“Well, a lot of schools do care about diversity in the coaching ranks, and at any given point there’s a pretty small applicant pool of minority candidates for Division I positions,” I told him. “If you’re a black coach, there’s not a lot of appeal to the not-so-famous, non-scholarship Ivy League to begin with. When you add in the fact that the league doesn’t care about sports any more, well, why would I want to coach at Dartmouth when schools that will give you the tools to work with are out there?”

Marty furrowed his youthful brow in thought.

“So in a roundabout way,” I continued. “The league hurt its commitment to diversity within Ivy League sports when it cut back on them entirely.”

“It’s a vicious cycle,” Marty said, parroting his favorite line from Austin Powers 20.

“Exactly,” I said. “Just one of a number of things the league’s presidents failed to think about when the cutbacks started. Let alone that a lot of the most interesting people here back in my day played sports and went on to do all kinds of things. Run companies, pass laws, teach, even play professional sports.”

Marty was aghast at this last point. I told him about Ben Crockett ’02 and Carl Morris ’03, guys I’d covered as an undergrad making their mark in baseball and football, respectively. He hadn’t heard of either one, but that’s mostly because the only sports he watches seriously are wrestling, motocross and Slamball. Who knew Slamball would be such a big hit with the kids?

But Marty knew enough about football to wince when Columbia fumbled for the fifth time in the first half, and a smallish but determined-looking linebacker took the ball back eighty yards for a score.

“I don’t know, Dad,” Marty said. “Maybe the whole league is bad now, but Columbia is really, really, really bad.”

Some things never change. I smiled. We hugged. 28-7, Harvard.

—Staff writer Martin S. Bell can be reached at msbell@fas.harvard.edu.