Harvard Football One Game Away From Perfection

Want to know how many times the Harvard football team has gone undefeated in the last century? Hold up one finger. Now another. There you have it.

That’s right, the Crimson has finished its season without a loss or a tie only twice in the last 100 years. In that span, Harvard earned a total of 16 Ivy League titles. But perfection is much harder to come by.

Both of those flawless campaigns came within the last 15 years. In 2001, Crimson coach Tim Murphy guided the team to a 9-0 record and his second Ancient Eight championship. Three seasons later, current Houston Texans quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05 propelled Harvard to another undefeated 10-0 mark in a record-breaking 2004 campaign.

The 2014 Crimson squad has its own rare opportunity to enter the record books. With a victory against Yale at home on Saturday, Harvard will secure an unblemished 10-0 record and its third Ivy League title in four seasons.

It certainly won’t be easy. The Crimson has defeated the Bulldogs seven straight times, but this year’s Yale squad marches into Cambridge with an 8-1 record, good for second place in the Ancient Eight. The 2014 rendition of The Game will be one of the most meaningful in recent memory—a conference championship and an undefeated season hang in the balance.

While this year’s Harvard team has marched to a sparkling 9-0 mark, the journey hasn’t been smooth at times. Sure, the Crimson rolled past Princeton, 49-7, in what was billed as the toughest game of the year. But just last Saturday, the team needed a 17-point fourth quarter to survive Penn’s upset bid and escape Philadelphia unscathed.

“[Going undefeated is] just so hard to do,” Murphy said. “If you just look at the league historically, there are just not a lot of teams that ever do it.”

MODERN PERFECTION

Indeed, the Crimson’s perfect record thus far must be understood in the context of the constant grind of the Ivy League season. With no weeks off, teams must remain locked in for 10 straight Saturdays. Bye weeks give most college programs a chance to recover from injuries or take a mental break. To succeed in the Ancient Eight, you must win a war of attrition.

The undefeated 2001 team understood that fact, as Harvard surrendered just nine turnovers en route to a perfect record. Such disciplined play allowed the Crimson to prevail in several close games, most notably a 28-26 victory at home against Princeton.

When Harvard fell into an early 14-point hole in the penultimate game against Penn—which possessed an FCS-best 11-game winning streak—the team did not panic. It rattled off four consecutive touchdowns to ultimately secure the 28-21 win.

A week later, the Crimson faced the formidable task of securing an undefeated season in a Yale Bowl filled with more than 50,000 screaming fans. Led by quarterback Neil Rose ’02-’03, who threw for four touchdowns and rushed for another, Harvard outlasted its archrival, earning a 35-23 victory.
Rose holds the all-time program record for both career passing yards and touchdown throws. A freshman in 2001, Fitzpatrick served as Rose’s backup and made two starts.

“I think with all sports teams there’s got to be a good camaraderie in the locker room,” Fitzpatrick said. “I know we had that. I had that all four years there. Especially in ’01, I happened to be the backup quarterback that was going in when the starter went down. There was always a good support system.”

Crimson fans found themselves biting their fingernails throughout the fall of 2001, as four of the team’s wins were decided by 10 points or less. But while the nerves certainly existed, so did the enthusiasm. The New York Times ran a Sports Saturday feature on the football fever sweeping Cambridge. Chemistry professors discussed the team in dining halls, then-President Lawrence H. Summers participated in practice drills, and the executive director of the Harvard Varsity Club found children at his doorstep demanding tickets to the Penn game instead of candy.

When all was said and done, Murphy’s squad had earned the program’s first perfect season since 1913.

THREE YEARS LATER...

While the 2001 Crimson pulled out close wins and kept turnovers to a minimum, the 2004 undefeated team found success through another form of consistency—namely, a high-powered offense that could always put up big numbers.

Led by captain Fitzpatrick and then-sophomore running back Clifton Dawson ’07—who would become the leading rusher in Ivy League history—Harvard scored at least 30 points in eight of its 10 games. Fitzpatrick earned the Bushnell Cup as the Ancient Eight’s most valuable player.

The 2004 team had ample talent on both sides of the ball. While its offense was busy setting school records, the stalwart Crimson defense ensured that all but three games would be decided by at least 15 points, including a 35-3 drubbing of Yale to cap off the year.

“That team was really great offensively,” Murphy said. “We were probably almost as good as we are [now] defensively, but I think we’re [presently] a more balanced team…. But the intangibles are very similar.”

In 2004, Harvard surrendered 13.4 points per game, good enough for first in the Ivy League. This season’s Crimson defense has managed to improve on that mark.

Fueled by a strong defensive line and the leadership of captain Norman Hayes in the secondary, Harvard has allowed an FCS-best 11 points per game through nine contests—roughly half the average of the second-place Ivy team.

The current Crimson may not have a Fitzpatrick-type talent running the offense. But if the 2004 and 2014 seasons show anything, it’s that strong defensive play can give teams a chance to win every game.

Another obvious lesson is that nothing comes easy. The loss column may be empty, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any close calls. For instance, in 2004, the Crimson escaped with a pair of one-point victories. Perfection cannot depend on the performance of any one individual—it takes a team effort to achieve success week in and week out.

“The consistency of the Harvard football team, especially in the past 15 years…it’s been really impressive to see the consistency [Murphy] has brought to the program,” Fitzpatrick said. “To be able to build around the program rather than certain guys I think is really impressive.”

EARLY SUCCESS

Nowadays, it’s clear that going undefeated means passing a series of difficult tests. But that wasn’t necessarily the case over a century ago.

For many college football programs, saying that a team has two undefeated seasons in the last century would account for the program’s entire existence. Not for Harvard, one of the nation’s oldest college football teams, which began recording results in 1873.

The seasons were far shorter back then. In 1875, Harvard managed to go undefeated—but with a 4-0 record and with rules far different than today’s.

The 1890 team was so superior to its competition that it’s unclear whether going undefeated was even much of an accomplishment. Harvard finished with an 11-0 record and outscored its opponents 555-12. Yes, you read that correctly.

The Crimson had a spurt of extraordinary success early in the 20th century. Harvard ran the table in both 1912 and 1913, shutting out its opponents in more than half of the games en route to a pair of 9-0 records.

Although the team’s strong play continued in 1914, a pair of ties prevented the Crimson from ending three straight seasons without a loss or draw.

According to Dick Friedman ’73, who covers the Crimson for Harvard Magazine and is writing a book on Harvard football in the early 20th century, much of the era’s dominance can be attributed to an athletic collection of 1912 sophomores known as the “group of seven.” Led by coach Percy Haughton, whom Friedman dubs a “football genius,” the Crimson earned national championships in 1910, 1912, and 1913.

“Harvard had more depth and more talent,” Friedman said. “They would just wear teams down, especially the smaller schools that came in…. [The seasons] are unfortunately forgotten, but they really were brilliant teams.”

ONE MORE SHOT AT THE PRIZE

The Crimson had to wait 88 years for another untarnished campaign, which a Murphy-led squad finally accomplished in 2001. Perfection would occur once more in 2004. A decade has passed, and the Crimson now has another opportunity to maybe, just maybe, go undefeated one more time.

The long 20th century demonstrated just how elusive sustained success can be, but the Harvard football program has hit its stride under Murphy. Sixty minutes is all that stands between the coach and his third undefeated, untied season at the helm of the Crimson.

“It’s a remarkable accomplishment,” Murphy said. “It’s something you can never take for granted because it’s so extraordinarily rare.”

No one knows exactly what to expect on Saturday. But if you’re a Harvard football player or a member of the Crimson faithful, you’ll be hoping for one thing—that at the end of the day, the result will indeed have been historic.

—Staff writer David Steinbach can be reached at david.steinbach@thecrimson.com.