CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The Ivy League will permit its members to compete in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs beginning next season, the conference announced Wednesday, ending a century-long postseason ban originally aimed at allowing the athletes to focus on their schoolwork.
“It’s a monumental day in the Ivy League and a special day to be an Ivy League student-athlete,” Yale senior receiver Mason Shipp, who was the chair of the conference’s student-athlete advisory committee that pushed for the change after a year-long study, said in a news release. “For the future generations that are fortunate enough to represent the Ivy League in the FCS playoffs, go win us some hardware!”
The 2024 Ivy League season ended with Columbia, Dartmouth and Harvard earning a share of the championship; it was Columbia’s first conference title since 1961. The league will spend the offseason coming up with a tiebreaker to determine how its automatic qualifier for the 24-team FCS playoffs will be awarded.
“Thank you to the Presidents for giving the student-athletes an opportunity to compete for a national championship,” Harvard coach Andrew Aurich said in a release. “Ivy League football is the most competitive it’s ever been and I’m excited for us to make some noise in the playoffs for years to come.”
The schools that would later form the Ivy League were a force in college football in the leather helmet days that predated the forward pass, with Princeton and Yale winning 23 of the sport’s first 25 unofficial national championships in the late 1800s. Harvard claimed the other two and went on to add five more, including a 1919 title that was sealed by a victory over Oregon in the Rose Bowl.