Year in and year out, Ivy League football has offered one of the best bets in college sports.

Empty your savings account, find a bookie (try Mather House) and lay greenbacks on the following:

The Columbia Lions will not win the Ancient Eight crown.

Don't pay attention to Columbia alumni. The Lions have only captured the title once in the last 45 years. And that ought to tide them over for the next 45.

In fact, The Lions will probably finish last, repeating last year's 1-6 finish.

The only other candidate to knock the Lions out of the basement is Brown, where Coach Mickey Kwiatkowski's innovative Spread-T Flex offense will be crippled because nobody will know how it works.

The Bears return a total of five starters on both sides of the ball.

The Lions and Bears will jockey all season long for the privilege of being listed at the bottom of the standings.

That's the easy call. The hard calls are at the top.

But it looks like Princeton, which returns nine offensive starters and seven defensive starters from a squad that went 5-2 and finished second, is the team to beat.

Despite the loss of Chad Roghair, the leading passer in the Ancient Eight last year, the Tigers are the prohibitive favorite to win the Ivy League title.

If Dartmouth, last year's title winner, or Harvard, which finished third, can plug critical holes in their defenses, they could give the Tigers a run, especially if Princeton's quarterback problem doesn't solve itself.

The remaining teams--Cornell, Yale and Pennsylvania--are doomed to finish with mediocre records.

With that in mind, here is a closer look at the Crimson's Ivy contenders, in projected order of finish.

PRINCETON