Winningest Ivy schools: Princeton, Harvard, Penn, Cornell

Interesting story in the Daily Princetonian this month:
Princeton is the winningest team in modern Ivy League history ...

... and by a wide margin. Princeton and Harvard have won just under half of all team titles in Ivy sports since 1973-74, the first year the Ivy League held tournaments for women.

As for Cornell: It reached as high as third in the late 1970s – probably our deserved if not always earned position, largest Ivy enrollment if not endowment – then in the 1980s wound up around fifth most years. By 1989, Cornell was seventh (thank you, Columbia, for buffering us from eighth), then reached sixth in 2003, fifth in 2004, then fourth in 2005 and remained there ever since except a jump to a tie with Penn for third in 2014 and 2015.

According to the Daily Princetonian (which likes to call itself The Prince (check your privilege? they do every day and it's still there):

Andrew Bosworth
Cornell University’s ranking changed most dramatically in the League between 2000 and 2023. Cornell began the 2000–2001 academic year with 73 Ivy League titles since 1974, the seventh most in the league. They currently hold 182 titles, the fourth most in the league.

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but this climb from seventh to fourth coincides almost exactly with Andy Noel's tenure as athletic director. Andy Noel, the guy we blame for the third UNH goal slipping between David LeNeveu and the pipe in 2003, and for Syracuse's Miracle at the Midfield in 2009, has been AD while Cornell rose to a near dead-heat with Penn for two decades.

Of note:
* Princeton has won titles in every sport. Except for year 1, Princeton has been on top of the overall standings.
* The most dominant sport/school is Harvard in women's squash, where the Cantabs have won 64% of the titles. Next is wrestling, where Cornell has won 61%.
* For Cornell, the most successful women's sport is outdoor track and field, with 30% of the Ivy titles.
* Cornell has the worst gender disparity. Cornell men have won 120 of Cornell's Ivy titles (66%). Because there are more men's sports in the Ivy League, there's a 52%-48% disparity in the number of titles available.
* Actually, it's Columbia with the worst gender disparity: 76% of the Lions' titles have been won by Columbia women. The other school where women have won more than half the titles is ... Dartmouth.
* Money talks? Harvard has the world's largest endowment and Princeton has the largest endowment per student, something like $5M banked for ever Princeton student. That buys better facilities and costlier (not always better) coaches.

About the survey: It appears data was compiled through the end of the 2022-23 winter sports season. If multiple teams tie for a league title, each school counts it as a title. In leagues where there is not a distinct Ivy-only champion, the highest Ivy school is considered the champ. There DP's totals appear to reflect the total titles available, with adjustments for fraction of titles won that are available to that school (Columbia can host the Ivy lax tournament but with no men's team they can't win it).

Given Cornell has the worst ratio of women's to men's titles, this may be one of the top goals for the new athletic director: more titles for women to come closer to titles won by Cornell men. And maybe pull past Penn; currently we are four titles behind the Quakers.

I'll leave it to someone else to note our current four-title disparity vs. Penn for third place could have been solved by a few more football titles. Amazing that over almost seventy years, we've never won the title outright.

Table shows titles won by each school's women's and men's teams, the W-M ratio as a ratio, total titles won by the school, and the percentage of the 1,671 titles (including ties) each school won.

Princeton and Harvard together account for almost half of all titles. Money buys titles, indeed.

And where does the money come from to fund the recruiting, training and education: Donations that are well-managed. Maybe the other Ivies will start to catch up to Princeton after 2024 when Princeton's money man (a Duke grad) retires:

After 30 years growing Princeton’s endowment, Andy Golden to retire in 2024

Their investments guy the past three decades, got a portfolio return of 47% in 2021, and over Andrew Golden's tenure, Princeton's portfolio grew from $4 billion in 1996 to $35.8 billion at the end of 2022, a gain of 8.5% per year. If the Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO) had only matched the rate of inflation, it'd be $8 billion. Cornell's endowment, to support 2.5X the students (and faculty) is just under $10 billion.

And that is Princeton's advantage in recruiting students, athletes and name professors. $35.8 billion equates to $4.2 million per student for lower cost of attendance, nicer buildings and better athletic fields and arenas. If Princeton decided to allocate half the average annual gain to ease students' financial path through college, there'd be a theoretical $180,000 a year per student.

Golden himself made $7 million in 2021, probably well under his Wall Street market value.

Excellent analysis; the results are unsurprising, as Princeton has been the premier sports program in the Ivies, with their women's teams especially strong. Our women's teams, with a few exceptions, have been woeful. One team that could use a new coach is women's basketball.

billhoward
And that is Princeton's advantage in recruiting students, athletes and name professors. $35.8 billion equates to $4.2 million per student for lower cost of attendance, nicer buildings and better athletic fields and arenas. If Princeton decided to allocate half the average annual gain to ease students' financial path through college, there'd be a theoretical $180,000 a year per student.

Yet again... not how endowments work.

Indeed. Not that a university would ever say, "We have $4 million to oversee and support each student here at Princeton," or $500,000 for each Cornell student, because there are also buildings and research and faculty salaries to support, and those segments support students. But roughly, from the lens of university <--> students, Princeton has 10X the resources of a Cornell when looking at the endowment and what can be done.

Nobody has enough money. Even Princeton 25 years in is looking for someone to find a name (donor) for the 1998 replacement to Palmer Stadium. Down at ground level, the field is named, so it's Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. 27,773 seats, none crumbling, cost $75 million in today's dollars, and nicely integrated into the academic environment.

Trotsky
Princeton and Harvard together account for almost half of all titles. Money buys titles, indeed.

Not necessarily.If we're talking about wealth related to athletic achievement, Yale is an under-achiever. It has the second-highest endowment, behind only Harvard, yet ranks 5th, one spot behind Cornell, in Ivy titles since 1973.

Fair, but I’d rather win one Ivy football title than two polo championships…

CU2007
Fair, but I’d rather win one Ivy football title than two polo championships…

What the Daily Princetonian guy did is really good and it gives others a chance to kibbitz. What if:

• Readers could assign relative weights to sports so football merits 2X soccer and 10X squash. Football counts more at most schools, Cornell and Columbia wish it would go away (from this calculation).
• Beyond Ivy titles, count NCAA team appearances, making the final four, making title game, winning national championship.
• Count individual performances for wrestling, swimming, tennis, fencing
• Count sports that are not NCAA sport: crew, polo
• Count the number of sports total, the number for men, the number for women
• An adder for mens-womens sports parity (not good for Cornell, nor for Columbia which is even more unbalanced, in favor of women's titles)
• Spectator attendance
• Having a real marching band and a pep band that travels.
• Quality of facilities. Yes, that's subjective.

What else? Subtract credit for sports abandoned since 1973-1974 (when the survey began counting).

billhoward

CU2007
Fair, but I’d rather win one Ivy football title than two polo championships…

What the Daily Princetonian guy did is really good and it gives others a chance to kibbitz. What if:

• ...
• Quality of facilities. Yes, that's subjective.

What else? Subtract credit for sports abandoned since 1973-1974 (when the survey began counting).

But age of facility or years since last upgrade is not subjective.

One could also count capacities.

I thought about counting capacity, percentage of seats filled, and thought for Yale Bowl's 61,446 seats (70,896 when opened in 1914) do you count seats so splintered it's not safe to sit there (ditto seats Cornell cordons off)? You might also count quality of facility. We're taking this from Ivy newspaper story to graduate thesis is sports management.

Cornell and Dartmouth didn't build 60k seat football stadiums because they are in located in Nunavut, not because of relative commitment.

Trotsky
Cornell and Dartmouth didn't build 60k seat football stadiums because they are in located in Nunavut, not because of relative commitment.

Was about to say, "Look at Yale Bowl and New Haven," but in the early 1900s when the Bowl was built, New Haven was America's 35th largest city (today: 208th) and population was 134,000; today's it's 135,000.

There are handful of large stadiums bigger than their containing cities, though most are artifacts of small town size in larger area. Penn State's Beaver Stadium of 106,000 is 2.5X that of State College.

For the Ivies, the right stadium size is: Will it have 4-6 family seats per graduating senior. And if not, you make your college's (i.e. arts, engineering) graduation the featured event on par with commencement. A college graduation will fit in a basketball or hockey arena.

billhoward

Trotsky
Cornell and Dartmouth didn't build 60k seat football stadiums because they are in located in Nunavut, not because of relative commitment.

Was about to say, "Look at Yale Bowl and New Haven," but in the early 1900s when the Bowl was built, New Haven was America's 35th largest city (today: 208th) and population was 134,000; today's it's 135,000.

There are handful of large stadiums bigger than their containing cities, though most are artifacts of small town size in larger area. Penn State's Beaver Stadium of 106,000 is 2.5X that of State College.

For the Ivies, the right stadium size is: Will it have 4-6 family seats per graduating senior. And if not, you make your college's (i.e. arts, engineering) graduation the featured event on par with commencement. A college graduation will fit in a basketball or hockey arena.

it pains me to say it, but I do think some relatively recent (i.e., late 20th century/early 21st century) Harvard-Yale football games violate this rule of thumb.

billhoward
in the early 1900s when the Bowl was built, New Haven was America's 35th largest city

TIL.

Like the early cities of the National League:

Indianapolis
Louisville
Providence
Buffalo
Syracuse
Troy
Worcester
Columbus

Trotsky

billhoward
in the early 1900s when the Bowl was built, New Haven was America's 35th largest city

TIL.

Like the early cities of the National League:

Indianapolis
Louisville
Providence
Buffalo
Syracuse
Troy
Worcester
Columbus

Or the early NBA: Syracuse, Rochester, Fort Wayne

Trotsky
Cornell and Dartmouth didn't build 60k seat football stadiums because they are in located in Nunavut, not because of relative commitment.

As good of a place as any to trot out a fact I once heard (but could not verify just now with a quick google): when it was built in 1914, the Yale Bowl (70,896) was the first stadium to exceed the seating capacity of the Roman Colosseum (~50,000).

Robb
As good of a place as any to trot out a fact I once heard (but could not verify just now with a quick google): when it was built in 1914, the Yale Bowl (70,896) was the first stadium to exceed the seating capacity of the Roman Colosseum (~50,000).

As quoted in the July 28, 2018 New Haven Register: “The Roman Coliseum was the only facility on Earth that could compare at the time, and of course, it wasn’t being used by then.”

Sorry, but I just can’t help myself — Lions, Tigers and Bears, however, are still cheered for at the Yale Bowl.