“The Ivy League doesn’t give athletic scholarships, because it doesn’t have to,” he said. “Harvard is still Harvard, Yale is still Yale, Princeton is still Princeton.”

Gavitt concurred that the Ivies’ stance is unlikely to be adopted elsewhere. He expressed regret that as the Ivy schools have become less competitive in Division I, the once highly influential voices of the conference’s athletic directors have become silent.

“I think the Ivy model is a great one,” Gavitt said when asked if he thought the Ivy League should begin awarding athletic scholarships. “The rest of the country just won’t [adopt] it because they don’t trust each other.”

Feinstein concluded the discussion with a challenge to the Ivy League to allow its football teams to compete in the Division I-AA tournament and also to move to a conference tournament in basketball. These steps, he said, only make sense in light of the league’s stand on behalf of its student-athletes as the ones who “should matter the most.”

—Staff writer Brian E. Fallon can be reached at bfallon@fas.harvard.edu.