NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale Bulldogs made the trip up to Bristol on Thursday to ESPN Headquarters for the 2019 Ivy League Football Media Day. In addition to numerous media hits, press conferences and interviews for the Elis, Yale was also recognized by ESPN College Football as one of the top-10 programs in the 150 years of collegiate football, raking No. 7 overall.
Head coach
Tony Reno, senior quarterback
Kurt Rawlings and senior defensive lineman
Devin Moore were all on campus at ESPN yesterday along with several Yale administrators as the Bulldogs took top billing on the day as the Ivy League Preseason Media Poll favorites.
Reno and the Bulldogs got a full tour of the ESPN grounds including ESPN Radio, SportsCenter Coast to Coast studios and even the famous ESPN Cafeteria. Yale stopped for media hits with Worldwide Leader representatives as well as members of the NCAA office, Ivy League Digital team and local and national journalists.
While the day was capped with Reno, Rawlings and Moore live in studio on ESPN+ with host Jack Ford '72, the event started with a bang for the Bulldogs as ESPN Stats & Information put Yale in the top-10 of its
50 best college football programs over the past 150 years.
The goal of the rankings was to honor the accomplishments of teams across 150 seasons and all divisions, while rewarding successful programs at the highest level in the sport's most competitive era.
FROM ESPN:
7. Yale – ranking: 66.7 | 18 national titles
"Yeah, Yale. Park your recency bias at the curb for just a moment and consider that for the first 50 years of college football, the sport's dominant power resided in New Haven. No wonder Yale is in the top 10: Walter Camp, the Father of American Football, played here (and yes, he made up the rules as he went along). Once the Ivies took a look at scholarship football after World War II and said no thanks, Yale ranked as first among equals in that league through the 1970s."
The Ivy League was well represented with Yale leading the way and Princeton (11), Harvard (13), Penn (26) and Dartmouth (37) all in the top-40 of the rankings.
Yale is now just four days away from the start of its preseason schedule and just over a month away from the kickoff of the 2019 football season.
