In Search of Parity

Two pee-wee teams playing each other will make for interesting football just so long as the two teams are equal in talent. The Three Stooges versus the Marx Brothers would be a great game because both are equally incompetent.

So, at any rate, goes the logic of Ivy League administrators who are committed to keeping Ivy football where it is, far below the standards of the nation's top teams, like Miami and Oklahoma.

If Harvard and Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth, Cornell and Penn, Brown and Columbia can fight hard-fought, close-fought battles, the league is where it should be, administrators say. No matter that Harvard played Miami it would lose by a truck-load of touchdowns. No matter that if Princeton played Oklahoma, its entire team would be carted off the field in a jumbo-sized ambulance.

Ivy League football will remain interesting because it will feature teams of comparable talent dueling each other, administrators say. Parity, not perfection, is the goal of Ivy League administrators.

Ivy League games will never be the equivalent of Road Runner versus Wile E. Coyote, or Popeye versus Brutus. Ivy League games will continue to feature Wile E. Coyote versus Brutus.

And what cartoon lover wouldn't want to see such a match-up?

As Harvard Athletic Director Jack Reardon says, "I like watching Harvard football games. They're exciting. [But] I don't know what the person who watches Notre Dame every weekend would think after watching one of our games."

He'd probably think the talent was not that good. But if the game went down to the wire, he'd be on the edge of his seat.

No, Harvard will never be able to beat Miami. Princeton will never be able to beat Oklahoma. But Harvard and Princeton will be able to beat each other. This, administrators say, is the goal of the Ivy League.

Reardon and his colleagues are right. As long as Ivy games remain close, it doesn't matter how far below the national football mean Harvard and Princeton are.

If Wile E. Coyote and Brutus go 15 rounds, that's a heck of a fight, more fun than watching Mike Tyson knock out outclassed opponent number 43 in the first round.

Besides, if the Ivy League were to try to regain the national prominence it once had (back in the days when families gathered around their radios for nightly entertainment), it would have to lower it academic standards a foot or two and get involved in the terrible bidding war for top-notch athletes which current Division I-A colleges wage every day of the year.

The Ivy League is too noble for that

There are certain minor rules that Ivy League administrators should revise. For instance, the ban on post-season play.

Granted, the Division I-AA playoff process--four games over five weeks--is grueling. But if the Ivy League has a team capable of being the Division I-AA champion (and this would be rare enough to warrant a parade in each Ivy city), that team should be given the chance to prove itself.

In 1986, the Pennsylvania football team went 10-0, including a victory over Division I-A Navy. The Quakers, ranked seventh in Division I-AA, should have been given a chance to prove themselves against the teams ranked higher in the Division I-AA poll.

Also, the Academic Index should be abolished. The Index, which applies solely to potential athletes in major sports, is composed of class rank, SAT and Achievement Test scores. Any athlete who falls below 161 on the Index cannot be recruited.

The Index discriminates against athletes. There is no such index for musicians or actors or poets. Imagine the Harvard English Department being unable to approach a promising writer because his or her Index score was below 161.

The Index is also elitist, as Brown basketball Coach Mike Cingiser says. It favors those students who are able to buy a spot in an SAT class or go to private or prep schools geared toward preparing students for college entrance tests.

The public school kid, equally or more intelligent than the average preppy, is often on his own when it comes to taking those tests. No guidance, no glory. He goes at it alone, like someone coming cold off the bench into a heated game.

The Ivy League will never regain national prominence in major sports. Too many schools willing to dish out scholarships and occasionally overlook a fistful of D's on an athlete's report card are out there, ready to pounce on a top-notch athlete. The Ivy League will continue to attract the top-notch student-athlete. A student first, an athlete second is the great motto of Ivy League athletics.

The real problem will come when Miami starts drawing the quarterback who makes straight As and Oklahoma gets the linebacker with 1600 on his SATs.