The colleges referred to as the Ivy League
are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, Columbia and the
University of Pennsylvania. They are all old-time institutions, with
thick-vined, aged icy covering their walls, and the designation at first
applied specifically to their football teams. Sportswriter Caswell Adams
coined the term in the mid-thirties. At the time, Fordham University's
football team was among the best in the East. A fellow journalist compared
Columbia and Princeton to Fordham, and Adams replied, "Oh they're just Ivy
League," recalling later that he said this "with complete humorous
disparagement in mind.