The "Council of Ivy Group Presidents"...otherwise known as...

[NattyBumpo]

...The Ivy League

Some interesting and unique aspects of the Ivy League is something Ive been meaning to address. I'm sure a lot of us are already aware of many of these things. But I also know that the average NCAAB fan/gambler doesn't normally pay a lot of attention to the Ivy League until Friday night, when there's not much else besides a handful of Metro Atlantic games to chose from. So I've made this a conference to focus on for a lot of personal reasons that have little to do with gambling other than one thing... I wanted to have a conference to bet, on Friday nights, that I really knew a lot more about than in previous seasons. So here's some fun facts that you all may or may not be aware of when you grab a Friday card and say hmmmmmm.....

1 - The Ivy League is not the official name. It is the Council of Ivy Group Presidents. Although it is never referred to by such name. I'm not even sure (but curious) if the letter heads even bear this name. I think it's funny to wonder if some of the players are even unaware of this fact.

2 - There are no athletic scholarships in the Ivy League. A lot of the players actually pay upwards of 45,000$ annually to play in and earn an Ivy League degree. This does not mean they are all rich kids. The Ivy League schools have a lot of generous financial aid programs. But they are granted on the basis of need. You don't get a free ride just because you can play and are worthy of recruiting. You must also be a terrific student and exhibit a financial NEED in order to receive financial aid. Ivy Athletes MIGHT be given SLIGHTLY lesser academic standards than the rest of the student body, but this is considered a small concession to allow for the time spent on their extra curricular achievements. It's still light years away from the academic standard required for admission to any of the Major conference schools. So if you're one of the best high school athletes in your area and you get mostly A's and score very high on your SAT exams, you might get most of your tuition paid in financial aid if you are from a lower income family. It is also unique, and probably the only advantage a student athlete gains by choosing to play in the Ivy League, that the sudden inability to play (or even quitting because the demands of juggling athletics and scholastics are just too much) due to injury or otherwise, does not mean the end of financial aid. Coaches do not hold the power of God to decide a students fate if him and the player do not see eye to eye or the player can't meet expectations. Try telling coach K you can't work on free throws because your head aches from lack of sleep and you have a biology exam on Friday.

3 - The Ivy League schools are among the highest endowed University's in the World. Princeton boasts more than a 15 BILLION dollar endowment, Harvards is over 25 BILLION. And yet, the basketball teams travel to and from the conference games by bus. ALL of them.

4 - Most of the leagues conference schedule are played on back to back Friday and Saturday nights. Each team plays their road games back to back and respective home games back to back. That would seem to give the home team a huge advantage in the Saturday games. But there's a hitch to that...

5 - The Ivy schedule is based upon something they call "Travel Partnerships". This Friday/Saturday schedule is meant to give academics, during the school week, the priority. The travel partner deal is to try and minimize the cumulative travel miles and make it (in theory) as fair and consistent as possible. The hitch to playing two home games is based in the travel partner deal.
One home team might have to play the two best Ivy teams on back to back nights. Thankfully for most of the League... Harvard and Princeton are not travel partners. But it might be pretty close. Penn and Princeton are!!!! Meaning if your Columbia, you get to host Princeton on friday night and Penn on Saturday. Good luck sweeping that homestand much less winning one out of two. Yale should consider themselves very fortunate that they get this pair after they played on Monday and both had a long layoff prior. As I type... Yale is nursing a 2 pt lead down the stretch vs Princeton.
The Ivy League coaches and players consider the Columbia/Cornell travel weekend the and most grueling of the travel schedule. It is a hard 223 miles by bus after playing and banging for 40 minutes the same night.
Checking weather and traffic conditions on travel nights in the Ivy League is something not many people do... ha ha. Do you do that when Duke hosts NC State?

Ivy League travel partners are (its the same every year):
Columbia and Cornell
Brown and Yale
Harvard and Dartmouth
Princeton and Penn

5 - Final exams....This doesn't have too much effect on the regular conference schedule with one exception. Princeton takes final exams in the first two weeks of January. Which is an interruption after the beginning of conference play. They usually schedule a tune up game against a division III team before going headlong into the rest of the season, but this year they went straight to Penn. There are no mandatory scheduled practices allowed in the Ivy League during the final exam period. Not to mention games. There are informal voluntary practices that players can show up for but these are rarely attended by more than half the team at one time and are never much more than an hour long.
The students are all very serious about grades and scholastic achievement as well as basketball. I don't think its something that needs a lot of emphasis... but I will never again consider a bet on an Ivy League team in the month of December. Nor should you.

6 - Just because these teams don't have very many NBA prospects on the roster ... know this. These players are probably the most competitive (by nature) individuals in the ranks of college athletics. Ivy League athletes are individuals who excel and expect to succeed in every thing they do in life. Basketball is probably the most humbling thing they will ever face. They want to succeed, even if that means not finishing in last place or just finishing the conference with a winning record, as much if not more than Duke or Syracuse players. They work as hard as you can possibly imagine to win and improve their teams chances. While all the time keeping up grades in the most demanding courses a collegian can want.

There's a lot more to the psychological and logistical aspects of an Ivy League season that are virtually unhandicapable from a statistical perspective. You can imagine from this foundation of knowledge what some of them might be. Maybe it helps explain why Harvard nearly loses to a Dartmouth team some Saturday night when Dartmouth is 1-10 in conference play and is listed as a 25 pt dog.

I've hardly scratched the surface but I hope this is interesting and helpful. Anyone wishing to add any tidbit (they are many) that I haven't spoken of, or add to the ones I have. Please chime in here.