KING JAMES BIBLE: Statement Game Just Falls Upon Deaf Ears

It was the type of game that forces the national audience to stand up and notice.

Harvard 41, No. 19 Northeastern 14.

The same Huskies team that went into Annapolis and pushed Division I-A Navy (5-1) to the limit before falling 28-24. The same Huskies team whose only other loss came in overtime to William and Mary, which is ranked in the top two in six different computer polls. The same Huskies team that outgunned Villanova—the squad responsible for the “1” in Penn’s 4-1 record this season—34-30 the week before.

Surely, a dominating victory over a I-AA powerhouse like Northeastern was the statement that this Crimson squad was longing to make.

“We don’t get into [statement games], we really don’t,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “Every week, if you’re not completely prepared to play, if you don’t have a great game plan, if you’re not ready to handle some adversity that comes your way, then you’re going to get beat....So, we don’t look at it that way at all.”

Well then, consider the statement retracted.

You can’t fault Coach Murphy for adopting that approach. The Crimson faces its toughest Ivy test thus far next weekend, as the squad travels to Princeton to take on the Tigers (4-1, 2-0). Any slipup in that contest would severely hinder Harvard’s chances at claiming an outright Ivy title, as the Crimson would no longer control its own destiny.

On a relative scale, the game against Northeastern was meaningless. Sure, the Huskies were a nationally ranked opponent and a regional rival, but in terms of the all-important Ivy race, the result was inconsequential.

So while the rest of the I-AA world marveled at the utter beating that Harvard unleashed upon one the best teams from the nation’s toughest conference, the Crimson packed up its pads and moved on, almost completely unwilling to accept responsibility for the national shock waves it had just sent through the nation.

The reason for Harvard’s indifference is that the incentives are all wrong. The Crimson has the talent to play with any team in I-AA right now. In fact, Harvard might be the best team in I-AA. And, none of that matters in the least, because the best the Crimson could do from day one was the Ivy Championship. A system that turns a blowout of the No. 19 team in the nation into just another game has serious flaws in my mind.

The Harvard field hockey team currently sits at 4-0 in league play. If it can claim victory in its final three conference matches, the squad will take the Ivy title and venture off to NCAA postseason play. Even if the Crimson drops out of the top spot in the Ivies, however, it still could have racked up enough strong non-conference victories to remain in contention for one of the at-large bids. (The squad has failed to defeat a ranked opponent thus far this season, making its at-large prospects dim, but in theory the point still stands.) This makes every league and non-league game crucial, as each contest can have its own unique bearing on the squad’s postseason prospects.

The Harvard football team currently sits at 2-0 in league play. If it can claim victory in its final five conference matches, the squad will take the Ivy title, hang up its cleats and call it a year. If the Crimson drops out of the top spot in the Ivies, its season becomes meaningless, except for a final game against Yale that well over half the student population would rather tailgate for than show up to. This makes every league game crucial and every non-league contest utterly worthless, since the concept of postseason play is about as foreign to Harvard as the score or number of outs is to Manny Ramirez.

Just as in 2003, when Penn finished the season as the last unbeaten standing in all of Division-I football, we seem headed for another awkward situation in which the legitimacy of the I-AA national championship is brought into question by the presence of a team which has a serious claim to the title “best team in the nation” but is prohibited from competing for it.

It’s a sickening feeling, watching the fourth championship contender in as many years (Harvard—2001, Penn—2002, 2003) wither and die under the most ill-conceived of all of the ignorant policies—and there are myriad—the Ivy Presidents have passed in relation to athletics.

But that’s Coach Murphy’s lot. He knew that when he took the Harvard job his biggest games of the year would come in the final two weeks of the season against Penn and Yale, not in the I-AA playoffs against a powerhouse like Georgia Southern.

No matter how talented a team he can build, that simple fact will never change.

So maybe it’s no surprise that Coach Murphy’s team doesn’t play statement games—it’s just not allowed to.

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu.