AROUND THE IVIES: Harvard the Heavy Favorite vs. Lions

Harvard cheerleaders, I wrote you a song:

You better work out,

You might as well cry,

Get ready for a rout

I’m telling you why

Col-um-bi-a is coming to town!

Yes, prepare yourselves my pom-pom bearing friends—tomorrow Harvard gets its turn to experience every Ivy football team’s favorite week of the season. It plans to celebrate by scoring many, many points, which in turn means that you will be doing many, many pushups.

Columbia football hasn’t had a winning season since 1996, when one in ten Americans had internet access, the Macarena was a No. 1 hit, and Anthony Davis was three years old. It gets worse when you consider the team's history against Harvard. The Crimson is 41 games over .500 all-time against the Lions and has won the last eight meetings by an average of three touchdowns. So to call Columbia a doormat would be an insult to front porches, to call it a bottom-dweller would be disrespectful to deep-sea fishermen everywhere. Instead, let’s put it this way: the Lions are to Ivy League football what “Star Wars VII” will be to George Lucas’ career—something that in the future we’re all going to wish we had never witnessed.

Granted, Columbia is coming off a rare victory after they barely inched by fellow trainwreck Yale, despite the fact that the Bulldogs were forced to start a running back (Tyler Varga) and spell him with a wide receiver (Henry Furman) under center because its top three quarterbacks were hurt. And the game STILL came down to the last minute, largely thanks to the Lions allowing Varga to collect 220 yards on the ground. But a win’s a win, right?

Here’s what Columbia first-year coach Pete Mangurian—who looks about as qualified for his job as E was when he became Vince’s manager on Entourage—had to say about Varga following the game:

“Man, is he good. He’s a good football player. I’ve seen a few good football players, and he’s a good one.”

Did everyone get his central thesis there?

A few things, Coach: It’s not so much that Varga’s good—he can’t be that special, considering he couldn’t even win the starting halfback job over an athlete named Mordecai—but rather that your team is just bad. As a general word of advice, when a team’s quarterback is actually a running back, there’s a pretty good chance he’s going to be running the ball. You probably should’ve realized this after Yale called runs on 11 of its first 13 plays, and maybe even started to sense a trend there. Because in case you were unaware, there are things you can do to prepare for the run—stacking the box, for example—so that a team that LITERALLY CANNOT THROW THE BALL is not able to pick up 257 yards on the ground. But that’s just a suggestion. Of course, it’s very possible that you did try such a strategy but your team did not execute, which would not be surprising at all, considering the fact that on a roster of 93 players, you’ve only seen “a few” good ones.

But it’s not just you, Coach; many of your predecessors have found it as difficult to win at Columbia as it is for Nicholas Cage to turn down a role in an action movie. The Lions are 27-80 over the past decade, and the program’s last (and only) Ivy championship came way back in 1961—and it was a co-title, split with Harvard. Since then, everyone else has won at least three.

But here’s the question: Why? There’s simply no reason the Lions should be to Ancient Eight football what France was to the World Wars. Because guess what, Columbia? Your campus is in New York City! Recruiting for you should be as easy as 3.14159265359 (get it?), but instead your search for talent has gone about as successfully as it did on American Idol the year Taylor Hicks won.

On the whole, Columbia’s epic failure as a program makes no sense whatsoever. In the 51 years since the Lions last won an Ivy football title, Dartmouth has won 16. Dartmouth! Do you understand how difficult it must be to convince talented athletes to spend four years in Hanover, New Hampshire? I spent four hours there last weekend and was just about ready to pull an Andy Dufrense and do whatever was necessary to get myself out.

In fact, I bet LeBron wishes he had originally played in Hanover, because nobody would have ever blamed him for leaving. Had Columbus landed there, he would have just turned back. If Hanover had seceded during the Civil War, the internet would've been invented in the 1860s just so people could make memes using Lincoln’s ensuing “I ain’t even mad” face. Had Jack Shephard lived in Hanover, Lost would’ve never existed, because he would have never tried to get off the island. The city is as unappealing as sexual protection is to Antonio Cromartie. Even Joe Biden would have refused to grow up there.

Are you getting all this? Do I need to get into the ritualized vomiting to make clear just how terrible a place Dartmouth is?

Therefore, you can’t tell me that rounding up the Big Green’s best recruits over all those years, blasting some Sinatra and saying “You can live in the greatest city in the world, or you can live in a state that can’t even beat out Iowa on the presidential calendar” wouldn’t have worked. By the way, you can use similar logic with regard to Ithaca, Princeton, and New Haven. Recruiting-wise, there is no conceivable reason why your program should have failed this badly for this long. Of course, it doesn’t help that your main campus is closer to New Jersey than it is to your football stadium, but that’s a whole other story.

Columbia, I could go on (and really, I could), but you presumably get the point—you can do better. For now, however, things are going about as well for you as Donald Trump’s presidential blackmail attempt went for him.

So, in conclusion, let me restate my core argument, in case I haven’t been 100 percent clear.

Man, are the Lions bad. They’re a bad football team. I’ve seen a few bad football teams, and they’re a bad one.

YALE AT BROWN

The Bulldogs just lost to all of the above, which tells you everything you need to know about them.

The Bears, like Yale, are more beat-up than the illusion of Tyler Durden, as their top five running backs are all injured. But having no running backs is still better than having running backs playing quarterback, right?

Pick: Brown 31, Yale 13

DARTMOUTH AT CORNELL

The Big Red pulled the upset over Princeton last weekend, reopening the Ivy race. The Jeff Mathews-Luke Tasker combination continues to be one of the best the Ancient Eight has seen as a very long time. Mathews is second in the country in passing yards per game (he had 525 last week), while Tasker is second in the nation in receiving yards per contest (he had 210 against the Tigers, while Grant “don’t forget about me” Gellatly—who ranks 13th nationally in yards per game—had 215).

Meanwhile, the Dartmouth defense did a respectable job containing the Crimson, but its offense struggled throughout most of the game and both Alex Park and Dominick Pierre aren’t fully healthy. I can’t see the Big Green going into Ithaca, where Cornell hasn’t lost this season, and outgunning the real Big Red machine.

Pick: Cornell 35, Dartmouth 20

PENN AT PRINCETON

Simply put, a huge game. Remarkably, Penn still controls its own destiny, despite being below .500, struggling all season, and (worst of all) losing to Yale.

Now, it travels to Princeton, whose fans will be pumped not only because of the importance of the contest but because of the nature of the rivalry.

The Quakers had a big win over Brown last week, but the Tigers are too good and have come too far to fall apart now. So if Penn can pull a second straight upset here, I’ll be more impressed than Ron Burgundy was when Baxter pooped in the refrigerator and ate a whole wheel of cheese.

Pick: Princeton 27, Penn 14

COLUMBIA AT HARVARD

Let’s just say Gary Johnson has a better chance of winning the election Tuesday than the Lions do of winning this game.

It’s a statistical mismatch on so many levels. As one example, the Lions have given up the seventh-most sacks per game in the country, while Harvard leads the nation in sacks per contest.

So yeah, good luck with that, Sean Brackett. I’ll tell Mt. Auburn Hospital to keep a bed on reserve.

Pick: Harvard 42, Columbia 0

—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu.