Ivy & I-AA Do they dislike the Label?

[Gamecocks99]

Maybe IvyTalk can help me understand some of the discussion from their board about how some think 1-AA is on the way out and some seem to dislike the label of 1-AA. Or is this a small group? What are your thoughts?

[DFW HOYA]

One of the reasons why the Ivy League does not like I-AA was that they were relegated to it. As late as 1970 the Ivy League fielded a top 20 team in Dartmouth, and a runner-up to the Heisman a year later in Cornell's Ed Marinaro. I think a few older Ivy fans still remembered when Dave Diles opened ABC's weekly college football wrap-up show in the 1970's with "Let's begin with scores from the Ivy League..."

Today is a different story. Only half of the Ancient Eight regularly average more than 10,000 a game. Princeton cut seating almost in half with its new stadium, while Dartmouth is planning to downsize its older stadium. Columbia has one of the nicer stadiums in all I-AA and hardly gets anyone to go there. The Lions drew 4,495 a game last year--one game drew 1,318.

The Ivy Leaguers aren't looking to add Penn State and Notre Dame, but the I-AA name and the intransigence of its administrations can certainly irritate its fans, none more so than when the admissions director at Dartmouth complimented D-III Swarthmore on dropping football, writing that "football, and the culture that surrounds it, is antithetical to the academic mission of colleges such as ours."

A Dartmouth article below goes into much more detail on this dichotomy.

http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/06/12/the_fortunes_of_dartmouth_football_furstenbergs_fa ux_pas.php