Ivy League Hits All-Time Lowe Point; H.Y. Game Leaves Loyal Fans Reeling

It is probably better to be co-champion of the Ivy League in football than not to be, but it's certainly nothing to get excited about. The Ivy League is a dying concern, and the thought that the horror show last Saturday in New Haven determined one of the titlists is disconcerting indeed.

For this year's Harvard-Yale game was possibly one of the worst football contests ever played. It was even worse than the Harvard-Lehigh, Harvard-Colgate, and Harvard-Brown games.

Any true football fan would have enjoyed last year's Harvard-Yale game (29-6, Yale--remember?) much more than last Saturday's debacle. At least it afforded a chance to watch a truly fine eleven in action--Yale's Lambert Trophy winners. And although Harvard was out-manned, the Crimson played a solid, sometimes spectacular brand of football that kept things interesting. The 1960 squad, playing the way it did against Yale, would have murdered this year's bunch.

This, of did not stop the Varsity Club from throwing what was from all reports a sickening congratulation-fest Monday night. In their delirium over beating Yale, the old grads never realized that the 1961 Crimson eleven deserved credit only for pulling itself together after a 1-2 beginning, and for improving its brand of football from bad to mediocre.

It the Varsity Club dinner was anything like last spring's Friends-of-Harvard-Track marathon, everyone probably went home wishing Yale had won.

Ask the men involved why Ivy League football is so bad, and they will tell you they can't recruit (though they do anyway.) they can't practice in the spring (though they do anyway), and they don't get enough financial support (though the do anyway, to the almost total exclusion of all other fall sports.)

Players will also say they don't feel much like giving their all because nobody watches the games. Well, no one is going to come to the Stadium, the Bowl, or anyplace else around the League if they have to watch slop like the Harvard-Yale game. And why do football players fell victimized if nobody comes to see them? If they can't derive satisfaction simply from playing, no one is forcing them to participate.

All-Ivy Team

Try to pick an all-Ivy team and you see how bad the League is. The Ivies have in their midst one football player, and he didn't even make the AP all-Ivy lineup, which is to be expected. That would be quarterback Bill King of Dartmouth, who completed 42 of 77 passes for 584 yards and ran up 737 yards in total offense.

Gregg Riley of Princeton, Bill Taylor of Harvard and Tom Haggerty of Columbia, the League's top runner and scorer, would fill out the mythical Ivy Lackfield. On the line would be ends Dave Usher of Dartmouth and Bob Boyda of Harvard; tackles Darwin Wile of Harvard and Bob Asack of Columbia; guards Bill Swinford of Harvard and Bill Tragakis of Dartmouth; and center Leo Black of Columbia.

There aren't enough competent players for a second team, but backs Tom O'Connor of Columbia, back Bill Grana of Harvard Schuman of Princeton deserve mention--granted, of course, that anybody does.