The Ancient Eight: College Football's Ivy League and the Game They Play Today

As a Yale alumnus who had the privilege of playing football for the Bulldogs in the 1970s, I approached John Feinstein's latest offering with genuine excitement. The Ivy League football tradition deserves thoughtful exploration, and Feinstein's previous sports writing suggested he might be the author to do it justice. Unfortunately, "The Ancient Eight" proves to be one of the most disappointing and poorly executed sports books I've encountered in years.What should have been an insightful examination of contemporary Ivy League football instead reads like the bloated first draft of a much shorter, potentially interesting book. Feinstein's decision to chronicle the entire 2023 season game-by-game results in a mind-numbing slog through endless play-by-play recaps that add nothing to our understanding of the sport or its unique place in these historic institutions.The book's most glaring flaw is Feinstein's maddening tendency to repeat himself ad nauseam. The same anecdotes, statistics, and observations appear multiple times throughout the text, often within mere chapters of each other. It becomes painfully obvious that Feinstein lacked sufficient material for a full-length book and chose to pad the manuscript rather than craft a tighter, more focused narrative. I lost count of how many times he rehashed the same stories about coaching changes, recruiting challenges, or administrative attitudes toward football.Feinstein's organizational skills appear to have abandoned him entirely. The narrative bounces erratically between schools, seasons, and decades without any coherent structure. He'll launch into a tangent about Harvard's coaching history, then abruptly shift to a detailed breakdown of a meaningless October game between Penn and Cornell, before circling back to restate points he made fifty pages earlier. The lack of editorial discipline is astounding.Even more frustrating is Feinstein's failure to capitalize on the rich material available to him. The Ivy League's unique position in college athletics—balancing academic excellence with athletic tradition in an era of rampant commercialization—deserves nuanced treatment. Instead, we get superficial observations buried beneath layers of repetitive game summaries that would bore even the most dedicated fan.As someone who lived and breathed Ivy League football (admittedly, not as a star player), who understands both its traditions and its current challenges, I found myself checking the page count repeatedly, hoping for the ordeal to end. When finishing a book feels like a chore rather than a pleasure, the author has fundamentally failed his readers.Feinstein has written compelling sports books before, which makes this effort all the more disappointing. "The Ancient Eight" reads like the work of someone going through the motions, collecting a paycheck rather than crafting a meaningful contribution to sports literature.For anyone interested in Ivy League football, I'd recommend seeking out older, better-written accounts of the Ancient Eight rivalry. This book will only remind you why some stories are better left untold—or at least told far more concisely.Skip this one. Your time is too valuable to waste on such a poorly conceived and executed effort.

nI’ve been a Feinstein fan sice Season on the Brink. I’ve read 16 Feinstein books, and this is the worst. The topic and content were interesting, but he repeated the same quotes and stories, some as many as 5 or 6 times (Harvard beats Yale 29-29). In the intro he compares this book to The Last Amateurs; not even close.

Famous sports writer but little tension, content. Repetitive and sadly boring. Expected more from John Feinstein. Felt like he was wandering around looking for a point to the book

This is a frustrating read. While it's fun to learn how some players and coaches ended up at Ivy League schools, the rest of the book is boring and repetitive. The tedious play-by-play game accounts...reading a dozen identical descriptions of a lifelong friendship between the Harvard and Dartmouth coaches...being told over and over that the November weather in Hanover and Ithaca is really cold...I could go on. Even the athlete profiles -- the best part of the book -- were superficial. It might've been interesting to hear what players had to say about how they were regarded and treated by fellow students -- from whom they're not separated, as is done at major football schools. How did they manage the academics, also not separately tracked? There's a good book to be written about football in the Ivy League, but this isn't it.

A very good read! In the movement of college football teams changing conferences and destroying traditional rivalries, the Ivy League has stayed together continues to emphasize the student in student-athlete. The rivalry they have established with the Patriot League continues to be based on academics.