Harvard College - Athletics

Athletics

By the late 19th century critics of intercollegiate athletics, including Harvard president Charles William Eliot, believed that sports competition had become over-commercialized and took students away from their studies, and they called for reform and limitations on all sports. This opposition prompted Harvard's athletic committee to target 'minor' sports—basketball and hockey—for reform and regulation in order to deflect attention from the major sports—football, baseball, track, and crew. The committee made it difficult for the basketball team to operate by denying financial assistance and limiting the number of overnight away games in which the team could participate. Several losing seasons, negative attitudes toward the commercialization of intercollegiate sports, and the need for reform contributed to basketball's demise at Harvard in 1909.

Today Harvard, one of the eight members of the Ivy League, claims to have the largest Division I intercollegiate athletics program, with 41 varsity teams and over 1,500 student-athletes.

Begun in 1852 the Harvard-Yale Regatta is the oldest intercollegiate athletic rivalry in the United States Better known is the annual Harvard-Yale football game—"The Game", to insiders—first played in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1875, and now played on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, making it one of many significant games played on "Rivalry Day."