Just re-read that. I thought you were insisting it's an Ivy rather than correcting my misspelled "Ive." My bad. My mind works faster than my fingers type sometimes.
You have it correct this time.
The Ivy League began officially in 1954 to legitimize intercollegiate participation in
all sports among the eight member colleges. The first sporting competition between two colleges was a rowing match between Harvard and Yale a century earlier. In the decades after that first competition, several of the oldest colleges in the Northeast (including West Point and the Naval Academy) competed regularly in other sports, such as football and baseball. But it wasn't until 1954 that the league was formalized to include all sports. West Point and the Naval Academy dropped out a few years earlier. The College of William and Mary, and Rutgers University (called Queens before the revolutionary war) were not asked to join because of their public funding.
Leland Stanford and his wife traveled to the east coast to consult with the Presidents of Harvard and Cornell, among other colleges in seeking advice about starting a college.
