The Ancient Eight: College Football's Ivy League and the Game They Play Today

Inside the Ivy League, college football’s oldest teams, amid a rapidly changing and increasingly monetized collegiate sports world—from award-winning and bestselling author of A Season on the Brink and A Good Walk Spoiled, and contributing columnist for The Washington Post, John Feinstein.

There is a tremendous amount of history surrounding the Ivy League, dating back to Princeton playing in what is considered to be the first college football game, in 1869, against Rutgers. That history, however, is not what this book is about. This book is about Ivy League football today—specifically, the 2023 season. Why? Because Ivy League football is underrated—there are typically about a dozen former Ivy players in the NFL. To play in the league, you have to be smart and a good student and a good football player. The rivalries are as intense as in the SEC or the Big Ten, even if the linemen aren’t quite as large. There are some arcane rules—not letting the league champion play in the NCAA postseason, not allowing eligible graduate students to play, and insisting on playing ten straight weeks with no bye. But there is also a real purity—not one that’s made up for marketing purposes—in the Ivy League.
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The story of the 2023 season began with tragedy when longtime Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens suffered fatal injuries in a bicycle accident in March; one of his players died of cancer the day of the accident. But Dartmouth would fight through the tragedies to win a share of the Ivy title, along with both Harvard and Yale—the result of a nail-biting 138th meeting of those two schools in The Game. On the field, inside the locker room, and around campus, The Ancient Eight explores the phenomenal stories of the young men who play in today’s Ivy League and the men who coach them.