Ivy League Football Round Up: Down with the Hatch?

The Tale of Harvard and Hatch

The decision-making process about whether or not LSU transfer QB Andrew Hatch will be allowed to play for Harvard this fall should be finished soon. It's a thorny issue for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the Crimson appear a little thin at the QB position this coming season.

Then again, that's what we said two years ago when Liam O'Hagan was suspended and Harvard had to settle for Chris Pizzotti, who turned out to be a star.

As much as I don't want to see Harvard get stronger than it already is (and I actually think the Crimson got weaker last year, compared to 2007, despite sharing the title), I do hope young Mr. Hatch is judged based on the rules and the rules alone. Just because Harvard is a very rich team right now doesn't mean they should be held to a different set of rules.

It's kind of like making it legal to rob rich people: It might make you feel good, but it ain't right.

Big Money

Columbia is getting a lot of publicity, maybe not all good, from a national story about the highest-paid university employees in the nation. At the top of the list was USC head football coach Pete Carroll, who made $4.42 million in the 2006-07 academic year.

Of course, No. 2 was Dr. David Silvers, a dermatology professor at Columbia, who made $4.33 million.

For those of you who don't know much about medicine in this country, dermatology is a field only the best med students can get into. It's the specialty with the best earnings-to-terrible schedule/hassles ratio.

So this guy must be a total genius. I think I can live with a top skin expert making that kind of money; I guess if he were a plastic surgeon doing boob jobs, I wouldn't be so happy.

I think the bigger question is whether or not these big salaries will be sustainable for anyone at any school in the coming years. That's an open question that transcends medicine, sports, and bureaucracy.




Back to the Program

And now, we return to the 1961 Penn-Columbia program.

Today begins with page nine, on which editor Philip J. Burke sets the scene for the Ivy League race: Three teams went into Week Eight of that nine-game season with a chance at the championship.

Columbia had the lead at 5-1, while Harvard and Princeton were close behind at 4-1 in the league. Burke talks about how fans will be listening closely to P.A. announcer Bud Corn's updates on the Yale-Princeton and Harvard-Brown games, both of which could help the Lions clinch a solo title.

As it turned out, both Princeton and Harvard won that Saturday as well. Princeton ended up losing the following week to Dartmouth, leaving Harvard and Columbia tied for the title, even though the Lions defeated the Crimson at Harvard Stadium.

Anyway, Burke goes on to remind readers that Yale was predicted to win the Ivy title in 1961 and that Cornell was chosen second. Ends up Yale was stuck in the middle of the pack that year, and the Big Red barely eluded the cellar.

Surprise is nothing new in Ivy play. While the last couple of seasons have been free of absolute shockers, you know another "Cinderella" champ like Brown in 2005 or Princeton in 2006 can't be far off.