Little Three

The Little Three is a term started by and used in reference to athletic competition between three private liberal arts colleges in the New England area of the US:[1]

This article is about the New England conference of colleges. For the Western New York agglomeration, see Western New York Little Three Conference.
Locations of Amherst, Wesleyan, and Williams

The exact origin of the term Little Three is lost to history,[1] but was used by the three colleges in an allusion to the Big Three, coined in the 1880s to describe the three big universities, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, which dominated football in the Ivy League.[2] The earliest known reference appeared in John Hallahan’s Football in New England Colleges in 1923: "Williams College again won the championship of the Little Three, which includes Wesleyan and Amherst . . ."[1] Little Three championships are contested in 24 sports throughout the academic year.[1] They first joined together as the Triangular League athletic conference in 1899, which lasted only three years before breaking up over an argument concerning the eligibility of college baseball players who received pay during summer league play. In 1910, they formed what is believed to be "America’s oldest, continuous intercollegiate athletic conference without a membership change," which earned another moniker, The Triumvirate.[1]

See also

References
  1. "The Little Three: Williams • Amherst • Wesleyan". williams.edu. Williams College.
  2. Duckworth, Henry Edmison (2000). One Version of the Facts: My Life in the Ivory Tower. Univ. of Manitoba Press. p. 93. ISBN 9780887553523. Retrieved July 21, 2018 – via Google Books.


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