With the Super Bowl happening as I write this column, it officially signals the end of the football season, on all levels. What really seals the deal is looking at how the Ivy men’s basketball standings shape up this season, in stark contrast to the football standings last December—the two teams at the bottom are Harvard and Yale.
Looking back, we’ve just come off of one of the more historic years in Ivy football history, with The Game being more than just the annual match up between Harvard and Yale. It’s the same story every year, only each statistic gets one year older. This time, the Crimson basically used the Yale Bowl to celebrate their 12th Ivy title while also denying the Bulldogs their first perfect season in nearly 50 years. There was a quite a bit of drama, at least leading up to the game, and a lot of pain after the game (or joy, depending on how you look at it). For a Columbia student and Lions fan, I really couldn’t care less. Our season never really took off like many probably expected it would after last season’s encouraging and emotional finish.
I don’t want to sound like I loathe the football season—I actually think I’ve gained a relatively deeper understanding of the game this year. But for me, it’s more the prospect of March Madness being right around the corner—and the fact that the focus is no longer on the most ancient of the teams in our conference makes the basketball season so much more appealing. A team like Cornell, poised to deliver on its preseason predictions, now gets to take the spotlight. The Big Red has won each of its last three games (all Ivy) by a margin of 16 points. They are 3-0 on the road, while no other team has a winning Ivy record away from home (Penn and Princeton haven’t traveled yet).
There’s also quite a bit of hope this season that the conference will be completely shaken up from years past. Neither Penn nor Princeton was chosen to get a ticket to the Big Dance, for the first time in 20 years. The two teams were a combined 8-24 entering the Ivy schedule. Before Yale’s terrible start, including a 71-58 loss to the Lions, it was picked to finish right behind Cornell, largely on the merits of conference Player of the Year candidate Eric Flato, an experienced starting core, and last season’s near-Ivy title.
Obviously after only four games, it’s too early to predict what could transpire. If there is one thing I’ve learned about Ivy sports over the last few years, it’s that anything can really happen. In most cases, powerhouses don’t just fall off from one year to the next. I thought Yale would run over everyone at one point during the football season, but it ended up getting pounded in the title game. I thought Cornell would win last season’s men’s swimming and diving title after going 8-0 in dual meets, yet perennial favorites Harvard and Princeton showed up in the championship event and demolished the field. A few years ago, Princeton’s men’s basketball team lost to some really bad non-conference teams and everyone counted it out. It almost ended up taking the Ivies. Last spring, Columbia’s men’s golf team was playing extremely well and took a lead (though slim) into the final round of the Ivy Championships. It ended up totally busting under the pressure of Sunday.
With the Rockies in the World Series, the Giants winning the Super Bowl, and a weird college football season in the books, this year seems to have a theme of really high levels of unpredictability. That sets up perfectly for basketball season.
Kartik Kesavabhotla is a senior in the School of Engimeering and Applied Science majoring in biomedical engineering.
Sports@columbiaspectator.com