Tourney Will Take Away Ivy Uniqueness

For the first time in decades, Ivy League basketball coaches are on the same page.

From the hallowed halls of the Palestra to the basketball offices of Leede Arena, the coaches are nearly unanimous in their support of a postseason tournament to determine the Ivy League's guaranteed representative in the NCAA Tournament. And with seven coaches now strongly in support of the idea-Princeton's Joe Scott being the lone exception-there is increasing pressure on the Ivy League to change its ways.

"Some of the coaches met with the ADs [athletic directors] and made a proposal for us to consider in the future a postseason Ivy League basketball tournament," Columbia athletic director M. Dianne Murphy said. "And so we said that we'd have some discussion about it."

On the surface, it makes sense to give all eight teams something to play for until the end of the season. Increasing the marketability and visibility of the Ivies through the creation of the postseason tournament can bring the league out of the Stone Age and into modern times. If it's good for seven teams each year, it has to be good for the league as a whole, the argument goes.

And more importantly, if you're a coach for any team not named Penn and Princeton, it gives you an even better chance of breaking the cyclical dominance of the league's best teams. Sure, you can't beat the Killer P's over the course of 14 games, but in a two-to-three-game stretch, the league is anyone's to win. It can give coaches the exposure needed to build their programs and even further their careers.

But as convincing as those arguments may be upon initial inspection, as the way the league currently stands, a tournament is just not the answer.

As long as the Ivy League stays a single-bid league, which it appears it will remain in the foreseeable future, an Ivy Tournament hurts rather than helps. A league which has been waiting for nine years to win a first round tournament game cannot afford the risk of sending its second- or third-best team as its representative to the Big Dance.

It's very difficult for the best team in the league to win a tournament. Hypothetically speaking, let's say that the tournament simply matched up the eight best teams in the league in a standard bracket. Penn, the regular season champion at 11-3, has about a 75 percent chance of beating another Ivy opponent. But their chances of winning three in a row to clinch the league's automatic bid? Under 50 percent. It is simply unfair from the angle of competitive equity to ask the top regular season team to have to prove itself again, and risk losing all that it has earned over the course of the year, in order to be crowned champions once more.

Moreover, the rationale behind a tournament at most other conferences is financial. An Ivy League tournament would not be a meaningful source of revenue for the Ancient Eight. Instead, it could actually detract from one of the league's most powerful marketing tools: its unique image. Right now, there's a certain cache that comes with being the only league without a tournament, with being the first team to clinch its bid every year, and with leading off the SportsCenter highlights with grainy video of Princeton clinching the title in Ithaca. That's, honestly, something to embrace.

A tournament also takes away from the regular season. Right now, down the stretch, any number of different games can have Ivy title implications. Knowing that one team and one team alone can take home the championship lends each Ivy game a greater air of importance for all eight schools. In the Ivy League now, players fight through every game looking for that title and the NCAA Tournament berth. But in a league with a postseason tournament, teams only play for seeding. Ivy games, especially games between contenders like Penn and Princeton, would lose their regular season importance and competitiveness.

It's great to see Ivy Athletic Directors attempting to push the envelope in a league filled with archaic rules. In the past years, they've pushed for allowing Ivy football teams into the playoffs and are attempting to transform a culture of athletics that currently teeters between the Division I and Division III level, because of a failure to keep pace with a changing athletic landscape over the past 20 years.

And there are many ways to substantially change things, from renovating stadiums to increasing recruiting budgets. But this is one tradition that needs to stay-not for the sake of history, but because it's the smartest thing to do. If the quality of play in the league improves and allows the Ancient Eight to becomes a two-bid league, we can revisit the argument. But until then, there's no reason to touch the status quo.

Besides, the Ivy League already has a tournament. It's just 14 games long.