Reply to If the Ivy League had to expand, who'd join?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The Ivy League should consider dropping to D3. The athletic departments are burning through money and D1 athletic excellence isn't a top priority for the universities. The half in and half out approach just means a lot of teams are expensive to operate but not very good! [b]Trying to compete in D1 without athletic scholarships doesn't make sense in wins and losses or in mission. D3 aligns much better.[/b] [/quote]

No it doesn't, you nerd.  The Ivy League competes just fine in plenty of non-football sports.[/quote]

Stanford has more non-football NCAA team championships than the the entire Ivy League! It is also a school that everyone would consider a peer institution academically. These days, the Ivy League strives for academic excellence but athletic mediocrity (comparatively, anyway). They could go all-in on athletics and compete with Stanford, take a step back and be very strong D3 athletic departments like high-academic schools MIT, Williams, Amherst, Chicago, Swarthmore, and WashU have been lately, or continue spending just as much to be "just fine" or get crushed in pretty much everything not done at an exclusive club. It is strange for great schools to allocate a lot of resources (and admissions sway) but be fine with not being very competitive at a national level.[/quote]

I said that they "compete just fine," and they do.  Harvard clearly doesn't want to be Stanford, or it'd, well, be Stanford.

Again, the Ivies are quite happy where they are.  Stepping back to D3 would be a huge overall prestige loss, so that will never happen (imagine playing Swarthmore or MIT in anything, lol).  The only people on here who push for this sort of thing are parents still angry that their "super smart" kids ended up at Hamilton or UMD.[/quote]

I don't dispute they are happy with where they are. Harvard being fine with such expensive mediocrity is what is so surprising about their athletic decisions. They do seem excited to just make the NCAA tournament in soccer and NIT in basketball and maybe do slightly better in something like lacrosse.
Would competing for titles across numerous sports at a lower level be worse? Most people on this board don't even seem to realize that the Ivy League is really just a low-level D1 athletic conference. It could just be a top-level D3 conference. No one would think less of them prestige wise. The sport Harvard has been best at lately, women's squash, isn't an NCAA sport and they regularly compete against other top 10 programs like Trinity and Amherst (D3 in most sports).

If you are going to compete, at least play to win! Harvard hardly seems fine with being just okay at anything other than competitive sports.[/quote]

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