I don’t believe it is inaccurate to state that there may be no more than one in ten thousand college football fans that can actually recall the time when Ivy League football attracted a majority of players of the caliber that could have succeeded in any of the major conferences. Decrease the number by ten-fold for those who will recall the early part of the Twentieth Century when the Ivy League actually dominated collegiate football. The reign of those glorious Ivy teams to most, was the stuff of the Silent Film Era and while there is truth to that statement, there is also truth in the fact that until the league de-emphasized football in 1956, Ivy teams were still appearing in the Top Twenty Polls at the end of the college seasons. Unless one is a grandparent or at least old enough to enjoy that distinction, they would not recall the national prominence of Army and Navy teams that routinely supplied All Americans and both Heisman Trophy candidates and winners. While many note that the revival of football at West Point for example, took the intrusion of a World War, it was another armed conflict, this one in Indochina, which literally destroyed Army football as a national power. With the Ivies and both Army and Navy stocked with excellent players, there was in fact an era where Eastern football could hold its own. Entering the 1956 season however, significant changes would occur.

 

Despite the 1869 contest between Princeton and Rutgers that is considered to be the inaugural college football game, many historians note 1872 as the true beginnings of college football. More widespread participation, public awareness, and a stricter set of rules launched what eventually became the modern game. With the older universities in the East, it was no surprise that they were the first to grab on to football and thus dominated the various list of “bests” into the mid-1900’s. The Ivy group existed as a ground-breaking entity but remained true to its academic founding. I doubt that anyone would forget that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton with or without a football team, are still Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, considered by most to be among the top three to five academic universities in the nation if not the world. However, until the formal agreements among the schools in 1956, the Ivy teams were not incorporated officially as the Ivy League and teams did not always play each other in any specific season. In 1954 for example, the University Of Pennsylvania played but two Ivy League opponents and while that was a bit extreme and due to Penn’s desire to be more of a “big time” football power, some seasons saw much less “Ivy vs. Ivy” than “Ivy vs. Non-Ivy” across the board. Beginning in 1956, an annual round-robin scheduling format and the limitations of a nine game schedule insured that every team within the league would face each other and that there would be very limited play against teams from outside the league. This is exactly what the Ivy university presidents wanted as early as 1954 when they chose to amend the rules they played under.