To be at site of regular season winners starting in 2028.
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FINALLY.
Could have come a little earlier if you ask me… cough 2024 cough
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So Men and Women will be separate?
Also, what are the tie-breakers?
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Why not 2023 then?
Uh… because.
Is there some thought that 2027 Ivy Madness should be played at the Palestra because of its 100th anniversary celebration? Not fair to Dartmouth, which has waited its turn, but it looks improbable that either the Big Green men or women will be around to host it, so maybe Dartmouth could be convinced. I’m a big advocate for holding the tournament in a neutral site, preferably in New York, but one more time at the Palestra might be ok.
Holding the tournament on campus, however selected (e.g. the existing rotation, going to the home of the regular season winner), sounds better than it has been. Keep in mind that in 2026, six of the eight Ivies were on spring break the weekend of the tournament, with Cornell fortunately being one of the exceptions. It’s nice to be on campus but campuses during a break are empty and pretty bleak.
The problem is that ESPN has told them that the only way it gets on TV is if it is played the last weekend before the Selection Show. The Ivies could easily schedule it to fit the prior weekend, but they want the 500,000 viewers they got.
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But as I’ve noted earlier, these are secondary ESPN outlets. The two semifinal games were on ESPNU and ESPN News, and even some folks on the Ivy boards were frustrated that they could not access them. And the “grand prize” was yet another secondary ESPN outlet–ESPN2.
The real question is how many of these viewers were simply streaming it on a standalone ESPN+ (in which case there is zero incentive to schedule around it, as that option is always available no matter when they schedule the ILT) versus watching it on their cable system (a shrinking number).
If they actually had over 500,000 viewers as they said, it wasn’t on ESPN+ that they were watching. It’s that it was the best thing on at the time
We crusty old DirecTV users with the full package get all the ESPN channels–they could put it on the Ocho. (Of course I could have streamed it if necessary, but the pleasure of watching it on delay and zapping all the commercials and much of the dead time is hard to beat when Princeton isn’t involved.)
They wouldn’t draw flies to a neutral site. The reg season champ should host. Men and women.
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