This past holiday weekend, members of the Harvard Crimson football team probably spent their vacations being congratulated by friends and relatives for winning the Ivy League championship.

The Harvard players also probably spent a bulk of their new free time sitting in front of a TV, watching football.

But if the decision were up to them, do you think that the players would have preferred playing football for one more week instead of watching it?

You bet they would.

Sadly, however, alone among Ancient Eight sports, football teams are not allowed to participate in the NCAA postseason. Since the Ivy League was created more than 50 years ago, the eight Ivy presidents have maintained a strict ban on postseason football.

Though this idea has been formulated repeatedly in recent years in different publications (including this one), it merits repetition once more: as quickly as possible, the Ivy presidents should lift the archaic ban that restricts Ivy teams from participating in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) playoffs.

In an era in which every single other athletic program in the Ivy League has the right to participate in some form of postseason, the playoff restriction for football starkly sticks out. The perpetuation of the ban is unwarranted and unnecessary, and repealing it would yield a tremendous amount of benefits to coaches, teams, and most importantly, fans.

Unfortunately, not everyone (including the all-important Ivy presidents) agrees on the idea of lifting the postseason ban. Therefore, in order to clearly elucidate why the ban should finally be terminated, I will try to comprehensively address the concerns raised by those who favor keeping the ban in place.

Playoffs would interfere with exams. In the vast majority of the likely scenarios, football playoffs would not interfere with final exams. Playoffs would only interfere with final exams during the special, highly unlikely occasions in which Ivy teams reached the FCS playoff semifinal or final. This year, for example, if Columbia had won the Ivy title, it would have needed to win three consecutive playoff games against progressively more difficult teams in order for conflicts to arise. Even then, Columbia players would only have experienced potential conflicts with one day’s worth of exams (Friday, Dec. 14). And in this very special case—playing for a national title—special accommodations could be arranged.

In terms of scheduling, most other Ivy schools have either exam schedules that are somewhat similar (such as Yale) or exams that take place after Christmas (such as Princeton). Additionally, other Ivy sports such as soccer and volleyball have playoff schedules that are almost identical to the national football playoffs. Yet while these sports are allowed access to playoffs, football is not.

Playoffs would ruin the Ivy League’s uniqueness. Proponents of this view believe that Ivy League football is unique in part because of a lack of playoffs. According to this belief, rivalries such as Yale/Harvard are more special because no greater goal (such as winning an NCAA title) exists. However, if playoffs were allowed, the result would most likely be that Ivy rivalries would be enhanced, not marginalized. Can you imagine the extra bonus that would accompany rivalry games when one team knew that, through winning, it could either advance to the playoffs or prevent its rival from doing so? This has been shown to be the case in basketball, where the possibility of an NCAA tourney berth has added an additional level of intensity to the Penn/Princeton rivalry. In football, rivalries such as Yale/Harvard likely cannot grow any larger, but the added element of a playoff berth would add an extra level of excitement to the end of the Ivy season, especially if the parody of recent seasons continues.

Playoffs would add increased pressure for coaches to win, creating more of an incentive for coaches to recruit academically subpar players. The idea that Ivy League coaches don’t already have pressure to win is foolish. Head coaches in this league are continuously under heavy scrutiny. And as recent seasons have illustrated, when coaches fail to perform, they are often shown the door (for more, see “Shoop, Bob”).

In the race for fund-raising, good football teams and stadium environments promote better alumni relations, and happier alumni lead to larger donations. Thus, as long as University administrations care about fostering fun, successful athletic environments that are useful in luring alumni back to campus, football coaches will remain under pressure.

As for the recruitment of academically subpar student-athletes, football coaches already recruit players through a heavily-monitored system that the addition of playoffs would in no way affect.

Ivy teams don’t have a shot at winning an NCAA title, so the Ivy champ should be spared the embarrassment of losing every year. The same logic could be used as rationale for denying Ivy basketball teams the right of participating in the NCAA tournament. However, though Ivy teams have been without wins in the tourney for almost a decade, there is no public outcry to ban Ivy teams from taking part in March Madness each year. Nor should there be. Just as the Ivy basketball champ gets the opportunity to take its shots at some of the nation’s top programs, so too should the Ivy football champ get the opportunity to square off against some of the nation’s best.

As shown, the main arguments for the continuity of the football playoff ban are weak and poorly substantiated. In a perfect world, today’s Ivy presidents would examine the injustice of refusing the postseason to one sole sport and lift the ban immediately. And in this world, the next Ivy League football champion would deservedly get the chance to play football on Thanksgiving weekend instead of watching it.