WHOA, KENNELLY: For Once, Penn Game Doesn't Decide All

If you don’t care about Harvard football, Yale is the biggest game of the season.

If you do follow the Crimson, though, you know that it’s the week before that really matters.

At the beginning of this season, I circled Nov. 12 on my calendar, and not because I was taking the GREs that day.

That Saturday, the Penn Quakers come to town. While Yale provides tradition, alumni, a packed stadium, and a roaring tailgate, Penn has, in recent years, promised more—a game with title implications.

The past five Ivy champions have been either Penn or Harvard. In every year since 2001, either the Quakers or the Crimson—or both—have been undefeated in the league when the two collide the second weekend in November. Even when Harvard wasn’t contending for the title (in 2003, when the team came in on a two-game losing streak) the outcome of the matchup, a 32-24 Penn win, wasn’t decided until the final seconds.

In other words, Yale is for bragging rights, but Penn is for the championship.

It’s not going to be that way this season. The YES Network cameras will be at Harvard Stadium, but not the Ivy League trophy.

For the first time since 2000, Harvard and Penn will play each other with similarly tarnished 3-2 Ivy records. With Penn’s 30-13 loss to Princeton at Franklin Field Saturday—the Tigers’ first win over the Quakers since 1995—it’s Brown and Princeton, not Harvard and Penn, who sit alone atop the Ivy heap.

The Bears have only league whipping boys Dartmouth and Columbia ahead, virtually ensuring that Brown will end the season 6-1 in the Ivies.

Princeton faces Yale and then ends with the Big Green. It’s a more difficult lineup than the Bears’, but it’s likely that the Tigers will win out as well.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the Ivy title picture is shaking out so differently than it has in the past half-decade. Both Harvard coach Tim Murphy and his Columbia counterpart Bob Shoop said they had expected more parity this season.

But the annual Penn-Harvard battle has gathered so much steam over the years that it’s hard to accept that this time, it’s merely a footrace for second. Maybe it’s because the beginning of this season started out like its predecessors—Penn and Harvard, firmly entrenched at the top of the media poll.

Brown was the sexy underdog pick, but an early double-overtime loss at Harvard Stadium put the Bears at a disadvantage from the get-go. Another Penn-Harvard matchup, it seemed, was on tap from day one.

When the Crimson writers made our season predictions, we all picked Harvard to finish first, with Penn no lower than fourth.

I don’t think this was entirely out of loyalty to the home team, nor was it only based on the talent of the Crimson’s skill players like Clifton Dawson and Corey Mazza and the return of a veteran offensive line.

Instead, I think it’s hard for those of us who’ve followed the league in recent years even to conceive of an Ancient Eight where a team like Princeton can not only beat Harvard, but have a legitimate shot to tie for the title.

Is it only cyclical? Does every team’s day come, as both Murphy and Shoop proclaimed after the Crimson’s 55-7 shellacking of Columbia this weekend? Has the power balance of the league shifted away from the Harvard-Penn dichotomy of the last five years for good?

It will take until next season, or even the one after, to see if that’s the case. For the moment, and for the first time since 2000, Penn-Harvard will be just another game.

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