It’s been almost a quarter-century since former Indianapolis Colts coach Jim Mora Sr. delivered his infamous news conference rant questioning the playoffs, but lately that’s just about all that anybody around football can talk about.

The NFL has floated changes to its postseason seeding at recent owners meetings while the College Football Playoff has been locked into an endless debate over the event’s future format and composition. From commissioners to coaches, everybody is seemingly feeling the need to weigh in whenever there’s a microphone present.

Yet the biggest change that will happen surrounding a forthcoming set of playoffs this fall is one that has flown under the radar—one that will come courtesy of the lone cohort that far predates the NFL on the gridiron and is on the opposite end of the spectrum from those making millions off of a CFP appearance. 

That’s because this year, for the first time since 1945, the Ivy League is participating in the college football postseason and will send at least one team to play in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. 

“One of the most common questions I would get from all different constituents, and particularly student-athletes, is why don’t we participate in the FCS playoffs?” Ivy League executive director Robin Harris says. “When this current round started with our Ivy League Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) in the summer of 2023, it was a normal question to be honest. I answered it as I normally do, explaining the presidents had considered this and gave the litany of reasons why when the presidents last talked about it.

“And our student-athletes did not accept that answer.”

Perhaps that’s because the football postseason wasn’t always off limits to the so-called Ancient Eight schools who would eventually go on to form the Ivy League officially in 1954. The Brown Bears, Penn Quakers, Harvard Crimson and Columbia Lions all trekked across the country to play in early editions of the Rose Bowl game, while the likes of the Princeton Tigers and Yale Bulldogs were regularly trading national championships around the turn of the century when the concept was even more limited.

Predating the formal creation of the league, however, the respective schools banded together in 1945 to sign the Ivy Group Agreement which, among other things, took their teams out of the running for participation in such postseason contests—which had been the case in the 80 years since.

“I don’t know how many times it’s actually been presented to the presidents to vote on since the [agreement]. People might assume the presidents kept saying no, but I don’t really know if they’ve been given the opportunity to say no,” says Harvard coach Andrew Aurich, a former Ivy League offensive lineman with Princeton. “When I heard about the proposal, it was exciting because at least we’re going to get an answer from them and not it being tabled for more discussion with different levels within the Ivy League.”

The Ivies have been a part of what is now the FCS since 1982, a few years after the NCAA formally split Division I into two subdivisions and implemented a playoff that began with four teams and eventually grew into its current 24-team bracket. While there had been informal attempts over the years to get the conference to soften its stance on postseason participation, university presidents clung to the ideals of separating athletics from overtaking the academic experience on campus. The same was true with regards to March Madness, with the Ivy League only acquiescing to holding a conference basketball tournament in 2017 after years of being a lone holdout.

What changed this time around? 

According to everybody in and around the league who spoke to Sports Illustrated in recent weeks about the decision, it was the fact that this effort was spearheaded by the athletes—and not just the football players who stood to benefit. A constant refrain was that it was not equitable that one sport was prevented from joining the NCAA’s postseason structure. 

The seeds of change were planted in 2023 during a routine meeting of the conference’s SAAC executive board, with Brown softball player Leah Carey and Cornell Big Red lacrosse player Chloe Maister among those who first called attention to the Ivy League not participating in the FCS playoffs. 

“As a football player, my initial reaction was that of course it would be a cool idea, but I was unsure if we had the ability to help make a change, which we quickly learned that we did. From this point on, we got to work,” says Yale wide receiver Mason Shipp, the group’s chair. “I reached out to teammates at Yale, other student-athletes and members of other Ivy League institutions. My goal was to gain as much knowledge as possible about the history of Ivy League participation in postseason football, as well as the consensus for whether the idea is widely supported or not throughout the league. 

“My biggest takeaway after my conversations was there was an overwhelming amount of support for this idea. So, I got to work on drafting the proposal.”

That was two summers ago, beginning an arduous 16-month process that led to a mid-December announcement by Ivy League presidents that they voted for the change to what had been a foundational principal underpinning the conference’s very creation. 

“Since arriving at Yale, I’ve consistently heard from our football student-athletes and coaches about their deep desire to compete on a national stage in the FCS playoffs. I’m incredibly proud of Mason and his fellow Ivy League SAAC representatives for their vision, determination, and persuasive advocacy in advancing this transformative proposal,” Yale athletic director Vicky Chun said in a statement. “Under Mason’s leadership, the SAAC crafted a thoughtful, compelling case—one that resonated with Ivy League presidents and skillfully moved through the appropriate legislative channels. Their diligence and clarity of purpose made it easy for my colleagues and me to lend our full support.”

Before the proposal formally reached the presidents, the conference office confirmed with NCAA staffers that the league was eligible for participation in the playoffs and was politely surprised to learn it wouldn’t need any sort of special waiver or formal application in order to receive an automatic qualifier berth to the FCS playoffs because it already met the criteria for one. The Ivy League was even eligible, once it elected to move forward with the proposal, for at-large selections from the selection committee which picked and seeded the field at the end of every season.

Officials in other FCS conferences have been surprisingly supportive of the change even prior to December’s announcement—despite there being fewer spots in the playoff for their own teams as a result—and those within the Ivy League have already been experiencing an uplift in interest in the sport across a variety of fronts in the months since making the announcement. 

“We’re up to nine NCAA championships with multiple teams participating this year, so we’re not only an [automatic qualifier] league in many sports, so that helps certainly with recruiting. I think our coaches focus on the overall experience that our student-athletes have when they come to the Ivy League,” Harris says. “They can be students, and they can be athletes, and they really get the best of both worlds. This now adds another component to the athletic piece of the equation without taking anything away from what they already have.”

“In recruiting, it’s definitely positive. I wouldn’t necessarily say we were losing guys because we can’t go to the playoffs, because the Harvard degree is a very powerful degree that helps you win a lot of recruiting battles regardless of the playoffs. But it definitely adds to the discussions when talking to recruits,” Aurich says. “The way I look at it, the talent walking into the Ivy schools every year is as good as any league in FCS football. So if you combine that talent walking in with the development the right way, there’s no reason that we can’t compete for national championships in the Ivy League.”

To what degree that competition will take hold each fall remains to be seen given that the conference is still playing a slightly different game from their peers that regularly make deep runs in the FCS playoffs. 

The likes of the North Dakota State Bison, South Dakota State Jackrabbits and Montana State Bobcats all can distribute up to 63 athletic scholarships and also benefit from the ability to redshirt some players to enhance their ability to build competitive rosters. The usage of the transfer portal—especially with FBS players dropping down a level—is another area of differentiation and several FCS schools have already confirmed they plan to opt-in to the revenue sharing that will come about as part of the House v. NCAA settlement that is set to begin this summer. 

The Ivy League programs, however, will do none of those things when it comes to enhancing their on-field product.

“I have immense respect for the Ivy League and the way it operates. It has worked well for a very long time. With that, it was very cool to see a league with such historic traditions agree to a change like this to benefit the student-athletes,” Shipp says. “My hope is that the Ivy League’s participation in the FCS playoff gives our programs the platform in college football to have our student-athletes recognized for the immense amount of work they put into their sport and their education. 

“Fans will be more excited as every game now has heightened importance. Everything will now matter just a little bit more.”

Indeed, that’s notable given that tiebreakers for the league’s automatic qualifier spot have yet to be formalized and announced. The Ivy has had a split conference title in three of the last four seasons, though the round-robin schedule means that head-to-head competition will carry significant weight in earning a place in the playoff field.

Perhaps the biggest challenge with the change in postseason participation is that previously all the football players in the conference have been able to assume they’ll be home each Thanksgiving—a key selling point for some.

“I think it’s going to be really big,” Aurich says. “There’s a lot of history and tradition within the Ivy League and this is just like a new chapter added on to it, which is really exciting.”

For some, it might even be worth making sure those Thanksgiving flights home this fall can also be booked with a refundable ticket just in case.

So, playoffs? We’re talking about playoffs?

Yes, after a decades-long wait and amid all the debate over playoff formats that have taken place in recent months, even the Ivy League can finally talk about the postseason and all that comes along with it.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as For the First Time in 80 Years, the Ivy League Will Participate in Playoff Football.

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