Ivy League football coaches would like to see the restriction on post-season play lifted to give good league teams a chance to compete nationally.

"I think it's unfortunate that the football champion is the only team in our league that isn't allowed to participate in post-season play," Zubrow says. "I would have liked to have seen our team [of two years ago] and Harvard's team [this year] have that opportunity."

But administrators believe that lifting the regulations on post-season competition would send the wrong message.

"To change now would be seen as a re-emphasis on football," Reardon says. "It would be misread. I can see the editorialsts and the people at Sports Illustrated asking if we're going back to big-time football. I think philosophically we're not going there at all."

Besides, these administrators say, the Division I-AA playoff format--a grueling, four-game tournament spread out over five weeks--would keep players on the playing fields and away from the classrooms.

"I think in terms of the amount of practice and the number of people involved, football would involve far more academic displacement than other sports," says Jeffrey Orleans, the Executive Director of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents.

The closest Ivy League coaches are likely to come to post-season play, according to Reardon, is a championship game between the winner of the Ivy League and the winner of the Colonial League, a group of schools including Bucknell and Holy Cross which model their programs after those of the Ivy League and field teams of comparable talent.

The real goal of Ivy League football, administrators say, should be to keep intra-league play competitive. Even this modest goal has proved difficult, however. This year, the presidents agreed to allow Columbia, the owner of a 41-game losing streak, to lower some of its academic admissions standards to allow better football players to attend the school.

But if parity in the league can be maintained, fans will continue to attend league games, administrators say.

"If the competition level is fairly stable--it isn't yet, because Columbia has a ways to go--the product will be good," Paul says. "The athletic skills of the athletes will be comparable, so that will make for a good game."

Ideally, administrators hope, Ivy League football stands as a symbol for the place athletics should occupy in the life of a university. This, Orleans says, is why the administrators refuse to budge on such issues as scholarships and post-season play.

"It's the kind of historical symbolism that remains important to the presidents," Orleans says.

And even the coaches concede that, at least morally, Ivy League football is heading in the right direction.

"I feel we still have the best league around, for a lot of reasons," Cozza says. "I feel the sense of values is right. We don't exploit athletes. They all are permitted to major in what they want. They can feel they're students, not just athletes, which I think is not the case at some other schools."