One of the students I tutored yesterday afternoon is a football player who will be attending an Ivy League school next year. He told me about an Ivy League football movie in the making and about a trailer for the movie. I did a little digging and found the trailer on ivysport.com. I am a little annoyed with fellow blogger, Eric Barnes, (just joking) who founded ivysport.com several years ago and neglected to tell me about the movie and the trailer. Anyway, you can access the trailer at www.ivysport.com by clicking on the image of the football-player gargoyle. Below is some additional information about the movie that I obtained from Eric.
Created by writer/director George GianFrancisco (Columbia ’88 – LB),
producer Lee Reherman (Cornell ’88 – OT), and executive producer Dean Cain
(Princeton ’88 – FS), “The League” chronicles the history of the 8 schools
of the Ivy League and their groundbreaking incubation and development of
college football as a means to attract students, create totemic
institutional associations, and advance the industrialization of American
higher education.
The film, which is entering post-production, boasts a cast of numerous
high-profile Ivy League football alumni and breathtaking footage of the
campuses and stadiums of the modern Ivy League – all recorded in
cinema-quality hi-definition.
“The League” investigates the fact that the problems facing major college
football today almost identically mirror the problems facing Ivy League
schools over 100 years ago and how the 8 universities resolved to create the
singular example of athletic reform in the history of higher education in
this country.
The long road to the modern Ivy League standard of the true student-athlete
has taken 138 years and it has filled popular culture with heroes,
innovation, fashions, pageantry, celebration, and ultimately tradition. It
has shown America the finest examples of sportsmanship and the most poignant
examples of humanity.
Great athletes and scholars – all one in the same – have played football in
the Ivy League. This will be a chance to meet them all and learn the epic
story of how 8 schools brought a new way of thinking about sports and
education to America.
