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Ivy
League is the name applied to eight universities in the
US (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania,
Princeton, and Yale) that over the years have had common
interests in scholarship as well as in athletics.
The phrase was coined by Stanley Woodward, New York Herald
Tribune sports writer, coined the phrase in the early thirties
in 1936. In the year 1945 the presidents of these universities
entered into an agreement ``for the purpose of reaffirming
their intention of continuing intercollegiate football in
such a way as to maintain the values of the game, while
keeping it in fitting proportion to the main purposes of
academic life.''
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To achieve
this objective two inter-university committees were appointed:
one, made up primarily of the college deans, was to administer
rules of eligibility; the other, composed of the athletic directors,
was to establish policies on the length of the playing season
and of preseason practice, operating budgets and related matters.
Thereafter,
the Ivy Group (as the league was called in the Presidents' Agreement
of 1954) established schedules in other sports, including some
in existing leagues with non-Ivy members.
As of 1977, the
Ivy League colleges competed in various sports including football,
soccer, basketball, and with certain variations as noted, in baseball
(also Army and Navy), fencing (except Brown and Dartmouth), ice
hockey (except Columbia), squash (except Brown, Columbia, and Cornell),
swimming (except Columbia, but also Army and Navy), tennis (also
Army and Navy), and wrestling (except Brown and Dartmouth). Ivy
championships in cross-country and track were determined at the
annual Heptagonal Meets, in golf at an Ivy championship tournament,
and in rowing at the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges Regatta.
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