TAKE THE KENNELLY: Football Officially Puts Past in Past

What happened last year, happened last year.

That’s the party line, at least, and the Harvard coaches and players will say that despite any lingering memories of last year’s humiliation by the Lions, this was just another Ivy game to win or lose. Going in with a desire for revenge just clouds the fundamental goal of getting one of the 10 wins that have become necessary to win the Ivy title.

But judging from the scoreboard and the final stats, this sure looked like an exorcism of last year’s 16-13 horror show.

The memories of that game are still painful to recall. Then, Harvard was reeling from an upset loss to Dartmouth that derailed its quest for an undefeated season. Still ranked No. 23, the Crimson could preserve its Ivy title hopes if it remained undefeated the rest of the way.

But quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick had re-injured his broken hand during the loss to the Big Green and, stuck on the sideline, could only watch in dismay as the Crimson offense disintegrated. Injuries took out wide receivers Rodney Byrnes and James Harvey in the first quarter and left backup QB Garret Schires with a threadbare receiving corps. Once the Lions realized the sorry state of the Harvard passing game, all they had to do was shut down Clifton Dawson and wait for an inevitable Crimson mistake.

They got two, when Lions cornerback Prosper Nwokocha intercepted Schires twice in the game’s final two minutes to send Harvard home in dazed defeat.

The numbers were brutal: 88 yards passing against the worst defense in the league. Two-for-16 on third-down conversions. 262 yards of total offense by a Crimson squad that was averaging over 500 yards per game coming in.

Those are numbers and plays worth forgetting. Saturday, Harvard did Columbia one better by giving back twice as good as it got.

This time around, the Crimson passed its scoring output of the previous year before the end of the first quarter. Before 16 minutes of the game had elapsed, the Lions were in a 21-0 hole. By the end of the third quarter, those ghastly numbers from a year ago were being superseded by more pleasing ones like 38 (total points for Harvard), 0 (total points for Columbia) and 12:32 (the Crimson’s advantage in time of possession).

Even when Nwokocha intercepted an errant Fitzpatrick pass late in the second quarter, there was no thrill of fear or flashback to last year’s debacle. Because at that point, the half was winding to a close, odds were good that the steadfast Crimson defense would stall the Lions in their tracks and, oh yeah, Harvard was up by three touchdowns.

While the fans might have been rejoicing over the change in fortune, the players kept it cool. If you want to remain focused, you can’t even think about the close call the week before, much less the year before. All that’s worth thinking about are the light blue jerseys currently on the field, not the haunting phantoms of a year ago.

These teams play each other so often—every November, plus this year a preseason scrimmage—that it’s sometimes hard to keep the wins and losses from blurring together. Teams know each other so well that in this league, this deep in the season, you always have to be prepared for the Columbias and Dartmouths to upset the Harvards and Penns. It’s easier to think of a loss as just a loss, with no adjectives like “embarrassing,” “demoralizing,” or “disgraceful” to further add to the agony.

Harvard coach Tim Murphy said his team just takes it day by day. They have to say that. So for all intents and purposes, Saturday’s game against Columbia was a win in a vacuum.

He also said, “We’re a completely different football team than a year ago.”

If you’re heading into the most important game of the season—and the biggest game of many of the Harvard players’ careers—it’s going to help to know that whatever happened last year has been thoroughly purged from the system.

Heading into the title bout in Philadelphia this week, it’s obvious where the momentum lies. Penn barely escaped falling to a lesser opponent for the second straight week, while the Crimson made it abundantly clear that what happened last year, was last year.

You might not want to call it revenge. But it sure felt good.

—Staff writer Lisa J. Kennelly can be reached at kennell@fas.harvard.edu.