If Eli's Dowling Stays Healthy, Harvard Will Face a Super-Team

If Yale's Brian Dowling remains a whole man, it could be a lean Thanks-giving weekend for Harvard football fans.

Dowling engineered the Elis to a 56-15 massacre of the once-mighty Dartmouth Indians Saturday with almost 50,000 rain-soaked fans screaming "We want a hundred." The week before, Dowling's men emasculated Cornell, 41-7.

Against these same two opponents, Harvard lost one game by two points and won another by the same margin.

The Elis moved against Dartmouth as if they were engaged in battle with one of the League's doormats. Yale scored each of the first four times it had the ball, on drives of 48, 21, 54, and 72 yards. After two minutes of the second quarter, it was 28-0. This kind of thing just doesn't happen to Dartmouth.

Cripple

Dowling, an injury-prone junior who has missed a season and a half of action, threw a 69-yard touchdown pass, scored himself on a 30-yard bootleg run, faked Dartmouth into obscurity, and called a great game. The Yale defense, meanwhile, snatched up a pair of Green fumbles and intercepted two of Gene Ryzewicz's passes--all inside the Dartmouth 40-yard line. Yale's great senior rusher Don Barrows scored the first three touchdowns for the home team, probably the best Yale eleven in decades.

In other League action, Princeton trampled on the dead Brown Bruins, 48-14, and Cornell topped Columbia, 27-14.

The Tigers, who visit Soldiers Field this Saturday, held back some of their stars and still had no trouble wiping out Brown at Princeton. Tiger coach Dick Colman avoided using his starting tailback Rob Weber, and several starting linemen also spent the game on the bench, apparently resting up for the Harvard-Princeton match.

A junior tailback, Rich Bracken, led the single-wing offensive with three touchdown runs, including a 57-yarder, and three pass completions. Ellis Moore, a sophomore fullback, scored two TD's and rushed for 134 yards.

In the only other League game, Cornell--smarting from losses to Harvard and Dartmouth--picked on Columbia to get even. The star of the game for the host Big Red was a 245-pound defensive tackle, John Sponheimer. Sponheimer intercepted a Marty Domres pass at the Lion 20 and took it in for a tie-breaking score after two minutes of the second half. Three minutes later, Sponheimer recovered a Domres fumble on the Columbia 21, setting up the score that made it 21-7.

Domres, who was returning to the place of his birth, Ithaca, pitched a pair of touchdown passes in Columbia's losing effort, but he also fumbled four times.

With three weeks remaining in the Ivy season, Yale stands as the only undefeated team with Harvard, Dartmouth, and Princeton one game back. Harvard hosts Princeton this Saturday, while Yale entertains Penn and Dartmouth meets Columbia in New York. In the one contest that does not involve a front-runner, twice-beaten Cornell hosts an outclassed Brown squad. Ivy Standings   W  L Yale  4  0 HARVARD  3  1 Dartmouth  3  1 Princeton  3  1 Cornell  2  2 Penn  1  3 Columbia  0  4 Brown  0  4