Football Owns Yale For Seventh Straight Year

They may call it The Game, but it didn’t seem like much of one on Saturday.

Harvard held a 28-0 lead at halftime. Moving the ball at will for the majority of the contest, the Crimson ended with 425 total yards of offense. And when the scoreboard read Harvard 34, Yale 7 as the clock ticked down to zero, the Crimson faithful officially made the Yale Bowl its own by storming the field.

The sight of Harvard fans celebrating with their victorious players has been a familiar one in recent years. Twelve of the last 13 matchups have gone the Crimson’s way against its archrivals, including seven straight.

This Saturday, the Yale Bowl once again belonged to Harvard.

By the start of the fourth quarter, much of the Yale student section had already left. The Crimson’s flurry of first half scoring—including four touchdowns from sophomore running back Paul Stanton on as many possessions—silenced the early shouts from Bulldogs fans.

The Harvard crowd, on the other hand, stayed in force. Admittedly, there was nowhere else they could really go. But the contrast of a boisterous mass of Crimson on one side of the stadium with a subdued, Bulldog-blue section directly opposite perfectly captured the reality: in recent years, what was once a rivalry has been anything but.

In 2012, it took until the latter stages of the fourth quarter for Harvard to seize control. But one year later, the Crimson’s dominance was made clear as soon as the two squads took the field. Before finally removing its foot from the gas pedal by turning largely to the running game, Harvard scored points on five of its first six possessions.

Indeed, the knockout blows came early. And it was Stanton who delivered a flurry of them—four, to be exact. Before the first half had ended—before the Crimson had even failed to convert a third down—the sophomore had tied the individual record in a Harvard-Yale game with four touchdowns.

Stanton got the scoring started on the Crimson’s first possession of the game. Taking a handoff to the left side, he cut straight back up the field and dashed untouched for the 29-yard score.

The very next possession with the ball on the Yale 21-yard line, Stanton received a screen pass from junior quarterback Conner Hempel and galloped up the sideline into the end zone, essentially untouched once again. Stanton’s third touchdown came on a nearly identical play; when Yale sent a blitz, the running back caught another short screen and weaved his way for an 18-yard score.

Despite putting up three touchdowns on his team’s opening three drives, Stanton was not yet satisfied. On Harvard’s next possession, he capped a 79-yard drive by diving into the end zone on second-and-goal. While entering the history books, Stanton had simultaneously transformed The Game into an early rout.

The young sophomore’s performance indicated that while history was on the Crimson’s side in the Harvard-Yale matchup, so was the present. After the game, Harvard coach Tim Murphy said that his team’s recent dominance in the annual showdown was “statistically unsustainable.” He may be right—but only statistically speaking.

Nothing else seems to indicate that Harvard’s run at the top of the Ivy League—and its taming of its biggest rivals—will end anytime soon.

It’s been repeated time and again, but still maybe not enough: last year, the Crimson graduated the All-Ivy Player of the Year at quarterback, a tight end now playing in the NFL, and one of the best running backs in program history. In addition, this year’s squad was racked with injuries to its key players all season long. Starters were leaving the field nearly every single week. When a player would finally come back, it seemed as if another would instantly go down.

With gaping holes in its offense and a rotating group of starters on both sides of the ball, the Crimson could have rolled over and settled for an average 2013 campaign. Instead, Harvard battled to a 9-1 record—one play away from an undefeated season—and earned a share of the Ivy League Championship on Saturday when first-place Princeton fell to Dartmouth.

For Harvard, when it comes down to it, it’s not the players who matter the most. It’s the system. Under Murphy’s direction, the Crimson has produced first-rate results year in and year out. Yes, Yale will improve in the coming seasons. An abundance of young talent playing under coach Tony Reno gained significant experience this year that will pay off going forward. But the past decade, the present, and the near future are all on Harvard’s side.

The theme of the week for the Crimson was to “expect the unexpected” from Yale. The Bulldogs would be entering the showdown fired up and, in all likelihood, would debut a variety of new offensive and defensive sets designed to throw their opponents off guard.

But for Harvard, it may be more apt to simply “expect the expected.” In recent years, no matter who’s on the field and no matter the setbacks along the way, the Crimson always finds its way to success. Accordingly, The Game, the rivalry, and the Yale Bowl itself all belong to Harvard.

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