COLUMN: No football playoffs is just unfair

Until yesterday, it never bothered me that the Ivy League discriminated against its football teams. I guess I just never really thought about it carefully before. While most football fans saddle onto the couch for a Saturday afternoon with a bag of chips, a remote and a major college game on the tube, as a lifelong Ivy fan I've spent more Saturday afternoons than I can remember braving the elements in one celebrated-if-not-antiquated stadium after another. I remember trying to dodge the frigid rain running off the umbrella of the fan behind me while watching the Quakers pound the Bears at Brown Stadium in '88. I remember desperately trying not to get trampled to death as I stormed the field last November against Harvard. And as long as I have known that Ivy League teams don't go to the playoffs, I have taken it for granted, accepting the fact that the teams I've been watching won't see their seasons run past Thanksgiving, no matter how successful. It wasn't that I didn't realize that of the 33 Ivy League champions crowned, only the football teams could not compete in the postseason. But I just accepted it as a fact of Ivy League life and it didn't bother me. I thought I knew all the stock reasons why -- reasons like the playoffs would interfere with exams and the Ivy Leaguers would get crunched by their I-AA scholarship brethren -- and I accepted them. Sure, it might have been nice to see the champs play on. But, if they didn't, then so be it. After all, the Ivy League is certainly not like any other conference around. An anachronism, the Ivy League made me long for an era I never even witnessed -- of 50,000 fans packing monolithic stadiums in the days before TV -- while at the same time I was accepting of its current unique position. To me, staying out of the playoffs was not an elitist, trying-to-be-different move but simply one of the quirks that made the old conference seem more lovably unique. According to Bilsky, this question hinges on two issues. "One issue is the question of fairness," he said. "Every sport in the Ivies is represented in the NCAA Tournament [except football]." This issue is not even debatable. The Ivy League discriminates against football. But is this discrimination well founded? According to Orleans, "From the outset in '54, the original group of Ivy League presidents said we will not have postseason play in football. So the issue has always been are we going to change one of the founding tenets of the Ivy League approach to athletics or not?" When the Ivy League was formally founded, de-emphasizing football was key -- scholarships, spring practice and postseason play were forbidden. In those days, however, the Ivies were still Division I. But the presidents could not have foreseen the creation of I-AA in 1978, a clear de-emphasis from I-A. And entering a 16-team I-AA playoff is hardly a sign that the next stop is million-dollar TV deals, booster scandals and a slot in a New Year's Day bowl. The second issue is, according to Bilsky, "Are we competitive?" The answer, quite simply: Yes. Consider the Patriot League, the Ivy's closest gridiron cousin. Ivy teams played 18 of their 24 nonleague games last year against Patriot League schools and won 10 of them. Until 1995, league bylaws declared all Patriot League teams ineligible for the NCAA Division I-AA tournament -- just like the Ivy League. In '95, though, the league's Council Of Presidents reversed its policy, stating that football should be granted the same NCAA post-season opportunities as every other league-sponsored sport. In 1997, Colgate finished 6-0 in Patriot League play to earn the conference's first automatic bid to the tournament. That year, the Red Raiders scraped by with a 44-38 overtime win against an average Cornell squad; against a homeless, road-weary Princeton team, they lost 31-28. Last year, the Patriot League sent two teams to the I-AA playoffs. That's right, two -- a scenario just as unlikely as the Ivies sending two basketball teams to the NCAAs. While Colgate copped an at-large spot, Lehigh went unbeaten in the league to earn the automatic bid, yet beat middle-of-the-pack Princeton, Harvard and Columbia by a total of 12 points during the regular season. Lehigh then won its first tournament game against Richmond before succumbing in the round of eight to eventual national champ UMass by a mere six points. Villanova's blowout win Saturday -- in just Penn's second game of the season -- changes nothing. The Ivy champ has a long history of elevating its level of play as the season wears on. It's not surprising, then, that Bilsky favors going to the playoffs, as does Penn coach Al Bagnoli, who said, without hesitation, "Any coach is going to answer 'yes' [in favor]." But there's still one issue left: that of academics -- a conflict with reading week and exam period. The single-elimination, 16-team I-AA football playoffs run each Saturday from November 27 through December 18 this year. This reasoning inherently presents a Catch-22. Penn begins its reading period on December 11, before many of its counterparts. Thus, anyone arguing that postseason play is an impediment to academics believes that the Ivy League champion has at least a shot of playing into the third round of the tournament. And keeping football out for academic reasons is just plain unfair. Consider baseball, where the Ivy champ in the NCAA tournament plays until the end of May. Last June, there may have been at least a chink in the 45-year-old armor protecting the prohibition. Brown president Gordon Gee, president of Big Ten football power Ohio State until 1998, raised the question. "[It was] certainly in my memory, the most extensive and thorough discussion," Orleans said. "I think it would be fair to say that it was the first time an individual president had actually said, 'This is an issue that I personally think we ought to review so that I understand what our decision is and what it means for my specific institution.'" The issue is not mine to decide. It is neither Bilsky's nor Orleans', who calls himself the "presidents' servant in this matter." It is the decision of the Council of Ivy Group presidents. So Dr. Rodin, please listen: Until yesterday, it never bothered me that the Ivy League held back when it came to football playoffs. As a diehard Ivy League fan, I accepted it. But because I am an Ivy League fan, I want to see what's best for the conference. And now I know what that is. Bring on the playoffs.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.