Ivy League football celebrates its 30th birthday this week.

Only 30 years of the Ivy League? What about the venerable tradition of the Big Three--and the nation's oldest college sports rivalries?

Don't worry. Princeton and Rutgers are generally said to have played in the first college football game ever, but the Harvard-Yale Game--which turns 103 this Saturday--is still considered by many to be the ultimate sporting tradition.

Nonetheless, the Ivy League has existed officially only since 1954, when the presidents of the eight schools that still comprise the league today banded together in an effort to preserve the academic integrity and athletic excellence of their schools.

Official round-robin play began in the fall of 1956, when the Harvard-Yale football rivalry was already 73 years old.

Continuing Commitment

In interviews this week, athletic officials reaffirmed the league's commitment to an athletic philosophy that stresses the student-athlete, and they expressed concern about recent trends in college athletics.

The Ivy League's original constitution stressed the academic nature of its athletic programs by banning athletic scholarships, shortening the length of the football season and making freshmen ineligible for varsity teams.

The league maintains most of that original academic and athletic formula today, say officials at the member schools.

"The principle that student-athletes are representative of the College in general has been better in the Ivy League than at other schools," says Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57, who was an undergraduate when the first Ivy League season kicked off.

"Students should be students first and athletes second," says Al Paul, athletic director at Columbia, a football doormat in recent years. Like the league's other member schools, Columbia maintains strict admissions policies and financial aid stipulations for undergraduate athletes. "We wouldn't let anyone in who couldn't do the work," Paul says.

At Dartmouth, a traditional Ivy League sports powerhouse, Athletic Director William I. Leland emphasizes the congeniality prevailing in Ivy League athletics. "There's a spirit within the League that's not in other leagues," says Leland, who has worked in several other football conferences. "An athlete should go out on the field with a 50-50 chance of winning, and in the Ivy League they do."

Several recent developments, however, have brought this Ivy athletic ideal into question. Four years ago, the eight members of the Ivy League were demoted by the NCAA from I-A to I-AA status in football, giving rise to fears that Ivy League teams could no longer compete on a national level.

John P. Reardon Jr. '60, Harvard's athletic director, says the decision to push the Ivy League teams into Division I-AA reflects a desire by NCAA to cut down "the number of teams getting a piece of the TV revenue pie."

Other athletic directors are more critical. "From a prestige point of view, I was very disappointed with the decision," Paul says. "The Ivy teams were the founders of college football with a long tradition of leadership in the NCAA."

Internally, the Ivy League faces conflict over the traditional domination of the League by the so-called Big Three--Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Other members of the league occasionally complain that the Big Three receive more than their fair share of the glory and publicity.

For example, the Public Broadcasting System this week plans to televise The Game instead of the Ivy League championship game between Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, the two teams with undeafeated league records this season.

The recent wake of drug scandals and recruiting violations at colleges known for big-time sports has increased the Ivy commitment to amateur athletics.

In light of the death last summer of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias from cocaine intoxication and the crisis in sports revenue that many smaller schools are facing, the Ivy League philosophy seems to be on the upswing, according to some athletic officials.

Many cite the development of parallel leagues in football and hockey as evidence of a trend toward academics over athletics. The Colonial League, a consortium of private colleges with similar academic philosophies and geographic locations, began play this fall after agreeing to accept Ivy League-type standards, including a ban on athletic scholarships.

The president of the Ivy Group, the League's administrative body, Jeffrey H. Orleans, says that these trends bode well for the future of Ivy League sports. "The Ivy League," he says, "demonstrates that you can maintain standards and still have very good competition."