Mystery at The Stadium

Saturday afternoon the majority of the 12,531 who witnessed the Harvard-Columbia football encounter must have left the game shaking their heads and saying to themselves what my father says every time he watches Masterpiece Theatre--"Huh? What?"

It was a weird game, my friends. And though "Ivy League Football" and "bizarre" have cohabited many sentences together over the years, Harvard fans have put out an A.R.B. (All Rogets Bulletin) to find an adjective for Saturday's contest.

There were the good things: more play action in the multi-flex with less illegal motion, no crew people masquerading as bad cheerleaders, a witty and less-than-tasteful halftime show by the band, and Harvard center Dave Scheper finally changing out of his green Notre Dame T-shirt.

There were the not-so-good things; the Paul Sablock option shot-put in the first quarter, five carries all day for Wayne Moore, Fred Cordova's refusal to take a touchback on his interception, and of course, justifying a loss to Columbia when you haven't had to do so for seven years.

Mostly, though, there were the strange things--the pre-game questions that couldn't be answered and the apparent folly in the way the Ivy League opens its season with intraconference games. And while the Crimson's first test of the season certainly didn't indicate how well the squad can play, it likewise shed no light on how bad Harvard may be this year.

It's no secret that the Crimson came into Saturday's game with question marks hovering over eight spots in the defense, along with an ambiguous-at-best punting situation.

There's no way you can make a judgment about the performance of the defense except that it played well enough to win. Sure it surrendered 21, but those guys were out there for almost two-thirds of the game ("That cannot be!" says the fan who believes everything he has read about Harvard's clock-munching offense.). Bob Woolway did turn in an inspiring performance at linebacker in his first start. I appreciate the way he destroys everything but leaves women and small children standing.

As for the punting game, A1 (Don't call me Fred) MacMurray never gave the Lions outrageous field position, and did manage to crank a 62-yarder in the second quarter. My personal feeling is that Harvard punting can't get anything but better after Scotty Coolidge's 10-yard boomer against Princeton last fall.

Coach Joe Restic, who hates having to defend his offense as much as the Atlanta Falcons hate to use theirs, said after the game that "This just shows how important a pre-season scrimmage is. We didn't have one, except between ourselves, and you just can't gauge your talent that way."

And now it seems that after one game the rest of us "just can't gauge" Harvard's gridiron talent. We see Larry Brown and his white shoes and we know he's a winner. We see the makings of a devastating outside running attack with Ralph Pollilio, Paul Connors and Moore. We see a dependable place kicker, an enthusiastic captain.

But that's it for now. It may take a week, a month, or the Yale game to come up with the final answers, the ultimate anlysis, but right now it's 0-1, last in the Ivies, and a lot of "Huh? What?" conversations.