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Congress did something of great significance to Ivy League sports Friday.
It did nothing at all.
Congress allowed a section of the Higher Education Act allowing key antitrust protection for the Ivy League to expire. The expiration increases the Ivy League’s exposure to legal challenges to its refusal to grant academic and athletic scholarships.
A quiet Saturday on the college basketball front was upended just after three o’clock with Adam Zagoria’s tweet:
Sources: Two Ivy League schools are highly unlikely to play men’s hoops this year and it’s possible the whole league won’t play at all.
“I have a feeling it would be the whole league isn’t going to play,” one Ivy League asst coach.
— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) October 17, 2020
Nearly a month after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis officer while three other officers stood by, the Ivy hoops community has continued to speak out against racial injustice and in support of people of color.
Another introspective from Nat Graham
Penn men’s associate head coach and 1997 graduate Nat Graham, who is White, on Sunday published a post on Medium thoughtfully reflecting on the structural advantages his race gave him in life and the “not so equal” separation between his Miami neighborhood and that of his Black high school teammate who Graham found out later eventually got his teeth knocked out while in prison.
Graham writes:
Our latest Ivy hoops roundup features the 2019-20 Academic All-Ivies and a whole lot of Ivy graduate transfers on the move:
Academic All-Ivies announced
The Ivy League released its winter edition of the 2019-20 Academic All-Ivy list Thursday. The basketball honorees were:
The Yale Daily News confirmed Wednesday what many already suspected: Jack Montague, former captain of the Yale men’s basketball team, was expelled from the university for sexual misconduct on Feb. 10.
The student who filed the November complaint declined to comment to the News for its story, as did Montague, the publication said.
The Yale Daily News is reporting another round of posters showing up on campus criticizing the team’s reaction to Jack Montague’s departure from campus last month.
Before their game against Harvard at Payne Whitney Gym on Senior Night Feb. 26, members of the team took the court wearing shirts with Montague’s jersey number and nickname, “Gucci,” on the back and “Yale” spelled backwards on the front, which Justin Sears characterized as a show of support for Montague after the game. The YDN reported posters featuring a picture of the team dressed in the shirts and asking Yale men’s basketball to “stop supporting a rapist” appeared all over campus, including at the entrance of Payne Whitney Gym.
On Tuesday, the Yale Daily News reported that the Yale basketball program is facing backlash on campus for its show of support for former team captain Jack Montague, who the News reported had withdrawn from the school on Feb. 10. On Thursday, the Yale Daily News further reported that that backlash is escalating.
Before their game against Harvard at Payne Whitney Gym on Senior Night last Friday, members of the team took the court wearing shirts with Montague’s jersey number and nickname, “Gucci,” on the back and “Yale” spelled backwards on the front, which Justin Sears characterized as a show of support for Montague after the game.
“‘Yale’ spelled backwards wasn’t to make a statement. It’s just because Yale is a brand and there was a copyright,” Sears told the News postgame. “It was just convenient, at the last minute. Everyone on the team supported it and wanted to show our support for Jack.”
But Tuesday, the YDN reported posters featuring a picture of the team dressed in the shirts and asking Yale men’s basketball to “stop supporting a rapist” appeared all over campus, including at the entrance of Payne Whitney Gym. The majority of the posters had been taken down by 8 a.m. that same day, most by members of the team, according to the Yale Daily News. Sears said told the News Sunday that Yale athletic director Tom Beckett and coach James Jones did not have “any say” in the shirts, declining to say whether the staff knew about the shirts in advance.
Then Thursday, the YDN reported a second wave of posters appearing on campus:
We’re counting down the top 10 moments in each Ivy school’s history as part of our Ivy League at 60 retrospective. Yale is next by request of Ivy Player of the Year Justin Sears.
Yale won its first ever postseason game on March 14, 2002. It took a while, but the payoff was sweet.
Yale earned a NIT appearance three years removed from a 4-22 campaign in 1998-99 by virtue of its share of the Ivy title (part of our No. 9 moment). The Elis drew a road matchup with favored Rutgers at the Louis Brown Athletic Center (better known as the RAC), a notoriously difficult place for visitors to play where the Scarlet Knights were 15-1 prior to facing Yale.
The 10th Ivy League playoff in history is set to tip off in a few hours, and it will not be broadcasted nationally. The Ivy League’s hands are tied. And the sad thing is, the league pushed itself to that point.
In the Ivy League, tradition is spelled a-r-c-h-a-i-c. It’s that traditional (read: old) thought process that led to Saturday’s Ivy League playoff between Harvard and Yale being broadcast only on the American Sports Network, which essentially means that it’ll air on various local affiliates across the nation, and ESPN3, an online channel for the World Wide Leader that will air almost any sport as long as the customer is willing to pay a fee.
For sports like cricket and ultimate frisbee – fringe sports that are trying to gain popularity in America – what ESPN3 has to provide is enough. For arena football or lacrosse, a local affiliate station is good enough. But for the Ivy League, a basketball conference that provides just as much excitement as any, it shouldn’t be.