The Ivy League Muscles Up

The biggest barrier for an Ivy League team rising above its peers is the league itself. No games involving Ivy teams will ever attract much national attention. "At the end of the day, TV drives who gets the exposure," Telep of says. "Until you get name players, you're not going to get the TV exposure you need."

Telep, one of the leading experts on high-school basketball talent, praised Harvard's recruitment but said it represents the bare minimum for established programs. "As good as Harvard's class is, that's not a class that's getting you to the top of the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference]. It would be in the bottom three for an established league. If you're in the ACC, you better have that caliber class every year or you're in trouble."

But maybe an Ivy basketball program only needs to make it to the NCAA tournament regularly and then have a team that can pull off occasional upsets and make it to the Final Four. Bill Bradley's Princeton team made it that far in 1965 and Penn made it that far in 1979. In 1996, Princeton beat UCLA in the first round before losing to Mississippi State. What distinguishes those Ivy success stories is teamwork, discipline and brainy play.

Why would Harvard and other Ivies want to extend their dominance into sports? Why isn't it enough to have the best law and medical schools, cutting-edge research on issues from genomics to brain studies and the deepest academic traditions in America?

Partly, it's a matter of branding. Seeing an Ivy League team pull upsets in the NCAA tournament would expose its university to a different audience. "People in the Midwest look at Harvard and see it as a snooty place," says Ohio University's Vedder. "Seeing Harvard in March Madness would send a different message. It does for Duke." Giving the Ivies a top sports brand could also yield new donations and attract an ever better crop of students.

The impact of hot sports teams on elite universities is usually minimal. Northwestern's football team enhanced the school's cachet for a few years in the 1990s. Notre Dame's football team gives an above-average school a national image. And Duke probably benefits from its basketball team's perennial success. But most schools do not move up a notch in any significant rankings because of sports success.

Partly, it's the thrill of the chase. "It just seems they have to be at the top of every heap," Michael McPherson, the president of the Spencer Foundation, says of Harvard. "If anyone didn't care about sports, you would think it would be the Ivies. But it's something else to be best at."