[...]... away from the basketball court They will become CEOs, doctors, lawyers, judges, and distinguished professors Many will end up flying their own planes and owning fabulous homes around the world But all of them will sit back and tell stories about their days playing in the Ivy League, about riding the buses, about the tiny locker rooms, about walking into the Palestra and Jadwin Gym and feeling the history... that even the Ivy League bought into it, publicizing the anecdote until facts disproved it Another theory about the Ivy League s etymology stems from the belief that it was once a four-team league Some say Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Columbia; others insist Penn, not Columbia, was part of the group These teams apparently formed the “Four League or, using Roman numerals, the “IV League. ” Yet, there is... basketball season, showing how teams come together and how they ultimately succeed or fail Starting with the October practices, moving into the preconference competition, then the league games, and finally the NCAA tournament, this book offers a chance to get to know the players and coaches that make this league special Outside the Limelight Chapter 1 Origins of a League The Ivy League is frequently... the kids who play basketball in the Ivy League are, in fact, student-athletes, unlike so many of the players on the so-called big-time teams that are ranked in the top twenty-five, week in and week out The graduation rate for Division I basketball players in the NCAA is about 44 percent In the Ivy League, as we would expect, it is closer to 100 percent Most of those who play in the league will go on... isn’t the official name of the conference The proper title is the Council of Ivy Group Presidents, which makes abundantly clear who runs this league But by the time the presidents got around to forming the conference in 1954, with competition slated to begin in 1956, the Ivy League label was so strongly attached to these schools that it became the de facto designation From its inception, the Ivy League or... multi-multi-multi-millionaires But there are other athletes, far less gifted, who care every bit as much and who work every bit as hard as Jordan and Woods They work in obscurity, knowing that if they give their absolute best, they may help Brown finish second in the Ivy League or keep Harvard in the top half of the league for another season They’re all very smart, so they understand that 999 out of 1,000 of them aren’t... voted Harvard’s basketball captain in more than fifty years—Stehle took the job seriously Unlike other schools, where the coach may select the captain or two or more players may be co-captains, Harvard chooses its leader by a secret ballot of the players in the spring The coaches have no input If there is a tie, the players vote until it is broken There are no co-captains “One of the things that’s really... much hand-wringing and brought about meaningful changes in the Ivy League, most notably to the Academic A Mom-and-Pop Store 15 Index (AI) The AI is a combination of a recruit’s grade-point average, SAT score, and class rank, and it must fall within an acceptable range for the athlete to be admitted Most Ivy League basketball players have SATs in the 1300s and GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0 In the rest of... sense because there is no college gym like the Palestra and Penn-Princeton is as special and as intense a rivalry as there is in college basketball But she knew there was a lot more to the Ivy League than Penn and Princeton She wanted to find out what it was like at the other six schools—Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale—grinding away year after year in pursuit of the league s two... of Ivy League basketball in February 1999, when my editor at the Washington Post assigned me to cover the Penn-Princeton game at the Palestra The focus of the story wasn’t to be about the game; instead, I was to capture how unusual the rivalry between the teams was After the first half ended, was I glad I wasn’t writing about the game Even a basketball fanatic like me had a hard time staying interested, . if they give their absolute best, they may help Brown finish second in the Ivy League or keep Harvard in the top half of the league for another season. They’re. for their education. Ivy League loyalists lament the decline of talent in the league, fearing the conference’s bet- ter days are behind it. Yet, the league