TO SAY THE LEIST: Title Race Comes Down to Three

Much of Ivy League football this year has been about unpredictability. With no stacked lineups or breakout superstars, almost any matchup could be anybody’s game. Brown quarterback Kyle Newhall-Caballero outdueling Patriot League god Dominic Randolph? Columbia holding Princeton scoreless in a 38-0 blowout? Yale having the league’s best scoring defense—and a sub-.500 conference record?

At this point, nothing in Ancient Eight football should surprise me. But on Saturday, something did.

The one exception to this league of unpredictability has been Dartmouth. Before Saturday, the Big Green had lost 17 games in a row. Last season, Dartmouth wasn’t within a touchdown of winning any of its games.

Columbia rolled into Hanover on Saturday looking to rebound from a tough loss at the hands of league frontrunner Penn. And instead of sending the Big Green tumbling to its 18th-straight loss, something went horribly wrong.

Dartmouth scored first. It opened up a 14-0 lead at halftime. And the Big Green won the game, 28-6.

Safe to say, even with a win under its belt, Dartmouth won’t be challenging anybody for the Ivy crown. But it’s also safe to say that upstart Columbia shouldn’t be included in any more discussions of the Ancient Eight’s upper echelon.

With just four games remaining to decide this year’s Ivy champion, the field has been narrowed to a three-horse race. It’s the only teams with a winning league record—undefeated Harvard and Penn and 2-1 Brown—who can still make a run at the crown.

The Bears’ one Ivy loss came under the lights at Harvard Stadium, a 24-22 decision in which Brown was throwing for the winning touchdown in the final three plays.

Since then, Newhall has emerged as the best quarterback in the league, completing 65 percent of his passes for 13 touchdowns and an average of 290 yards a game—though he does lead the league in interceptions (10) as well.

Of course, it helps that Newhall has the best receiver in the Ivy League to throw to. Senior Buddy Farnham hauled in touchdown passes of 48 and 56 yards in a win at Cornell on Saturday, padding his Ivy Player of the Year resume.

Brown, like the Crimson, gets three mediocre teams—Yale, Columbia and still-dismal Dartmouth—in its final four games. But its biggest test will come next weekend, when Brown welcomes Penn to Providence.

Among the top trio, the Quakers have the meat of their schedule still to play. The comeback win over the Lions has boosted Penn’s credibility after it beat Dartmouth by only six points in the league opener.

But the Quakers must go on the road to face Harvard and the Bears—no easy task.

Penn’s defense is outstanding, and that was on full display Saturday in a 9-0 win at Yale, where the only touchdown was a first-quarter interception return.

Because of their defensive prowess, the Quakers present an interesting matchup for the offensively-minded Crimson and Brown teams.

Penn leads the league in both rush and pass defense, but it will be going head to head with the Ancient Eight’s best rush (Harvard) and pass (Brown) offenses.

With a stalemate on one side of the field, what these games will come down to is how well the Crimson and Bears can stifle the Quaker offense. Penn’s got the worst passing attack in the Ivies, averaging under 130 yards a game. But it’s second behind Harvard in rushing offense, and the team that can figure out how to stop the Quaker ground assault—led by Lyle Marsh—is the team that has a shot to take Penn down.

I think it’s the Crimson that has the best chance. The Quakers have the ability to get in Newhall’s head, while Harvard’s capable of playing a balanced game on offense, even if it’s struggled to do so thus far.

And when the Crimson’s defense is on, it’s on. The team faced off against the third-best rushing offense on Saturday and held Princeton to just 38 yards on the ground. But to take down Penn—or Dartmouth, Columbia or Yale, for that matter—Harvard has to execute.

The Crimson seems to have the clearest path to the Ivy crown at this point. All it has to do is keep winning—unlike Brown, which needs both of the unbeatens to lose—and its toughest remaining game comes at home. If it can solve the Quakers, Harvard just has to beat the stumbling Bulldogs to take the title outright.

But this is the Ivy League in 2009, and anything can happen. Just ask Columbia.

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.