Sport: Ivy-Bound Agreement

• Share

Around a Manhattan club table shortly before Christmas met the presidents of the traditional Ivy League colleges* to talk about sport. They were fundamentally agreed about what had to be done, and last week came the result of their agreement: creation of an official Ivy Group of eight colleges whose members will play virtually all their games with each other.

At the same time, the group adopted the strictest and simplest athletic code since colleges began to build grandstands. Main points, some of which were carried over from earlier Ivy agreements: ¶ No athletic scholarships of any kind, direct or indirect. ¶ Strict eligibility requirements. Items: no student will be considered eligible until he has "completed satisfactorily" a full year's academic work at the school he is to represent; thereafter, he must continue to make good progress, "quantitatively and qualitatively," toward "a recognized degree." ¶ No spring football practice. ¶ No post-season games (except N.C.A.A. competitions, etc.).

Since each of the Ivy colleges will play seven football games a season with other teams in the group, they will have only a minimum of schedule space for traditional non-Ivy rivals, e.g., Princeton's ancient (85 years) rivalry with Rutgers, Columbia's rivalry with Army.

The Ivy presidents went further. Hereafter, coaches will not be permitted to give advertising endorsements, e.g., Columbia's Lou Little may still smoke Lucky Strikes but not on magazine pages. As a final new measure, the Ivy presidents solemnly shut the eligibility door on any athlete whose precollege career was ever tainted by a subsidy: "No student entering after Sept. 1, 1953 shall be eligible whose secondary-school education was subsidized or whose post-college education is promised by an institution or group of individuals not closely related to the family."