The Best and Worst of Soldiers Field

Quack-quack.

Today is my last day as lame-duck sports editor of The Crimson. It may also be my last day as a Harvard student, depending on the mood my section leaders are in. So it is with a spirit of reckless abandon that I offer the following reflections on sports at Harvard.

The most obvious comment is that the major teams have taken a John Belushi-like bellyflop the last four years. The football team, once the Ivy title-winner, lost to Cornell and Columbia--in the same season. The soccer team, once an NCAA regional contender, now can't beat (ulp) MIT. And the hockey team, once a perennial ECAC playoff qualifier, has become a not-so-very-funny joke.

But there have been some high points, too; what follows is a list of the ten best and ten worst Harvard sporting events I've witnessed. It does not, however, include games I missed or was inebriated at--the most notable omission being the '77 Beanpot victory.

THE WORST:

10. October 1978. Twenty-eight seconds to go, ball on the Princeton five, the stage set for Harvard to win at Palmer Stadium and stay in the Ivy football race. Larry Brown turns the wrong way, the ball bounces off Ralph Polillio's knee, Princeton recovers. And the eating club parties were worse than the game.

9. February 1978. My article in The Crimson calls the Harvard-Princeton showdown for the national squash title "a dead tossup." Princeton wins, 8-1.

8. October 1977. Halloween in Providence. Harvard tails Brown, 20-15, third-and-three on the 20, five minutes to go. The Crimson throws twice, incomplete, instead of running the ball. Suddenly we realize that the Harvard football team really isn't all that good.

7. September 1977. Quarterback Tim Davenport collapses under a pile of Columbia Lions in the Baker Field endzone, on a muggy, hot day in Devil's Elbow. Although Davenport finishes the game, doctors diagnose a broken neck vertebra two days later, putting the quarterback out for the rest of the season.

6. May 1978. This one's weird. The Harvard baseball team--taking exams at the Holyoke Holiday Inn because Harvard's screwy and won't give make-ups, except to hundreds of people who fake being sick--lose two straight at the NCAA regional playoffs. Delaware wins the first game, beating All-American Larry Brown (Pitching with balls that are Taiwan Little League rejects), 1-0 on an unearned run--but only after the game is called after an eight-hour rain delay.

5. April 1977. Leading 4-3 against Yale at Palmer Dixon, the men's tennis team drops out of the Eastern League tennis race by losing the final two doubles matches on tiebreakers.

4. September 1978. Harvard football loses to Columbia on a fake two-point conversion by the Lions, and some ridiculous razzle-dazzle plays by the Crimson. Columbia. Really.

3. November 1978. One of the best Harvard cross-country teams in memory loses the Heptagonals on an unseasonably warm day in uptown Manhattan when Thad McNulty--the potential fifth Harvard finisher--collapses from exhaustion 100 yards from the finish.

2. March 1978. Thirteen thousand-plus chant "Harvard Sucks" at the Beanpot finals, ugly fights prevail at center ice, and B.U. wins, 7-1.

1. November 1977. Harvard trails Yale 10-7, with 10 minutes to go, and the Crimson's All-Everything end Bob Baggott sacks Yale's QB Bob Rizzo on third down at his 35. Eli Mike Sullivan fools everybody--including Carm Cozza and, possibly, himself--by running around end for a touchdown. Yale goes on to win, 24-7.

AND NOW FOR THE BEST:

10. February 1978. While most of the Harvard racquetmen are busy impersonating the Dudley House intramural team, Mike DeSaulniers humiliates Princeton's defending national champ, Tom Page, 15-6, 15-12, 15-5. All Page can say afterward is, "Where's the nearest place to find a cold beer?"

9. February 1978. With 27 inches of snow coming down outside, Gene Purdy gives Harvard a thrilling 4-3 overtime win over Northeastern in the opening round of the Beanpot by rushing the length of the ice, swooping behind the net, and stuffing it in a la Bobby Clarke.

8. September 1978. Senior halfback Wayne Moore, banished to the bench for two years, breaks four tackles and accelerates like a cruise missile on an end sweep against Columbia that goes for a 73-yd. TD. (A broken ankle the next week ends Moore's season.)

7. February 1978. The only good memory to come out of the IAB: Harvard beats Penn by six in basketball. Fifteen hundred people collectively go bananas.

6. February 1976. With Harvard's then-awesome indoor track team threatening to lose the Big Three meet at Jadwin Gym, freshman Pete Fitzsimmons explodes at the end of the two-mile to win in a record 8:58. The team explodes and goes on a romp.

5. October 1975. Sophomore third-string QB Tim Davenport comes in against Princeton with 12 minutes to go on an 80-degree day at the Stadium, and pulls off a near miracle--putting three touchdowns on the board before fumbling on his own 20 as Harvard loses, 24-21.

4. May 1976. Harvard beats Princeton in tennis, 5-4 (comparable to Northwestern beating Ohio State in football) to win the league title in legendary coach Jack Barnaby's last year.

3. November 1978. Harvard loses to Yale, 35-28, but it's the most exciting game you'd ever want to see. Even the Spagnola-to-Krystyniak flea-flicker is a beauty. Larry Brown makes a gracious exit.

2. November 1975. Harvard wins its first undisputed Ivy football title when quarterback Jim Kubacki hits Bob McDermott on a fourth-and-12, and Mike Lynch kicks a wobbly duck of a field goal through the posts with seconds remaining.

1. October 1975. In a play immortalized across the nation's sports pages by a UPI photographer, Harvard cornerback Billy Emper makes one of the single greatest plays ever in Harvard sports. With Dartmouth threatening to overturn the Crimson, Emper comes all the way across the field, leaps like a cross between Doctor J and an Acapulco cliff diver, and ticks away what seems like a certain long-bomb TD pass with his fingertip.

Any disagreements, just write my successor--c/o The Sports Cube, 14 Plympton St.