The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference, comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The conference headquarters are in Princeton, New Jersey. The term Ivy League is typically used outside sports to refer to the eight schools as a group of elite colleges with connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism. Its members are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.
The New England Small Collegiate Athletic Conference (NESCAC) is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising sports teams from eleven highly selective liberal arts institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The eleven institutions are Amherst College, Bates College, Bowdoin College, Colby College, Connecticut College, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, Tufts University, Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Williams College.
The Little Ivies are an unofficial group of small, academically competitive private liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States. The term Little Ivy derives from these schools' small student bodies, standards of academic excellence, associated historic social prestige, and highly selective admissions comparable to the Ivy League. According to Bloomberg, the Little Ivies are also known for their large financial endowments, both absolutely and relative to their size.
Hidden Ivies is a college educational guide with the most recent edition, The Hidden Ivies, 3rd Edition: 63 of America's Top Liberal Arts Colleges and Universities, published in 2016, by educational consultants Howard and Matthew Greene.
Three popular American sports were invented in New England. Basketball was invented by James Naismith, a Canadian, in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891. Volleyball was invented by William G. Morgan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1895. Paintball was invented in 1981 in Henniker, New Hampshire.
Mike Whalen is an American college athletics administrator and former college football and collegiate wrestling coach. He is the athletic director at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, a position he has held since 2013. Whalen served as the head football coach at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts from 2004 to 2009 and at Wesleyan from 2010 to 2014, compiling a career college football head coaching record of 64–24. He was also the head wrestling coach at Williams from 1996 to 2004. Whalen played football and wrestled at Wesleyan.
The UConn Huskies football team is a college football team that represents the University of Connecticut in the sport of American football. The team competes in NCAA Division I FBS as an independent. Connecticut first fielded a team in 1896, and participated in Division I-AA until 1999. The Huskies began their two-year Division I-A transition period in 2000, and became a full-fledged Division I-A team in 2002. From 2000 to 2003, the team played as an independent. The school's football team then joined the conference of its other sport teams, the Big East, taking effect in 2004, through 2019. In 2019, the UConn football team left the American to again play as an independent, as the school's current primary conference, the current Big East, does not sponsor the sport. The Huskies are coached by Jim Mora.
The Bryant Bulldogs football program represents Bryant University in college football. As of the upcoming 2023 season, the Bulldogs are members of the Big South–OVC Football Association, a football-only alliance between the Big South Conference and Ohio Valley Conference that is part of the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The team has played its home games at Beirne Stadium in Smithfield, Rhode Island, which opened in 1999 as Bulldog Stadium and received its current name in 2016.
The Dartmouth Big Green football team represents Dartmouth College in NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) college football competition as a member of the Ivy League. The team possesses a storied tradition that includes a national championship, and holds a record 21 Ivy League Football Championships with 11 College Football Hall of Fame inductees.
Jack "Sid" Siedlecki is an American former college football coach. He was a head coach in college football for 21 years for Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1988–1992), Amherst College (1993–1996) and Yale University (1997–2008). He led his teams to championships in the Ivy League, the Freedom Football Conference, and the New England Small College Athletic Conference. He was selected as the American Football Coaches Association District I Coach of the Year after the 2006 season.
James E. Ostendarp was an American gridiron football player and coach. He played professional football for the New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL) from 1950 to 1951 and the Montreal Alouettes of the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union—a forerunner of the Canadian Football League (CFL)—in 1952. Ostendarp was the head football coach at Amherst College for 33 years, from 1959 to 1991, compiling a record of 168–91–5. He also served as president of the American Football Coaches Association in 1982.
The Williams Ephs are the varsity intercollegiate athletic programs of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
The Triangular Football League or New England Intercollegiate Football Association was an American college football conference. Its founding members were Dartmouth, Williams, and Amherst. The Triangular Football League was formed in 1892, and was a successor organization to the Eastern Intercollegiate Football Association (1887–1891) and the Northern Intercollegiate Football Association (1885–1886). MIT had been a member of the previous iterations as late as 1887, and Wesleyan became a member of the Triangular Football League by at least 1899.
The Wesleyan Cardinals football team represents Wesleyan University in the sport of American football. It is a member of the Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) and competes against traditional Little Three rivals Amherst and Williams.
The Big Three is a historical term used in the United States to refer to Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. The phrase Big Three originated in the 1880s, when these three colleges dominated college football. In 1906, these schools formed a sports compact that formalized a three-way football competition which began in 1878. This early agreement predated the Ivy League by nearly a century. Today, the term is used to refer to the comparable levels of prestige, tradition, elitism, and academic and intellectual superiority affiliated with the schools. The rivalry remains intense today, though the three schools are no longer national football powerhouses, and schools continue to refer to their intercollegiate competitions as "Big Three" or "Harvard-Yale-Princeton" meets.
NCAA Division III women's ice hockey is a college ice hockey competition governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as part of the NCAA Division III. Sixty-seven teams competed in NCAA Division III women’s hockey across eight conferences in the 2019–20 season.
The Biggest Little Game in America is an American college football rivalry featuring the Amherst Mammoths and the Williams Ephs. Both programs play in the Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference. With the exception of a few hiatuses, the series has been played annually since 1884, making it the most played Division III rivalry game, and the fourth most played NCAA game at any level. Williams leads the all-time series 75–57–5.
The 1946 Little Three Conference football season was the season of college football played by the three member schools of the Little Three Conference as part of the 1946 college football season.
The 2006 Williams Ephs football team was an American football team that represented Williams College as a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) and the Little Three Conference during the 2006 NCAA Division III football season. In their third year under head coach Mike Whalen, the Ephs compiled an 8–0 record, won the NESCAC and Little Three championships, and outscored opponents by a total of 276 to 74.
