Ivy League Football Schedule Ready for Remake

By the end of this column, you will understand why the Ivy League schedule is going to change, and why I have to start by talking about pre-term planning.

The tool that tries men’s souls, a Cthulhu-like nightmare worthy of True Detective, pre-term planning has no proper historical or cultural precedent. Except maybe Frankenstein’s monster, since Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris called the program “horrible” two years after witnessing its profane creation

But what does this have to do with sports? I’ll get there.

Despite the horrors, pre-term planning retains one redeeming quality (in addition to accurately predicting the enrollment for many courses): it makes an easy topic of dining hall conversation.

Students and faculty come together over a shared love of hating the system. They discuss how it distorts the TF hiring process, bewitches professors, and ensnares students in overcrowded lecture halls. Then, like the preteens we all are deep inside, they chatter about how they would fix the bad boy if only they could control it.

Selecting a course pre-term should give you a leg-up if it has a lottery during shopping week…. You should be able to add a degree of confidence with each selection…. Just create a model for course growth based on past enrollment, for Pete’s sake.

Pre-term planning is not the dining hall sage’s only area of expertise, of course. Listen long enough and you will hear all of their other quick-fix suggestions in due time.

Life would be easier for everyone if we could order grill items from our phones…. Professors should just give students a one-minute break to respond to emails and texts midway through class…. Why can’t Harvard figure out weekend shuttle service?

OK, so what does this all have to do with Harvard Athletics? Well, that exact same type of creative chatter is taking place in Ivy football circles concerning the league’s scheduling policies.

During last month’s preseason teleconference, Princeton coach Bob Surace suggested the league’s eight teams be divided into two divisions, with the winners playing in a championship game and one of them advancing to the FCS Playoffs.

The Daily Pennsylvanian joined the discussion earlier this month, with writer Steven Tydings opining for the conference to start play earlier.

Starting the season a week earlier would ensure warmer weather for the first night game, capitalize on back-to-school fan enthusiasm, and allow students to go to more games before their workloads reach cruising altitude.

Shifting the schedule would also mean inserting a bye week in the middle of the slate, as most other college and professional teams do. Adding a week off would fit perfectly with the conference’s stated priority regarding safety and health.

Harvard should also be able to play in the FCS playoffs, especially now that the league and the University are making broadcasting deals with ESPN and NBC Sports. It is unfair of the conference to use the students for nationally televised marketing while claiming, “Postseason play would undermine the student identity of our student-athletes,” as University President Drew G. Faust did in 2012.

I should add that the quote only applies to football players, in case you were confused about all the other Harvard athletes who are allowed to win national championships.

But I digress.

League insiders’ various suggestions aren’t important here; what is important is that the discussion is being had. Let’s go back to pre-term planning for a second.

PTP and other Harvard inanities make common topics of conversation because Harvard students like to complain and look smart, but the biggest factor is that nearly everyone agrees there is an underlying issue. You would be less likely to criticize PTP at dinner if you thought your friends might throw swai at you for disparaging what they consider to be a perfect tool.

Conversation normally focuses on whether there is a problem, except when everyone agrees that one exists.

I’m not being radical when I put forward the syllogism: a) There must be a consensus problem for conversation to be dominated by discussion of solutions b) The only conversations regarding the Ivy football schedule regard potential changes, and therefore c) The league’s schedule is accepted as flawed.

But it does not have to be. In recent years, the University has altered its academic calendar and tweaked pre-term planning after a groundswell of grumbling from armchair administrators.
In football scheduling, some changes are already coming.

Dartmouth will play New Hampshire for the first time in five years this season. Yale will play Army for the first time since 1996. Princeton will travel to San Diego, leaving its region for the first time in years, and Harvard will play in Washington, D.C., against Georgetown.

With an influx of new athletic directors around the league and reinvigorated discussions being had, bigger changes could come soon.

Sliding the schedule forward might benefit Ivy newspaper columnists most of all. They would no longer have to make contrived comparisons regarding pre-term planning and Ivy schedules during the second week of September.

They could make them about football teams instead.

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacob.feldman@thecrimson.com.Follow him on Twitter @jacobfeldman4.