Let them play

The administration should speak out in favor of allowing Ivy League football teams to participate in the post-season.

As sad as the current state of affairs may be, the biggest story in Princeton sports this week is not the fact that our rival Penn Quakers will be taking on Texas in basketball (instead of us). Rather, that title belongs to the USG decision to call for an end to the ban by the Ivy League on member schools' participation in post-season football play.

The arguments in the USG resolution are, on the whole, convincing and clear. Football is the only Division I sport in which Ivy League student-athletes are prevented from participating in postseason competition. There is also evidence that athletes from other academically rigorous conferences that have lifted similar bans — such as the Patriot League, which contains Bucknell and Lehigh — have not suffered. It is not surprising, then, that there is a league-wide consensus amongst students, athletes, coaches and athletic directors that football players deserve the opportunity to compete in the post-season.

But these arguments — and the debate itself — are not new. As The Harvard Crimson reported in its Nov. 12, 2003 article, "Ivy presidents listen up: football needs playoffs," former Princeton president Harold Shapiro GS '64 told coach Roger Hughes that "there was no logical reason for the postseason ban and that the presidents just didn't want Ivy League teams participating."

If Princeton football players were to advance to post-season play, they would not have to miss even one exam because the tournament would be over by mid-December — well before our January exam period.

With such specious reasoning behind maintaining the policy, why has nothing changed? The answer is unclear to anyone except the Council of Ivy League Presidents, the organization charged with making the decision. The Crimson suggests that their reasoning is based on the idea that it might be difficult to both maintain the Ivy League's academic standards and recruit competitive teams.

But this reasoning appears to us to be grossly inadequate. We applaud the USG's endorsement of the resolution. But more importantly, we urge Nassau Hall to take note of the resolution and to use it as the starting point for pursuing a more fair policy which affords Ivy League football teams the same opportunities available to teams in other sports.