Don’t know how many, if any, of you saw this past Sunday’s Times Sports Section article on the great old days of the Ivy League. Peter May’s essay revisits the supposed Golden Age – circa 1964 – 1975 with a quick nod to the Quaker team of 1979. “It was a legitimate league back then,” according to Dick Harter who coached the 1970-71 Penn powerhouse that Harter deems the “greatest team in Ivy League history.” I can’t beef over much with Harter’s estimation of his favorite crew, but do take exception to the general emphasis and overall tone of the essay which takes the cultural moment of Linsanity to compare the regular upward mobility of solid, individual Ivy grads to the NBA back in the day with Lin’s lone, if over hyped, current stint in the bigs. Geoff Petrie, Jim McMillian and, of course, Bill Bradley all get remembered as players from a much stronger era in the Ivies. I’ll just say, “I respectfully disagree.” The utter flabbergastification of the sports media and its underinformed audience at Lin’s emergence seems to depend greatly upon his Harvard pedigree. Perhaps this is a function of our cultural oversensitivity but his ethnicity is mentioned no more often than his alma mater. That last statement should be fact checked but anyone with the time and software should do a word count search on Jeremy Lin, Harvard, and Chinese/Taiwanese. We’d all learn something interesting.
In any case, the Ivy League that Lin played in, and that kids are playing in today, is absolutely better than the one that featured Mr. Harter’s charges or Mr. Bradley’s accomplices or Mr. McMillian’s immensely talented Lion team. The difference is in the depth and athleticism not to mention diversity of the current Ivy crews. Between 1963 and 2007, only 3 times was the league rep during March Madness not one of the killer P’s. For four and a half decades Pete Carrill or Chuck Daley or Fran Dunphy or Butch Van Breda Koff would predictably get the critical mass of talent needed to hoist yet another banner in Jadwin or the Palestra. The rare exception (can I get an amen for Columbia ’67-’68?) merely emphasized the two team nature of the League. But back in 2008-09 and then again the next season, Cornell put together consecutive titles behind a Randy Witmann led but 8 man deep squad that so great a skeptic as Jim Boeheim characterized as “good.” This from a man on record as saying an Ivy League team will never win a Division I title is almost high praise. Indeed Mr. Lin’s senior year squad fell to this same Big Red crew. The season after Lin’s graduation, Tommy Amaker must have been sure the Cantabs time had finally arrived but a very gutty Tiger crew featuring a murderer dressed as a guard named Doug Davis forestalled their victory dance again. This year, though, the Crimson do seem inevitable and they will have emerged from a league season that features not two but six battle tested, defensively rugged Ivy opponents. The teams playing in the Ivies today are longer and quicker (not to mention blacker) than the squads that played during Mr. May’s putative golden era. Though they may have fallen from the top 25 of late, the Linless Harvards should get a decent enough seed in the upcoming tourney that an Ivy League school will play past day one. And that is much more important than one “nerdy,” Taiwanese American hoopster in the NBA.
Peace out, paulie b
this reminds me a bit of the question: if you were applying to college today, would you be able to get into the one you went to? (let’s all pause and contemplate for a moment . . . okay) no doubt the league has stronger and more diverse players now, so what’s all the brouhaha about one of those players who has a week of public competence under his belt, is this what you’re asking? good effin question.
on another note, your screed reminded me that i saw Bill Bradley play in person several times when he was at Princeton, and he could really carry a team. an amazing player in any league.
Nerdy? Wait till his trophy wife is on basketball wifes.