Sadists vs. Ivies

I'm gonna have to be frank with you folks. You see, I've got this problem about what to do on Saturday afternoon. As everybody east of Blue Hill Ave. knows, Harvard's football team is playing Brown in the season's biggest Ivy League game. So why don't I just go on down to the ole Stadium and catch the game?

Not so fast, tailgate-picnic breath.

See, at the same time, college football's number-one team, the University of Michigan, is playing Minnesota on T.V., and the Wolverines are the kind of team you don't turn your back on--especially on the football field.

Which brings us now to the argument that's been around as long as pulled hamstrings; can Ivy League football stack up against the major college teams or is it glorified British Bulldog played by a bunch of guys who think that Ara Parseghian is an incurable form of cancer?

Sure I'm being a little hard on the jocks in the tweed jackets and LaCoste shirts, for though the multiflex can resemble a monkey-flex at times (with Bonzo the Chimp running post patterns), there is a horde of talented gridders playing Saturday's heroes for all eight Ivy teams providing all the grunts, second efforts and crack-back blocks that the Big Ten, Big Eight, or Big Sadist football fan craves.

The Crimson boasts defensive standouts Tommy Joyce and Bob Baggott, whose game-saving exploits on defense would have Woody shooting his recruiter at sundown if he only knew. Jim Kubacki had the kind of game against Brown last season that Nebraska quarterback Vince Ferragamo yearns to pull off just once. Brown has a passing combination of Paul Michalko to Bob Farnham that make Wishbone-oriented teams look like turkeys.

But amidst all the flashes of professionalism is Ivy League football's biggest drawing card: Ivy League football itself. "Unique" and "unpredictable" are overused descriptions of the style of play, but what else can you call football when fumbles are part of the offensive strategy, punters kick balls backward over their head and the home team suits up enough people for the entire population of Casco, Maine?

You've got all day Sunday and all Monday night to watch the pros "execute" and play almost fundamentally perfect football, with all the violence of a Barretta episode and all the cheering of Strauss Hall during "Charlie's Angels." So why not set aside Saturday for a bunch of guys really giving it The Olde College Try?

I can just see myself now, watching lettermen from the John Phillip Sousa School of Highstepping marching through halftime at the Michigan game, with the Wolverines burying the Golden Gophers by some obnoxious score. Then Jim Lampley will come on and say, "And out in Cambridge, it's Harvard 10, Brown 10," and I'll start crying in my Dorito's Nacho Cheese.

I want to thank all you folks for helping me make my decision. See you at the ballgame.