In a thought-provoking, albeit a little too familiar, article, the Wall Street Journal's Darren Everson asks if the Ivy League needs fixing.
Using the decline of national success of Ivy football, basketball and hockey, he writes about the luster Ivy Athletics has lost in the last 20 years or so. The standard reasons for the Ancient Eight's fall are there -- no scholarships, no football playoffs, no basketball tournament and of course rigorous admission standards for athletes -- but he does make a good point that the Ivies theoretically are at a crossroads with Robin Harris starting her job July 1.
So what do you guys think? Does the Ivy League need to seriously adjust their standards? Or is it OK that the league does well in second tier sports like lacrosse, wrestling and of course in lower-level sports like squash and fencing but can't make noise in the bigger ones? Let me know in the comments.
Since there's a possibility that link won't give you the entire article, the full text is after the jump.
But before that, here's some other Ivy news. I wrote a few months ago about the possibility of a Washington, D.C., "Big 6" version of the Big 5. Well Connecticut of all places has beaten out the nation's capital. Well kind of.
For the next three seasons, the Connecticut 6 Classic will take place at the beginning of every season, as Yale, Sacred Heart, Hartford, Quinnipiac, Fairfield and Central Connecticut State will compete in a triple header of games. So it won't be exactly like the Big 5 since it won't be round robin. Instead it'll be more like the Philly Classic that started two years ago.
(via Cornell Basketball Blog)
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