A step back could be a step up

NAOMI PEASE/YH

Along with the rest of the Ivy League schools, Yale downgraded its football program from NCAA Division I to Division I-AA in 1983. While former coach Carm Cozza lamented this move in his book True Blue, he knew that it had to be made.

As Ivy basketball begins to encounter the same problems that football found in the twilight of its Division I (D-I) years, it is becoming increasingly evident that it should join its gridiron counterparts in taking a step down from D-I. Basketball in the Ivy League has hit that uncomfortable stage of its evolution at which a move down would be painful but beneficial. It will turn the Ivy League into a powerful conference on the national Division II (D-II) scene and renew the excitement for basketball that has been absent from this campus for so many years.

The differences between the Ancient Eight squads and teams from other Division I conferences are too large to reconcile. Yale is, and has always been, an institution that can survive on its academic reputation alone. Unlike Florida State, Miami, and even Marshall, Yale, Harvard and Princeton have the privilege of being well-known on the streets of places as far off as Beijing and Nairobi. The Yale administration knows this and, hence, doesn't place as much priority as it could on the school's athletic programs. The lack of scholarships and athletic department funding in the Ivies makes it just as difficult for the basketball teams to compete as it does for the football teams. Moreover, there is even less historical tradition surrounding Ivy hoops than there is regarding Ivy football.

Ivy coaches must make a sell that even Dale Carnegie couldn't make. Year after year, they must convince talented players to not only attend a school not known for its basketball program, but also pay an NBA salary's worth of money to do so. The only way that an Ivy League team could ever compete on a national level is, well, to recruit another Bill Bradley. James Jones, Bill Carmody, and their counterparts pray every day that a top-level recruit will also happen to be brilliant, charismatic, wealthy, and desirous of an Ivy League education. Unfortunately, they may have to wait another millennium to find one. Even if such a scholar-athlete did exist, he or she would almost certainly take a free education from Duke, Stanford or Georgetown over a costly one from an Ivy League school. Grant Hill would have liked to follow in his father's footsteps in New Haven, but the lure of a scholarship and national television exposure ensured that he would wear Duke's blue, not Yale's.

If Yale were a D-II program, the campus would finally get a chance to participate in March Madness instead of merely watching it unfold on CBS. Every year, the Ivies would get four or five teams into the season-ending tournament, and Princeton, Penn, and maybe even Yale would be in the national title hunt. Imagine Princeton invading the Amphitheater with not only Ancient Eight dominance, but also with the national title on the line. The Ivy teams could continue playing one other and even some D-I teams from the Northeast Conference and the Patriot League. And they could still schedule cupcakes like D-III Swarthmore. But it is more reasonable for the Elis to play against Millersville than against Colorado. I would be the first one in line to buy tickets to the NCAA tournament, even if the Elis were playing Indiana of Pennsylvania and not Indiana.

Instead of playing non-conference games against talented but lower division opponents, the league's teams have instead scaled up their schedules. Already this season, Penn has faced Kentucky and will face Penn State while Columbia has challenged Duke, and Brown has taken on Providence. Imagine the Yale football team scheduling Penn State and Colorado. The differences in the two programs are just too great to overcome, in both basketball and football. This is by no means an indictment against the talents of the Ivy League's players. Many Ivy players do have legitimate Division I skills—but not enough to make their teams competitive in their non-conference schedules.

James Jones and Amy Backus have almost impossible jobs. They have made their pitch to many student athletes and convinced a few excellent players to commit to the Yale program. The lure of an Ivy education is still enough to attract some outstanding basketball players. Yet both squads continue to lose innumerable non-conference games. Against Division II competition, their stars would stand out, their teams would win 20 games almost every season, and the campus would look forward to postseason play every year. It would be a move backwards, but a move back to the era when Ivy teams were in the national rankings and in the national title hunt. It's time to have a back-to-the-future resurgence.

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