Ivy League (1982)

In our last post, we took a look at the wild 'n wacky Yankee Conference season of 1982, when four of the league's six teams shared the YC title. The Ivy League season that year wasn't as crazy, but three teams wound up sharing the trophy for the first time since 1969, highlighted by Penn's worst-to-first Cinderella season.

The big story in '82, however, came off the field: The Ivies, who had long sequestered themselves from big-time football, were formally booted from Division I-A (FBS) to I-AA (FCS) by the NCAA, which was tired of the Ancient Eight globbing off their precious TV money. The NCAA cited the Ivies' failure to meet minimum stadium and attendance standards. What's funny, of course, is that those standards haven't been enforced since, allowing FBS wannabes like UMass and about half the MAC schools to stay put. 

The Ivies weren't alone: Other small Eastern schools such as Colgate, Holy Cross, Richmond and William & Mary also got the heave-ho. (Looking back, it's fascinating how the Eastern schools of yore, all roughly equal in playing level, could have gone one way or the other. Boston College, Syracuse, Temple and Rutgers went one way; the others went, well, the other way.)

And now, onto the teams and uniforms ...

Harvard took home a share of its first Ivy title in six years, a lifetime for these guys. Offensive lineman Mike Corbat was named a I-AA All-American. (One advantage to the I-AA demotion: Ivy players could earn All-America honors since they didn't have to complete with the Billy Simses and Dan Marinos of the world.) Oddly enough, the Crimson's two league losses came to their co-champions, Dartmouth and Penn.

Harvard had recently changed its jerseys to what I consider the "classic" look, with the school seal on the shoulders and the black outlining the numbers. Amazingly, these jerseys remained virtually the same until ... 2021. 

I wrote quite a bit about Penn's '82 season in this post. Condensed version: Penn had been a joke for years, was widely predicted to be a joke in '82, won Ivy title, stayed a force for decades. A season-ending loss to Cornell enabled Dartmouth and Harvard, which won their season finales, to pull into a three-way tie for the championship.

The Quakers changed their uniforms just a year earlier, and kept this look into the '90s.

Despite a 5-5 overall record, Dartmouth was good enough in league play to earn its third and final Ivy title under coach Joe Yukica. (The Big Green had to wait eight years for its next championship.) Quarterback Mike Caraviello was named the league's rookie of the year.

Dartmouth's uniforms were basic, but do the job; actually, the jerseys bear a passing resemblance to the '90s New York Jets with the black outline. Of course, the classic "D" helmet makes any uniform better. I wrote a bit about them here.

Next, we come to a four-way logjam of 3-4 teams, which means only one Ivy team finished waaaay under .500 in league play. Gee, wonder who that was ...

Brown had another solid season under solid coach John Anderson (after he left in 1984, the Bears were decidedly less-than-solid until Mark Whipple arrived in 1994). This was during the era when Brown had the secondary "Bruins" nickname on the helmets, which I guess would be like Yale having "Elis" on its lids or Auburn and "War Eagle."

No. 85 in the above graphic is for tight end Steve Jordan, who went on to a long, productive career with the NFL's Minnesota Vikings. (Youngsters reading this might know him better as Cameron Jordan's dad.)

Cornell limped to another mediocre season in the finale for legendary coach Bob Blackman, who built a powerhouse at Dartmouth (and designed those awesome helmets!), but failed to replicate his magic at Illinois or Cornell. An aside: The story I always heard was that at Dartmouth, Blackman was the only Ivy coach who actively recruited players, while his contemporaries viewed such a practice as unseemly. I wonder if the other schools had changed their tune by the time Blackman reached Ithaca?

I've written about Cornell's unusual uniforms before, and I'm a proud owner of a vintage Big Red jersey, complete with curved, oversized sleeve numbers. In '83, the weird Dartmouth-eqsue helmet was replaced by the classic "C" version, which Cornell has worn ever since (albeit with quite a bit of tinkering).

Yale, which shared the '81 title with Dartmouth, took a tumble in '82 and suffered its first losing season in 11 years. The Bulldogs were one of two Ivy schools — along with Harvard — to meet the NCAA's stadium and attendance requirements for staying in I-A had they wanted to (can you imagine the outrage if that had happened?). Yale's smallest crowd that year, home or road, was 13,300 for its season opener at Brown; compare that with 2019, when its largest crowd outside of the Harvard game was 7,500 at Richmond.

Yale uniforms were a bit dull, but it's Yale, and that classic block "Y" is going nowhere.

Princeton was in the midst of a 20-year stretch (1969-89) without an Ivy League title as gun-slinging QB Brent Woods set season school and league records for total plays, passing attempts, completions, yards (passing and total) and yes, interceptions. (Amazingly, he is still at or near the top of these lists today.)

The Tigers' basic uniforms didn't change much in this era, but they kept changing their helmet logo every few years. That's supposed to be a Tiger on the '82 headgear, but it looks more like a runaway chipmunk. In '84 Princeton said to hell with it and went with blank helmets.

Last in the standings but perhaps most interesting otherwise, we have Columbia, which won one game and still boasted the league's player of the year in QB John Witkowski, which is kinda like Andre Dawson winning the '87 NL MVP for the last-place Cubbies. But unlike the Hawk, Witkowski didn't earn his award based on vague intangibles or questionable stats like RBIs: He was a great I-AA/FCS quarterback stuck with a lousy defense that served up nearly 40 points per game.  

Witkowski's most extreme experience in '82 came on Nov. 6 against Dartmouth. From this vintage Sports Illustrated article:

While the Lions stumbled to a 1-9 record in 1982, Witkowski completed 250 of 453 passes (55%) for 3,050 yards and 29 TDs. In one game, a 56-41 loss to Dartmouth, he connected on 39 of 64 throws for 466 yards and five TDs. His stats for the fourth quarter alone were 16 of 28 for 209 yards and three scores. And lest there be any thought that Columbia had a ground game capable of keeping the Big Green off-balance, note that the Lions' top rusher that day went 38 yards. That runner was Witkowski.

Witkowski still holds most of Columbia's career passing records. Had he been behind center at one of the Ivy's co-champions, they might have been tempted to say "SCREW I-AA!" and take a shot at the Penn States or Georgias of the world. Maybe. 

Witkowski's favorite targets were Don Lewis (84 catches, still a record 1,000 yards on the nose, still second all time) and Bill Reggio (70-987).

Also of note: This was Columbia's last year at historic-but-run-down Baker Field before its replacement, Wien Stadium (officially Robert K. Kraft Field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium, ahem) was built in 1984.

As for the uniforms, the bizarre two-logo helmet above that resembles something out of a high-school all-star game was replaced by a script "Columbia," which lasted three years. The Lions were changing their unis on a near-yearly basis, long before that was cool or trendy in college football. The road jerseys, for this one year only, looked like practice shirts with a plain number on the front and back and nothing else.

The Brown Daily Herald takes a few parting shots at Baker Field
after the Bears topped Columbia 35-21 in the final game played there.