But next year will be worse.

Penn should start out higher in the I-AA preseason polls than in seasons past, removing the “no matter how well we do, this is the highest ranking we can achieve” impediment. Harvard returns all its skill position players save Rodney Byrnes from a team that, a year ago, seemed poised for an undefeated season until the injury to junior quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. One of these two teams could rank well inside the top 10 in the nation.

What better time than now to end this inequitable ban?

In such a discussion, the Presidents

should consider the primary question raised by the listing of the sports above. What makes football so different? Why is football singled out?

Better yet, it would be beneficial for the Presidents to address the issue of why a majority of their recent restrictions have dealt with football. What is the motivation for making football the target of attack?

Or, maybe they can discuss why some Ivy schools spend as much as 25 percent of their budget for men’s sports on football and then prohibit the team from competing on a national level.

The singling out of football must come to an end. The excuses given for it are ridiculous. This spring meeting would be the perfect time for the Council to drop back but not pass on reassessing the situation.

Meanwhile, I’ll be shifting my focus back to tennis, because I, for one, appreciate the universal drama that is the NCAA tournament.

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu.