Globalization

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Congratulations are certainly due to 2001 Brown graduate Cory Gibbs, who was selected to the 23-man United States World Cup soccer team. He's the first Ivy League graduate to make the U.S. team since it re-emerged on the international scene in 1990, when it qualified for its first World Cup in 40 years.

Now those of you who follow soccer closely are well aware that the roster announcement came out on Tuesday. Why, then, did it take me so long to make this post?

Because no one I talked to knew whether Gibbs actually was the first Ivy League to make the U.S. World Cup squad in the modern era. I sent an email to perhaps the most influential person in American soccer, Columbia University economics professor and newly elected U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati, and he suspected it was true but wasn't sure. I called the U.S. Soccer Federation and no one there knew. I wrote to some other sportswriters I've met with Ivy League connections and none of them knew.

I called the Ivy League office and they didn't know, which I think reflects rather badly on them because this is pretty important, especially given the global reach of the Ivy League's academic reputation and Gibbs' stature with the U.S. team. This is the world's game, after all.

I finally got the answer I was looking for by going through all the rosters from the 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002 teams, and searching for where all the players went to college. It didn't take too long, but it's not the sort of information that soccer's governing bodies keep track of because the rest of the world doesn't care about college sports the way Americans do.

I did manage to find a few other Ivy League connections to the world's premier sporting event along the way:

-- Former Columbia football coach Aldo Donelli, who led the Lions to their only Ancient Eight title in the sport in 1961, was the only American player to score a goal in the 1934 World Cup in Italy, although he went to college at Duquesne.

-- Former U.S. goalkeeper Juergen Sommer, who was on the 1994 World Cup team, used to be an assistant coach at Harvard. Bruce Murray, a forward on the 1990 team (the first American team to qualify for the World Cup in 40 years), is an assistant coach with the Crimson now.

-- On the current team, head coach Bruce Arena is a 1973 Cornell graduate. One of his assistants on the 2002 team, Dave Sarachan, was the head coach of the Big Red from 1989 to 1997 after graduating from Cornell in 1976.

The World Cup kicks off in Germany on June 9; the first game for Gibbs and the United States is against the Czech Republic is June 12.