JONES: Lin proving Ivy athletics deserve respect

Linsanity.

At this point, anyone who doesn’t live under a rock has heard of Jeremy Lin—the breakout star for the New York Knicks and the sports world’s newest phenomenon.

As part of the minority that actually follows and cares about Ivy League sports, I’m pretty darn excited to see someone I once rooted against in Levien Gym suddenly appear on national TV. (Hey, we all knew he was good, but I’m a Lions fan.)

Basically, Spec Sports knew Lin was good years ago when no one else cared. I like to say it’s the only time you could ever call a sportswriter a hipster: We knew Lin before he was cool.

To say the least, it’s really exciting to see someone as underestimated as an Ivy League athlete get national attention. Exciting, but also kind of weird. I think the weirdest moment for me was when my younger brother’s best friend put up an “All I do is Lin” Facebook status, which promptly received comments such as “you’re linsane” and “Just another ‘Lin’derella story.”

While “All I do is Lin” is a personal favorite of mine, it was still so strange to see a kid still living in my hometown in the Boston suburbs jumping aboard the Linsanity train, especially because people from Boston have a pretty concrete rule against rooting for New York under almost any circumstance. So, this Jeremy Lin thing is pretty legit, even if the Knicks finally dropped a game to the New Orleans Hornets, 89-85.

Even more legit? Lin is a Harvard grad. Should he never score another point in the NBA, he has an Ivy League degree to fall back on. Not too shabby.
But for the time being, he’s all over the papers and news channels, and that’s not something that Ivy League athletes are known for.

The truth is, though, I think people are underestimating athletes in the Ancient Eight, especially when it comes to basketball. If you look back over the last few years, even just since my freshman year, Ivy League basketball has had quite a few appearances on the national news.

First, we had the Cornell basketball run in March Madness back in 2010. That year, the Big Red became the first team from the Ancient Eight to make it to the Sweet 16 in over 30 years. Cornell captivated the country with unexpected wins over Temple and Wisconsin before ultimately falling to a first-seeded Kentucky in its third matchup.

Even for teams a little lower in the Ancient Eight standings, there’s media attention to be had. Back in November, our very own Columbia Lions opened their season against UConn—the defending national champions. While no one expected the Light Blue to win (and it didn’t), no one expected the team to hold its own and stay in it quite like it did either. I know more than a few people who were impressed by the fight the Lions put up against the Huskies.

I’ll admit, Cisco getting dunked on by Jeremy Lamb took up a fair share of the media coverage after the game, but still.

And now, there’s Linsanity.

I think the moral to be drawn here is that you can’t just count athletes or teams out simply because they play in the Ivy League. To be fair, they might not always be as impressive as nationally ranked teams or top draft picks, but the Ancient Eight can be a lot better than you’d think.

We no longer just put up teams that get steamrolled in the first round of March Madness and team stars that go straight to entry-level positions at investment banks. I get that this is still true most of the time, and people still think course books and not game balls when they hear “Ivy League sports,” but I can’t ignore the performances we’ve seen from the Ancient Eight recently.

There’s been enough evidence from the last three and a half years to prove that nerdy men can jump (sometimes), and hopefully, Ivy League success stories will become a more and more frequent occurrence. I say just give our athletes a minute to drop their books and finish up their problem sets, and they may just put up a double-double against the Kings or hit a trey at the last second to beat the Raptors.

Victoria Jones is a Barnard College senior majoring in French.
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