Postseason potential

David Schamis

The Yale football team—seen here celebrating their season-ending win over Harvard last November—could keep playing into December or January next year, now that Ivy League schools can participate in a national postseason tournament. View full image

For 34 of Yale’s 35 varsity sports, there’s a chance to end the season as a national champion. And then there’s football. For decades, the Yale season has ended on the final Saturday before Thanksgiving with the annual contest against Harvard. The Bulldogs could take home an Ivy League title or even find themselves ranked in media polls, but after The Game, it was time to elect next year’s captain and head home for the holidays.

That will change next season. In December, the Ivy League Council of Presidents approved a student proposal to allow the Ivy League to participate in the annual Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs. Now, the Ivy champion will be granted an automatic bid to the 24-team FCS tournament that typically runs from late November through early January. Teams will also be eligible for one of the 13 at-large bids not bestowed on conference champions. “I’m so excited for everybody, for the school, for the alumni. It’s an opportunity to compete at the highest level,” says Yale head coach Tony Reno.

This doesn’t mean Ivy teams will be facing Alabama or Notre Dame. The FCS, which includes the Ivies and 121 other college teams, is distinct from the 134-team Football Bowl Subdivision, the top tier of the NCAA’s Division I. FCS teams include state universities such as Montana, Rhode Island, and North Dakota State (a ten-time national champion) and private schools such as Colgate, Holy Cross, and Lehigh.

The Ivy League has never had a history of participating in the postseason, but it wasn’t for lack of opportunity—the FCS tournament has been played since before the Ivy League joined the subdivision in 1982. There’s no one clear reason why the precedent has stuck for so long. Ask around and you’ll get different answers: conflicts with final exams, limiting competition in an admittedly dangerous sport, or a vague gesture in the direction of tradition.

What seems to have changed the league’s mind was a student-led campaign from the Ivy League Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, cochaired this year by Mason Shipp ’25, a Yale wide receiver from Monroe Township, New Jersey. “The argument was so clear-cut. The proposal I ended up submitting was simple—football wants an equitable experience that every other student-athlete in the Ivy League happens to get by competing in postseason play,” says Shipp. “But this is an argument that people have used in the past. It’s not like we found some magic tool. What I think was really unique about this is that it came from the students, specifically and uniquely the students.”

Importantly, it was also an argument not solely originating from the Ivy’s football programs. Shipp collaborated on the proposal with Leah Carey, a softball player at Brown who originally raised the issue, and Chloe Maister, who plays lacrosse at Cornell. The process found Shipp playing the role of grassroots lobbyist throughout the summer and fall. “I really encouraged people at each institution to talk to their head coaches and find pipelines to meet with their policy committee member,” says Shipp, referring to the Ivy committee that reviews proposals before they ultimately reach the Council of Presidents. Shipp himself met with athletic director Vicky Chun and policy committee member Lloyd Suttle ’69, ’75PhD, Yale’s vice provost for academic resources.

The proposal came at a time of dramatic changes in the college athletics landscape. Student athletes are increasingly taking advantage of lucrative “name, image, and likeness” (NIL) deals that have been permitted since 2021. For the most popular sports at prominent schools, compensation can easily run into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year, so recruited athletes have to weigh the promise of an Ivy League degree against a hefty NIL package and exposure elsewhere. Last April, Yale star and NBA prospect Danny Wolf chose to transfer to Michigan after his sophomore year, a rare move for a Yale undergraduate.

More recently, the Ivy League chose to opt out of a pending settlement that will allow NCAA programs to directly compensate athletes through revenue sharing programs. Given the league’s resistance to these larger trends, opening up the league to the FCS playoffs is a small acknowledgement that athlete bargaining power has increased. “In the long term, this will have a positive impact on recruiting, on the student-athlete experience as a football player, and I think it can increase the competitiveness of the league,” says Shipp, who will graduate without a shot at the playoffs but with a legacy as a change maker.

For the Yale community, it’s another chance to cheer for the Bulldogs on a national stage. Fans who enjoyed the men’s basketball team’s March Madness upset win over Auburn last year may soon be able to see the Bulldogs battle against perennial FCS powerhouses. “Going on and playing in a national tournament is just so much excitement for the school and so much excitement for the athletic department,” says Reno. “It doesn’t do anything but enhance the amazing league we have and the parity we have in it.”