly equal basis with all other students. Many of the best players get no help at all. Dartmouth's Coach Bob Blackman. reared in the high-pressure big time (University of Southern California), reports with a lingering trace of disbelief that in his four seasons at Dartmouth "none of our first-string quarterbacks have required or received scholarship help." In the Ivy League, explains Harvard's Coach John Yovicsin, "football is one of the most important extracurricular activities. Frankly, that's where it belongs. There is not a boy in the league who has to play football in order to stay in college.''

But even in the Ivy League, alumni are still alumni. When they got tired of seeing their teams beaten, Yale and Harvard alumni went to work to interest academically qualified players in their respective alma maters. They operated under restrictions. Only an estimated 3% of the best U.S. high school players can meet the Ivy schools' scholastic requirements. No financial help can be promised. But the lure of an Ivy-school degree is an important recruiting tool and, within limits, alumni can find a way. Of the 16 freshmen receiving scholarship help from the Harvard Club of Boston this year, 13 had either played varsity football or captained teams in other sports. The current Harvard freshman team boasts three rugged Oklahomans (two of them National Merit Scholars), amazed the experts by walloping the best Boston College freshman team in years. Yale came forth with a freshman squad exceptionally well-fixed at end, quarterback and fullback, precisely the weak spots on the current varsity.

Last week Princeton and Dartmouth met for the league championship. Both had been upset en route: Princeton had lost to Cornell and Dartmouth to Harvard. On form Princeton was given a minuscule edge, yet Dartmouth won the game 21-12. In the Ivy League, it usually happens that way.

-Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale.

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