"The University of Chicago (UChicago) discontinued its Division I football program in 1939 because the president at the time, Robert Maynard Hutchins, believed that big-time college football was incompatible with the university's academic focus. Hutchins also disliked the idea of athletes being role models and the popularity of football on campus"
Doubtful any black athletes were a part of those teams back in those years, but it's still
sounding
They've also been purposely avant garde (for lack of a better term) regarding their academics too. They don't have a traditional engineering school opting for a pro-theoretical, anti-applied bias. And engineering is about as applied as it gets. However, they have a school of molecular engineering but only since 2011. And they of course have a medical school b/c too much money to overlook that.
To me, just seems like pure hypocrisy to say "engineering is too scientific for our elite theoretical minds, however we'll have a full on medical school, and then we'll open an engineering school if someone provides the money for it" (Pritzker family provided funding for both the engineering and med schools)
regarding academics:
UChicago is considered "Ivy-adjacent", meaning it ranks higher than some Ivy League schools. It's also considered a Tier 1 school, along with other major private research universities like MIT, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins
