Another SportsCafe "Big Question" Win.

Question was "How did the Ivy League get it's name?"

My Answer:

There are two main popular (but, alas, incorrect) explanations for the
origin of the term "Ivy League"

The first refers to the group of older established Universities of the
Eastern United States (Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, yada, yada, yada).
Because of the length of time they had been in existence, they had ivy
growing over the buildings. Newer upstart colleges had not been there long
enough to grow the creepers up over the structures. It implied an image of
permanence, wisdom and solidity. Exactly the image that the college founders
wanted.

The second misconception relates to a mythical inter-college athletic
competetion run between teams from the four major institutions. The Roman
numeral representation of four is "IV". Hence the "IV" (Ivy) League.

Both of these misdirections were invented by the president's of the
universities in the 1930's to cover up the real (and more sordid) origin of
the name "Ivy League".
In the wild 1930's, prohibition had finished and America was starting to
loosen up a bit.
This was not the case on the east coast amongst the upstanding and
respectable Universities. Saloons and brothels were closed down and ejected
from the college towns as fast as they could spring up.

An enterprising bootlegger and notorious brothel keeper from Chicago, named
Ivy Boniface, realised that there was a niche market for a mobile cat-house
and gin-palace that travelled from town to town, never setting down long
enough to attract the attention of the town authorities or police. The
prestigious universities were full of young men with piles of cash and
nowhere to expend their ... errr ... energies. Ivy's custom built party
train would pull into the nearest station to the university and hold wild
parties where the young scions of wealthy America would booze and hump their
way through their generous allowances. Since the wealthy tended to attend a
select set of school's, these became a regular circuit for Ivy's mobile
business.

To attend a university which Ivy Boniface's party train would actually
visit, was a real source of underground pride among the students. These rich
pricks would taunt the poor saps from lesser colleges at football matches by
saying that their opponents' school was so shitty that it was not even in
"Ivy's League" (meaning that the train never went there). Eventually the
name stuck. If you attended one of the wealthy schools, you were in the "Ivy
League" and were tarred with the brush of studliness that the name implied.

Of course, all of the involved colleges will deny the truth of any of this.
They have an image to protect.

But now you know the truth.

Regards

Evan Yates

This is of course a complete fabrication, but it won me a "Black Hawk Down" DVD plus movie branded shirt, bag , cap and jacket. Cool.