In a conference founded before the invention of the microwave, firsts are hard to come by. But this season, Penn football will have a truly novel opportunity: the chance to chase a national championship.
For the first time in the history of the Ivy League, the conference will permit its member schools to participate in the FCS playoffs, giving Ancient Eight teams a goal beyond the league title. In 2025, the Ivy League champion will earn an automatic berth to the 24-team tournament, while other teams will also have the chance to be considered for an at-large bid.
It’s a historic change for a historic league, and it’s one this year’s Quakers are determined to make the most of.
“Personally, I’ve been in this league a couple years — 39 — and I never thought we would have seen this day,” Penn football coach Ray Priore said. “I’m so happy for the league. … The fact that we could be playing here, having Thanksgiving in Philly, would be pretty sweet.”
Last winter, the Ivy League Council of Presidents voted to retract the conference’s ban on postseason football, a move made after decades of debate. The policy, an original tenet of the 1945 Ivy Group Agreement, was designed to prevent the league’s football teams from playing games during their schools’ finals periods.
But as other Ivy sports like basketball and lacrosse found success in their respective postseason tournaments, the league’s student leaders began to push for change. The Ancient Eight’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee penned a proposal to repeal the ban, and roughly a year later, the league gave its final stamp of approval. Senior quarterback Liam O’Brien was involved in the process as part of Penn’s SAAC committee.
Now, each team in the Ivy League is competing to be first in line.
“I think it’s really cool, at the end of the day,” senior defensive lineman Paul Jennings, a two-year captain for the Quakers, said. “Historical thing for the Ivy League and for us to have the chance to set the record in terms of being the first Ivy League team in the playoffs.”
“We’re just trying to focus on our day-to-day goals, rather than getting too caught up in those long-term goals,” Jennings added. “But at the end of the day, it’s just something else to work for.”
In addition to national title contention, participating in the playoffs will bring another change to the league: the need to crown a single conference champion. In years past, the Ivy League has avoided breaking ties between teams at the top of the standings, instead opting to split the title between them. Last season, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Columbia all shared the banner with a 5-2 conference record.
Now, with an automatic qualification on the line, there can only be one. In the event of a knot at the top, the league will utilize a series of tiebreakers to name a single champ, including head-to-head record, advanced metrics like key performance indicators and the ESPN Football Power Index, and even a random draw.
That said, the Red and Blue are choosing to focus on the factors within their control.
“Ultimately, our goal is to win [the Ivy League] outright,” O’Brien said. “We don’t want to leave it up to a tiebreak. 7-0 is the goal.”
That goal has been reached by a number of Penn teams since the FCS playoffs’ creation — teams that would have been able to participate in the tournament if not for the Ivy League’s policy.
Since 2000, the Quakers have recorded four undefeated Ivy League seasons and won the conference outright six times. They also won a share of the title in 2015 and 2016, Priore’s first two seasons at the helm.
Now, as the Quakers prepare for their inaugural postseason pursuit, they are not just competing for themselves. They are competing for those who never got the chance.
“I do believe … that some of those Penn teams of the past would have did some damage,” Priore said. “Early ’90s we had Mark DeRosa, Miles Macik, and that group. The ’93 team, ’94 team was good. The ’02, ’03 team … I think we could have did some damage some years with some of the players we had, and I know they’ll be rooting us on.”
“It means a ton,” Jennings said of playing for past Penn greats. “I’ve been here for a little bit now, so [there’s] a lot of my former teammates and alumni who have a lot of eyes on us now, more than ever, because of this playoff opportunity. Making sure we represent them well, represent Penn football well, and the rest of the University, is really important for us.”
