Read one for the Gipper?
The Ancient Eight: College Football’s Ivy League and the Game They Play Today by John Feinstein (Hachette Books, 2024)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Stice
There’s something about sports that so many people just love. There is the thrill of competition, the passion of competitors and fans, and the ways in which we believe that sports can be both a model and mirror for life. We overlay our own narratives with the rise and fall of athletes and teams, the struggles and the sometimes victories. We also wish for our lives to more closely resemble sport, because it is one of the few areas in life in which merit seems to be the deciding factor.
People who love sports also very often believe that sports and character are closely related. We believe that good coaches and teams mold character. And that “high character” athletes can change the destiny of a team–that is why we love Rudy and why so many people revere Tim Tebow. We long to be under the leadership of someone like the fictional Coach Taylor of Friday Night Lights or the real-life Tony Dungy. We make some kids play sports because it is “good for them.”
Such sentiments about sports are stirred up by scenes like the famous one in Knute Rockne—All American, the 1940 movie starring Ronald Reagan. The “Win One for the Gipper” speech delivered to Notre Dame players in 1928 during the halftime of their game against Army changed the national lexicon. It was a rousing speech that recalled a former student and athlete, who had died young. In the movie, Rockne delivers it like this:
Well, boys ... I haven't a thing to say. Played a great game...all of you. Great game.
(He tries to smile.) I guess we just can't expect to win ‘em all. (Rockne pauses and says quietly). I'm going to tell you something I've kept to myself for years -- None of you ever knew George Gipp. It was long before your time. But you know what a tradition he is at Notre Dame...
(There is gentle, faraway look in his eyes as he recalls the boy's words). And the last thing he said to me -- "Rock," he said - "sometime, when the team is up against it -- and the breaks are beating the boys -- tell them to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper...
(Knute's eyes become misty and his voice is unsteady as he finishes). I don't know where I'll be then, Rock", he said - "but I'll know about it - and I'll be happy."
It’s all the players need to hear. They’re ready to charge out of the locker room.
Yet the ideal of sports is always in conflict with the reality of sports. We want sport to be driven by passion and filled with pure-hearted athletes. But most of the sports we watch are professional and not amateur–people make money and people make other people money. People threw the World Series all the way back in 1919. Players are not always role models. Neither are coaches. We used to imagine that college sports at least gave us something closer to the ideal or something more traditional. NIL has taken down whatever illusions remained among NCAA football fans.
And yet. There is a corner of college football that seems entirely unlike others. Ivy League football. It goes back a long, long way–to 1869. Some of the stadiums feel almost that old. Competition is fierce, but not very widely followed. The Ivy League conference can, and often does, end in a tie. The eight members of the conference are: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. And in recent years, there’s a story there.
John Feinstein’s The Ancient Eight is all about Ivy League football, explored through the prism of the 2023 season. Feinstein’s narrative draws on history, first-hand accounts, and player and coach interviews. The book identifies what is distinctive about Ivy League football. For example, the coaches are almost all long-term and are often given the chance to turn a team around over years. Coaching turnover is uncommon. Team practices are limited by the colleges and almost no one gets any extra eligibility, even if they are in grad school. To extend their time, players will drop out for a while and come back. (Now that the transfer portal exists in a meaningful way, some go elsewhere for grad school and a fifth season.)
2023 was a remarkable season for telling a story. The season was shaped by tragedy, beginning with the unexpected death of Dartmouth’s coach, Buddy Teevens, on the same day as his player, Joshua Balara, who had cancer. Though The Ancient Eight goes beyond the story of Dartmouth, the team’s journey is an emotional anchor for the book. And Dartmouth’s season shows some of the ways in which we use sports in our lives and find meaning in them. The other teams also had great stories in 2023, if not quite as dramatic as Dartmouth’s.
Part of what makes The Ancient Eight a good read is how it draws on the stories of individuals. We are introduced to specific players and coaches and learn their stories. That goes beyond hearing about them, Feinstein also lets us hear from them. He had access to locker rooms and sidelines and talked to almost everyone. Players and coaches explain their own seasons and what it is that makes Ivy League football special to them. The players all seem very special, too. In the acknowledgements, Feinstein writes: “I interviewed eighty-two players, and I can honestly say I enjoyed each of them” (231). When you put the book down, you can’t help but be a little more optimistic about young people than you were before you picked the book up.
Ivy League schools are old and Ivy League football is old school. Its traditional roots and ways harken back to an earlier era, one with less money and flash and much weaker lights on the fields for night games. The conference isn’t perfect or filled with puritans, but most of the players are in it for the love of sport more than the opportunity to go pro (though more Ivy League players are in the NFL than you’d expect). And the 2023 season, in particular, highlights the connections between sports and character that make football so compelling beyond the scoreboard. Feinstein’s book, The Ancient Eight, has the potential to make you interested in Ivy League football if you weren’t before.
Elizabeth Stice is a professor of history and assistant director of the honors program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. When she can, she reads and writes about World War I and she is the author of Empire Between the Lines: Imperial Culture in British and French Trench Newspapers of the Great War (2023).
