The longest hiatus in Division I college football is over: Finally, after almost 10 months, Ivy League play resumes tomorrow with a full slate of non-conference games. Last heard from, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, Harvard and Brown improved to 6-1 in the league with wins in their final regular-season games … so they shared the title and packed up their pads for the winter. The Ivies do not participate in the FCS (formerly Division I-AA) playoffs.
Granted, Ivy League football is about a century removed from its heyday. In 1909, Yale was the undisputed national champ. The 1919 season ended with Harvard beating Oregon in the Rose Bowl, 7-6. But Ivy pigskin remains in the wheelhouse of collegiate sports in the area — over 57,000 fans showed up at the Yale Bowl in 2007 for a de facto title game between Harvard and Yale — and key Ivy football graduates are hiding in plain sight in the cable TV-ticker landscape.
Penn State coach Joe Paterno, who has designs on bringing a BCS title to the Northeast for the first time, was a Brown quarterback, Class of 1950. Former Princeton QB Jason Garrett is the heir apparent to be head coach of America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys; he spends his days as offensive coordinator tutoring Tony Romo in quarterback play and Flemish painters of the Northern Renaissance. Unfortunately, he was not consulted on the following math problem:
Jerry wants to hang a video board. Shane can punt 100 feet into the air. Jerry does not want Shane’s punts to hit his video board. How high should Jerry hang his video board?
And former Crimson signal-caller Ryan Fitzpatrick is one hard hit of Trent Edwards away from joining Mark Sanchez, Tom Brady and Chad Pennington as the starting quarterbacks of the AFC East.
Fitzpatrick’s eventual successor as Harvard’s quarterback, Chris Pizzotti, directed the team to back-to-back Ivy crowns in 2007 and 2008. Despite Pizzotti’s graduation — he was the Jets’ final quarterback cut in training camp this summer — the Crimson were voted the favorite in the preseason poll to three-peat. Harvard is 41-9 the past five seasons and has at least seven wins (in a 10-game schedule) for eight years running.
Perhaps the most intriguing player in the league is not eligible to play until next year. Andrew Hatch committed to BYU, de-committed, entered Harvard in 2004, was mired as the fifth-or-so-string QB, left school to go on his Mormon mission, tore his meniscus, returned home for surgery, transferred to LSU, earned a full scholarship, started the Tigers’ first three games last year and switched back to Harvard this summer. Got all that?
Junior Collier Winters gets the nod as the starter this season. He has arguably the best receiving target in the league in 6-foot-5 senior Matt Luft. Harvard starts off with two big tests, visiting Holy Cross tomorrow and hosting Brown next week in a rare Ivy rendition of Friday night lights.
Penn, which opens against crosstown rival Villanova, ranked No. 2 in FCS, was pegged second in the Ivies’ preseason poll. Al Bagnoli, entering his 18th season running the show at Franklin Field, turns to running-threat quarterback Keiffer Garton in what is traditionally a league of dropback passers. Defensive back Chris Wynn is the headliner on the Quakers defense, ranked tops in the league in 2008.
Brown’s unsettled quarterback situation kept the defending co-champs third in the preseason poll and threatens to waste the squad’s most valuable asset — the receiver tandem of Buddy Farnham and Bobby Sewall. All-league defensive linemen David Howard and James Develin return to a unit that allowed a mere 77.1 rushing yards per game a year ago.
Yale and Princeton have the potential to play spoiler to the apparent big three. Former Jaguars assistant coach Tom Williams takes over at Yale, which loses four-year starting running back Mike McLeod and likely will give Nebraska transfer Patrick Witt the first crack at QB. Princeton’s Jordan Culbreath is the league’s returning rusher with 120 yards per game last season.
New York schools Columbia and Cornell tied for sixth in the preseason poll. Columbia, which opens tomorrow in The Bronx against Fordham, is powered by electric wideout Austin Knowlin and scrambling quarterback M.A. Olawale. The Lions went 2-5 in the league last year with home wins over Cornell and Dartmouth, but they’ll have to travel to those two opponents this go-round. Running back Randy Barbour and linebacker Chris Costello are the standouts for Cornell.
Dartmouth, the last Ivy team to three-peat (from 1990-1992, with Jay Fiedler under center the latter two years), hasn’t won a football game since Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner to become president. The Big Green were 0-10 last year with an average margin of defeat of 21.4 points. Their last win was Nov. 3, 2007, versus Cornell. The losing streak should continue today against visiting Colgate.
