Big Green’s Proctor on ground floor of NCAA football playoff effort
Published: 12-19-2024 6:01 PM |
Jackson Proctor’s phone was blowing up.
Nearly a month removed from the conclusion of the Dartmouth College football team’s season — the senior quarterback’s seven-touchdown performance on Nov. 23 helped clinch a share of the Ivy League title for the fourth time in five seasons — and well after the end of the school’s fall term, Proctor is back on the West Coast. So when his phone started ringing at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, he had no clue what was going on.
That’s when he heard the news.
Ivy League teams will have the opportunity to compete in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs for the first time, beginning in the 2025 season.
The league, which was founded in 1954 and first declared a champion in football in 1956, has long barred its football teams from competing for an NCAA championship. Since its inception, the Ivy League season has ended on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. While other sports programs at the league’s eight member institutions could play beyond the regular season — afforded a chance to compete for NCAA titles — football remained the lone sport where postseason play was not an option.
That all changes next season.
“The Ivy League, at least for football, doesn’t get the respect it deserves,” said Proctor, one of 30 graduating players from the Big Green’s 2024 squad. “We’ve never had the opportunity to really go deep in a playoff and prove why, as a conference, we’re able to compete with everybody else.
“That’s what the playoff is going to let us do: Show people around the country that we have dudes in this conference and we can hang with anybody.”
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Seventeen student-athletes, competing in 12 different sports, comprise the Ivy League student-athlete advisory committee (SAAC). The process, a year-long endeavor undertaken by SAAC, began with a formal proposal from a trio of athletes at three different institutions.
Crafted by Yale football player Mason Shipp, Brown softball player Leah Carey and Cornell lacrosse player Chloe Maister, the formal proposal was the first of its kind, according to the New York Times. It advocated for the league to overturn seven decades of precedent and allow its football programs to compete in the FCS postseason.
Proctor, a member of SAAC and the Ivy League football committee, recalls meeting a couple times last winter and spring to discuss the proposal. The athletes had to first get it approved by the league’s eight athletic directors, which happened over the summer. Then it was put in front of the Ivy League council of presidents, who approved the proposal on Tuesday.
Second-year Dartmouth football head coach Sammy McCorkle said he was initially “a little hesitant and a little guarded” when he first heard about the possibility of postseason play becoming a reality. After all, the league had long nixed any appeal to change the playoff boycott. But he could sense “a snowball effect” as the proposal progressed up the league’s administrative ladder, especially with a few schools appointing new presidents.
While the support of the athletic directors and open-mindedness of the presidents were key to the policy shift, McCorkle contends the advocacy and diligence of the league’s student-athletes is what made the proposal come to fruition.
“Their ability to prepare themselves and put this proposal together and present it to the presidents and athletics, they did a phenomenal job across the board,” McCorkle said of SAAC.
The Ivy League has long billed itself as a leader and innovator in college football, highlighted by its work to reduce concussions by moving kickoffs to the 40-yard line to increase touchbacks and eliminating live tackling at practices. Now its players will have “an opportunity to showcase the talent level of this league” on a national scale, McCorkle said.
“The Ivy League prides itself on a storied tradition of impact, influence and competitive success throughout the history of college football. We now look ahead to a new chapter of success and to further enhancing the student-athlete experience with our participation in the NCAA FCS playoffs,” Ivy League executive director Robin Harris said in a statement. “I want to commend the students on our SAAC for their thoughtful and thorough proposal as well as their commitment to the league’s legislative process.”
Donning the Ivy League champion hats at the postgame dais in late November, Proctor — along with two other seniors in defensive lineman Ejike Adele and cornerback Jordan Washington — spoke about the absence of a postseason. They all echoed a similar point: The decision was not in their hands, so they focused on what they could control, which was capturing an Ivy League title.
They did that. And less than a month later, the postseason ban was lifted.
The moment is bittersweet for Proctor. After exhausting his Ivy League eligibility, the Kent, Wash., native opted to enter the transfer portal and will play at Northern Illinois, a member of the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), next season. He won’t have an opportunity to represent Dartmouth in the postseason, but that doesn’t detract from the historic accomplishment.
“It means the world,” Proctor said of the ruling. “Obviously, it would have been nice if this could have happened a year earlier, allowing us to participate in it this year, but it’s been a long time coming. All the players and coaches of the Ivy League really believe we can compete. It’s finally come to fruition, which is really awesome.”
McCorkle, who said the team has already seen a positive reception from recruits regarding the policy shift, maintained that the program’s central goal will still be to win an Ivy League championship.
There are also plenty of logistics to still sort through with the postseason now in play. Chief among them is which team receives the automatic bid to the 24-team playoff should the Ivy League title be shared.
The 2024 season culminated with Dartmouth, Harvard and Columbia sharing the Ancient Eight crown, the fourth time in five seasons that the Ivy League title has been shared by two or more teams. The conference announced Wednesday that it will be developing tiebreakers in the coming months to determine which team is awarded the automatic qualifier when there are co-champions in future seasons.
Other questions remain regarding whether the Ivy League could receive an at-large bid to the playoffs or how the league will navigate the football season’s now-extended calendar.
But for now, the biggest hurdle has been cleared. Starting next season, the Ivy League will face the country’s best.
“Hopefully going forward, we’re going to have some teams, and the Ivy League is going to have some teams, that are going to be able to line up across from traditionally powerhouse teams in the country and be able to go toe to toe,” said McCorkle, who is 14-6 in his first two seasons helming the Big Green.
“This is something that we’ve wanted for a long time and our players have wanted a long time. Now we have the opportunity. Now we have to prepare ourselves to take it to another level. (The FCS playoffs) is the ultimate level.”
Alex Cervantes can be reached at acervantes@vnews.com or 603-727-7302.