Play by Play: How Student-Athletes Ended Ivy League Football’s 80-Year Ban on Postseason Games

After 17 months of work, 17 student-athletes finally saw the announcement they hoped for last week: the Ivy League would allow its champion football team to compete in NCAA playoffs.

The students — who make up the Ivy League Student-Athlete Advisory Committee — led the effort to overturn the league’s 1945 ban on postseason play.

The decision will allow one champion each season from the Ivy League to receive an automatic spot in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, competing against FCS teams such as the University of California at Davis or South Dakota State.

“Having that opportunity to go to the playoffs and compete for a title, that’s super exciting stuff,” outgoing Harvard football captain Shane M. McLaughlin ’25 said. “It’ll be awesome for the program.”

SAAC, which was created in 1999 and now meets monthly on Zoom, pushed the proposal from start to finish, drafting its language and lobbying players and athletic directors to overcome initial hesitance from high-level administrators.

Wednesday’s announcement marked not only a change from the league’s eight-decade precedent — but also the striking success of an initiative that was driven by student-athletes.

“It’s a really wonderful example of the student-athlete voice,” Ivy League Executive Director Robin J. Harris said in an interview with The Crimson.

‘Coming From the Student-Athletes’

At an in-person Ivy League SAAC meeting in July 2023, Brown softball player Leah R. Carey asked Harris why football was the only sport that could not compete in the postseason.

Every Ivy League team except football was eligible to compete in the postseason, something Carey didn’t realize until her sophomore year.

“I was like, ‘this doesn’t make any sense,’” Carey said.

For Ivy League football players, the rule ended every team’s season at 10 games, regardless of their standing. But student-athletes in other sports — many of whom see postseason play as a motivating goal — were confused why their peers were barred from the same opportunity.

Harvard women’s field hockey player Tessa A. Shahbo ’26, a co-president of Harvard’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, said that the postseason, for her, marks “the best part of the season.”

“It gives you something to work towards,” she added.

According to Harris, Ivy League coaches and officials had informally discussed the possibility of football teams competing in the playoffs in the past, but Carey’s question was the first time that postseason eligibility for football had been raised by Ivy League SAAC.

SAAC had typically been a space to do “small things that can help impact campuses” for student-athletes, according to Ivy League SAAC executive board member and Yale football player Mason A. Shipp — not an agent of policy change.

But Carey’s question to Harris sparked a 17-month process that would redefine the Ivy League’s football season regulations.

“I was like, ‘What can you bring up as our commissioner?’ And she was like, ‘Well, honestly, I think it would be better coming from the student athletes,’” Carey said.

An Administrative Interception

Determined to reverse the almost 80-year precedent, Shipp and Carey spent the rest of the year crafting an initial proposal to change the Ivy League’s rules.

Shipp created an informal “football committee” — a group chat composed of two football players from each of the eight schools — to consult on the process and share feedback from coaches and athletic directors.

After a four-month drafting process, SAAC submitted the proposal to the Ivy League in February 2024 for revisions and to start the process of official consideration. Then, in April, SAAC held a formal vote on their revised proposal, which they recommended unanimously.

Following the recommendation, the proposal went to the athletic directors, who discussed the proposal together in May during an Ivy-wide meeting. Once again, the proposal was a success.

But higher-level administrators proved more skeptical of the bid to overturn a long-standing precedent, and the proposal stalled when it moved to the Ivy League Policy Committee, a group of thirteen senior university officials who monitor the league’s athletic policies and programs.

Although the proposal had seen little resistance so far, the policy committee — composed of administrators in largely academic positions, as opposed to athletics — raised several concerns with extending the football season to include the FCS playoffs.

According to Carey, the committee worried the rule change would mean extending the season for three more months, causing schools to have to move their players’ final exams.

Ultimately, the policy committee decided to table the proposal to discuss at their next meeting in November — effectively stalling the proposal for months.

‘Basic Grassroots Work’

Once fall came around, Carey, Shipp, and members of the Ivy League SAAC launched a second campaign to revive the proposal.

With the proposal tabled from the spring, athletes had until the policy committee’s biannual meeting in November to drive support from their universities.

Carey said they encouraged members of Ivy SAAC to “put in a lot of work” to ensure the proposal would pass. They asked students to talk to representatives of the policy committee and athletic directors at their respective schools to plead their case.

In the end, Carey said, members of SAAC were able to do “really good basic grassroots work to kind of lobby our proposal.”

Carey spoke to her athletic director, who later spoke to Brown University President Christina H. Paxson. Following the meeting, Paxson emerged as a supporter.

“I did everything I could from the Brown University standpoint to push this proposal as hard as I could, and I know the same efforts were given throughout Ivy SAAC,” Carey said.

“It was a huge win for the student athletes as a whole,” she added.

The policy committee voted to approve the proposal on Nov. 20, sending it to the Ivy League Council of Presidents for final consideration.

The presidents signed off, and on Dec. 18, the Ivy League announced its decision to allow its football teams to compete in the postseason FCS playoffs.

‘Huge for the Ivy League’

For Shipp, the decision is not only the payoff of months of work, but a new opportunity as he enters his final year of eligibility playing for Yale’s team.

“It’s huge for the Ivy League. I think that the opportunity for us now to compete at the highest level of the FCS gives future recruits, future players, you know, the dream of playing in a playoff game,” Shipp said. “It makes it very real.”

Carey, who graduates in the spring, said she hopes to be able to see at least one Ivy League team compete in the FCS playoffs. Within days, she texted the SAAC liaison, asking for box tickets to the first playoff game.

In the long run, Carey said, she sees the proposal and decision as a first step toward expanding SAAC’s role in the Ivy League’s athletic policymaking. Ivy League SAAC, she said, is already thinking about trying to get student-athlete representation on committees like the athletic director committee or the policy committee.

“I think after this proposal, this kind of increases our legitimacy as Ivy SAAC and definitely helps people take the student-athlete voice more seriously,” Carey said.

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves.

—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.