More on the football schedule

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As a companion to the article about the renewal of the Ivy League football schedule, through 2017 from today's DP, here are three additional questions and answers:

1. What does this do to other sports?
Ivy League Associate Director Chuck Yrigoyen made it clear that one of the most important aspects of scheduling in the fall season is keeping the "jamboree weekends." For example, when Brown's football team visits Penn, their men's soccer, women's soccer and field hockey teams will as well. Volleyball's double-round-robin makes its inclusion impossible.

The jamborees will continue under the new system, with the only possible problems coming from conflicts with the soccer NCAA College Cups.

2. Why did they do it so early?
It was a priority to get the league schedule done, because unlike in basketball, the football non-conference scheduling is done years ahead of time. The Penn-Villanova matchup is booked through 2011, and Penn has been in talks with Delaware for 2012. In other words, it was important for the league schedule to be set in order to know which weeks were free for non-conference games.

3. What does it do to travel distances?
For Penn, a lot. Consider the current league schedule travel setup (adding up one-way distances).

Odd years: at Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, Harvard - 4 games, 1,057 miles
Even years: at Yale, Princeton, Cornell - 3 games, 450 miles

Under the new schedule:
Odd years: at Columbia, Brown, Harvard - 3 games, 694 miles
Even years: at Dartmouth, Yale, Princeton, Cornell - 4 games, 813 miles