IVY LEAGUE

a group of colleges and universities in the northeastern United States that are widely regarded as high in academic and social prestige: Harvard (established 1636), Yale (1701), Pennsylvania (1740), Princeton (1746), Columbia (1754), Brown (1764), Dartmouth (1769), and Cornell (1865). They are members of an athletic conference for intercollegiate American football and other sports known as the Ivy League. Though formally organized only in 1956, competition between the colleges dates back to football meetings in the 1870s. The Ivy League was dominant in the early years of football in the United States until 1913, as attested by the All-America teams, but it faded in the 1920s.