FOOTBALL 06: Moving Forward

The record has stood for 35 years.

Despite three tests in the last 15 years, no one has ever come within 50 yards of Cornell legend Ed Marinaro’s all-time Ivy career rushing record of 4,715.

This year a fourth player will make a run at the top of the list.

Senior tailback Clifton Dawson’s numbers are projected not only to approach, but to surpass Marinaro’s.

The back entered the 2006 campaign with 3,628 career yards, needing just 1,087 to break the 1971 record. With 170 yards in the team’s opener against Holy Cross, he now sits a mere 917 yards away from the record.

Dawson has already posted three 1000-plus-yard seasons, and another one is not out of reach.

He is also on pace to break both the league rushing and overall touchdown records.

Dawson currently stands at 47 total endzone visits, seven short of the record set by Brown’s Nick Hartigan last year. Hartigan’s record of 52 rushing touchdowns is a bit further away, with Dawson sitting at 43 after the season’s first week.

But the 5’10, 200 pound senior says records are the last thing on his mind.

“I’m not thinking about it at all,” Dawson said. “I figure that my first priority is to help this team be successful, to win every game. I think if we are successful, the record and individual accolades will come.”

Winning has been his goal since even before his career in a Crimson uniform began.

When visiting during his pre-freshman weekend his senior year of high school, Dawson told his host that if he came to Harvard the team would never lose a game.

Although that promise has not rung entirely true, Dawson was a major player in an undefeated year and Ivy League championship in just his sophomore season.

And he’s hungry for another perfect year.

The Crimson was projected to finish first in the Ivy league before the suspension of quarterback Liam O’Hagan and the dismissal of wide receiver Keegan Toci shook the offense up, and Dawson believes the squad can still play at that level.

But this will take more than putting up another 1000-yard season: this time he must pull his team out of its slump.

“We lost a lot of leadership last year,” Dawson said. “For us to be successful as an offense and a team, people are going to have to emerge as leaders. That’s what I hope to do, especially with my play on the field. I hope to set an example with how I play.”

This has been true in the past.

Dawson is a three-time First-Team All-Ivy and All-New England selection and holds every single-season and career rushing record the Crimson keep. This year The Sports Network has named him first-team preseason All-America.

All this is the culmination of three years of hard work and dedication.

“I can look back to my previous three seasons, I can notice the difference from when I was a skinny freshman, not exactly knowing what I was doing out there and running around scoring touchdowns, to being confident in the offense, knowing my playbook, being more of a complete back,” Dawson said.

It’s also three years of being a go-to playmaker.

Despite playing in a pass-first offense, last year Dawson averaged 25.8 carries a game; he finished with 1614 all-purpose yards, more than double the total of senior Neil Sherlock, who finished second in the category before switching to defense this season.

“I don’t know if we know his limit,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “I think that we sometimes get too comfortable just assuming that he’s going to get his 120 or 130 yards rushing every week, that he’s going to never fumble the football, and I think it’s asking a lot to expect that a kid’s going to do that every day, every game, four years out.”

But Dawson has been up to the task, averaging 113.9 yards a game with 11 total touchdowns last season. Quarterback Liam O’Hagan scrambled for eight more touchdowns, reducing Dawson’s overall touchdown output from the year before.

And so the pressure is on for the Scarborough, Ont. native.

Having put out three impressive seasons, Dawson hopes to wow the crowds even more by improving the passing dimension of his game.

He had 34 total receptions in 2005 and made them count, averaging 9.9 yards with two touchdowns.

With work in the offseason, the back says he may continue to be an additional set of hands for whoever lines up at quarterback.

”I think this year defenses will have to cover me as a legitimate threat out of the backfield,” Dawson said. “That’s the only sort of goal I may have, is to help our team be a better balanced offense.”

Yet defenses have been covering him in the passing game for three years now, even before Dawson made receptions a goal.

When Holy Cross head coach Tom Gilmore was asked how he planned to contain Dawson, he responded that he would have to put an extra man on the field. He recalled a time when three guys on the defensive line got through to Dawson, but he broke each tackle and ran for 75 yards on the play.

Those types of plays have led many to believe he has enough talent to play professionally.

Count the Canadian Football League among the believers.

Last year his hometown team, the Toronto Argonauts, drafted him No. 47 overall.

But his ultimate goal is the National Football League.

Unlike most members of the class of 2007, once this season ends Dawson will devote himself to promoting his football ability, not his economics degree.

“My future isn’t open ended at all,” Dawson said. “Come November when people are interviewing for Wall Street jobs, I’ll be working toward playing in the NFL. It’s going to be sole preparation for continuing to play football professionally.”

Dawson faces an uphill battle in that job search. Of the 27 former Ivy players who were on NFL camp rosters, just 12 made the final 53-man, including three ex-Crimson players, including Dawson’s former teammate, Ryan Fitzpatrick ‘05.

As the numbers show, solid statistics and work in the immediate offseason may not be enough to take Dawson to the next level of play. At least not according to former Crimson and current Seattle Seahawks linebacker Isaiah Kacyvenski.

“Being from the Ivy League and being from Harvard, the numbers come into play a lot as far as your forty time, your bench, your shuttle,” Kacyvenski told the Crimson last spring. “When they check you have to make sure you’re ready for all that stuff. It’s really hard to get a shot in the NFL, and coming from the Ivy League if you’re not putting up the numbers the scouts want to see, it turns off a lot scouts.”

Given that Dawson is on the smaller side for an NFL back, he will have to spend both this fall and the offseason proving he has the mental and physical toughness to succeed.

—Staff writer Madeleine I. Shapiro can be reached at mshapiro@fas.harvard.edu.