THE YEAR IN SPORTS Nothing to laugh about

It was a funny year in sports, in a way. As usual. Harvard sports teams performed fairly well--Crimson squads racked up to the second best composite winning percentage in the Ivies--but there were enough ironic endings to make even an O. Henry wince.

The football team lost quarterback Tim Davenport with a broken neck in the league opener, charged into the league lead by upsetting Dartmouth, ther fell back with a loss to a mediocre crew from Princeton. Then came the back-breaker with Harvard still clinging to its hopes of tying for the league title in the fourth quarter of The Game at New Haven, when Yale punter Mike Sullivan buried the ball in his gut on fourth-and-20 and sprinted 65 yards for a game-icing touchdown.

Juggling morning exams at the Holyoke, Mass. Holiday Inn, with afternoon NCAA playoff baseball games, the Crimson diamond squad sat through an eight-hour rain delay (a whole semester's study time for "Boats") before losing a pair of shutouts to eliminate themselves from the tourney.

There were some good spots, of course. The basketball team beat league champ Penn, but don't bother looking up the hoop squad's record. It'll only make you cry. Or laugh--you see, it was a funny kind of year in sports...