DIX' SPORTING GOODS: Ivies Open After First Games

“The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.” So sayeth Napoleon Bonaparte, but the same could be said for the Ivy League.

In the 2008 preseason media poll, Harvard and Yale each collected 124 points and eight first-place votes. While Penn tallied the last first place vote, its 85 points was only good enough for fourth. Brown, who last won the Ivy title in 2005, finished third with 99 points. Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Columbia rounded out the list with distant 58, 54, 47, and 21 points, respectively.

But with this past Saturday’s results, the Ivy landscape predicted in that poll has been entirely thrown into chaos.

The Crimson, which is looking to repeat last season’s championship-winning success, dropped in a heartbreaking 24-22 loss to the Bears. A late fourth-quarter drive ended with a Harvard touchdown and a flag on the play—personal foul, roughing the passer. So with the penalty yardage, the Crimson was poised on the one-and-a-half-yard line, aiming to tie the score at 24, and likely sending the game into overtime. Memories of 2005’s double-overtime showdown of the two teams were being recalled around the press box.

But with junior Ben Jenkins lining up behind senior quarterback Chris Pizzotti, Harvard tried to run it up the middle, only to be stopped short. A failed onsides kick returned the ball to Brown’s hands, and a few kneel-downs expired the clock.

“We didn’t expect to get it at the one-and-a-half-yard line for our two points,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “That wasn’t our original two-point play, our original two-point play was a three-yarder. If it was from the three, it would have been a very different play.”

So with Harvard knocked down a peg, that left the door wide open for the Bulldogs to take control of the league lead. But just moments after the final whistle blew in Providence, Yale fell, 17-14, to the Big Red in Ithaca.

With the two top dogs 0-1 in the Ivies, it looks like the Bears are now the team to beat.

That double-overtime Crimson victory two years ago kicked off Brown’s last Ivy title season, so all is not lost for Harvard, nor for Yale, nor for any team for that matter—except perhaps for Dartmouth, who gave up 367 rushing (yes, rushing) yards to first-week opponent Colgate and more recently fell 42-6 against No. 7 New Hampshire.

With the race still far from decided, Bears coach Phil Estes is still pleased to break an eight-year drought against Harvard.

“It’s one win in the Ivy League, is what it is,” Estes said. “It’s a good feeling, because it’s been eight years since we’ve done that and had this feeling.”

The Crimson travels to Easton, Penn. next week to take on Lafayette before taking on the recently Bulldog-triumphant Cornell squad. With the parity in this league, it is anyone’s game. But if Harvard wants to be repeat Ivy champs—the first since Penn in 2003, and the first Crimson squad to accomplish the feat—then it’s going to have to win every game on the rest of its schedule.

—Staff writer Dixon McPhillips can be reached at fmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.