Lights Out for Brown

John Rosenberg '67 returned to Harvard Saturday morning, but Brown's first year football coach wasn't prepared for the greeting he got.

Arriving at the Stadium, the Newton native and former Crimson gridder found a power outage in progress.

And that included the power not only for the scoreboard but also for the headphones that link both teams' coaches on the sidelines to their counterparts in the press box.

It also, unfortunately for Rosenberg, appeared to include the Brown defense which didn't have enough power to stop the Crimson offense in the early going--and the coach later linked the two.

"It there was a disadvantage because of the power shortage, it was probably to us because of my in experience," a distraught Rosenberg said after the Crimson tamed his Bruins for the fifth year in a row, 24.10.

"I've never coached a game without headphones never been without headphones even as an assistant," he explained.

Without the all important data coming from up above and out of touch with his assistants, the rookie's hands were tied. And even when the electricity came back up during halftime, only one phone was in working order.

"In fairness, what happens in a situation like this is that both teams operate the same way." Rosenberg said, adding that the hosts used only one set of headphones in the second half. "It was not an unfair advantage."

Harvard Coach Joe Restic took a slightly different view of the first-half communications breakdown "May be that was better," he grinned, pointing out. "We had 14 points [to Brown's zero]

"I've coached in log, in rain with headsets, without headsets." Restic said.

"In the Ivy League, you have to be ready to do anything and everything at any time and you better be ready to do that," said the Crimson's mentor, now in his 14th year in Cambridge.

"That wasn't a big problem, to tell you the truth," said an elated defensive tackle Barry Ford. "They didn't do anything we didn't anticipate."

Left pretty much to their own devices, the folks on the field used their judgement about how things were going. "We exercised some independence." Ford said.

But that wasn't the biggest thing on his mind Brown's power failure also proved to be the failure of the Bruins' Ivy League title hopes, and left Harvard as one of only two 5-0 league teams.

The other, of course, is Penn, and the Quakers just happen to be hosting the Crimson next weekend.

"We've never gone to Philadelphia like this." Ford pointed out

Even the disappointed Rosenberg is anticipating a good game. "Penn has more internal quickness, and Harvard has more perimeter quickness," he analyzed.

The more concise Restic was also more concerned about his injured players than the title race. "I'm just pleased to find ourselves in this position...Everybody talked about it and here it is.

"I just hope we're healthy for it."

And Restic just hopes his squad can keep the power on for one more week-on and off the field.