Hartigan May Rule Records

With two weeks remaining in the season, the only real source of intrigue is whether Brown running back Nick Hartigan will be the first Ivy League player to take home the Payton Award, given to Division I-AA’s top player.

Hartigan has rushed for at least 115 yards in seven of eight games this season, and with two more 100-yard performances could eclipse the 1,500 yard mark—something only two Ivy players have done in one season. Hartigan’s 47 career rushing touchdowns are three shy of the Ivy career record set by Ed Marinaro ’71.

Brown’s final two opponents, Dartmouth and Columbia, have the 56th- and 105th-ranked rushing defenses in the nation, so there are very few records that remain safe.

With that, let’s get to this weekend’s action:

DARTMOUTH (+22) AT BROWN

There are two types of people in this world: eternal optimists and those measuring shelf space in the Brown athletic offices.

The former might want to start helping out the latter. The Bears are going to beat the Big Green, and they’re going to obliterate the Lions. The only question marks are how much Hartigan will play in the blowouts, and whether Brown will cover the enormous spread against Columbia—expect triple digits.

The only hope for the rest of the league would have been a Brown opponent with a relatively solid rushing defense. But that’s just not the case here. The Bears will likely let up off the throttle after halftime, leading to a modest 20 point win.

PENN (+5.5) AT HARVARD

Where have you gone, Ivy championship game?

For the past five years, the winner of the Penn-Harvard showdown has gone on to win the Ivy title. Unless Yale rises from the ashes against Princeton or the Big Green stuns the Bears, the Crimson-Quakers duel will likely decide third place or, at best, second.

While this is obviously a shame for both squads involved, the embarrassment felt by the YES network has to top it. All year, YES pointed to the fact that it was doing things differently. It wanted the premier Ivy contests. It added the flexible final-week game to ensure that it could broadcast a matchup that possessed some sort of significance.

YES knew that it had to lock up the league’s most well-known contest outside of Harvard-Yale. Oops. Well, better luck next year.

As for the game, Harvard has come on strong in the past couple weeks, but the two squads have played roughly equally well. The Crimson will sneak past the Quakers on a late field goal.

YALE AT PRINCETON (-7)

The Bulldogs got the benefit of the doubt early on, because the schedule was front-loaded with patsies like Dartmouth and Columbia.

Yale’s recent struggles against Brown and Penn, though, gave the Ivy audience a better view of its talents. The Bulldogs are 2-4 in their last six games and the two wins came over the Big Green and the Lions.

Princeton, meanwhile, has flown under the radar to a 4-1 mark, taking two of three road contests against the preseason Big Three (Penn, Harvard and Brown). The Tigers stand within two wins—over Yale and Dartmouth—of claiming their first Ivy title in 10 years.

The Bulldogs will be little more than a speed bump as Princeton pulls out a 14-point win.

COLUMBIA AT CORNELL (-24)

The Big Red will take one more step toward its first winning season since 1999 when it hosts the Lions at Schoellkopf Field.

With the win, Cornell will move to 5-4 with a trip to Penn as its lone remaining contest. Columbia, which will surely get shellacked for the fourth time this season, will move ever closer to becoming the worst Ivy team in 20 years.

The Big Red will beat the junior varsity Lions by at least 20. Probably more.

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