 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Company at the Top
Created: 8/8/2005 9:58:49 AM
|
As far as Harvard head coach Tim Murphy is concerned, the Ivy League football trophy no longer belongs to the Crimson.
The shining reminder of Harvard’s undefeated 2004 season will be unveiled one last time before preseason camp begins. After that, Murphy said during the annual Ivy League Football Media Day, it leaves the trophy case for the season.
“I don’t believe in defending a trophy,” Murphy said, sitting at a table during Media Day in New Haven, Conn. “We’re out there chasing it like everybody else. I told our players: The minute we start preseason I’m taking the trophy out of the trophy case because it no longer belongs to us. That belongs to the 2004 team, and if the 2005 team wants it they have to go out and get it.”
If the media prove correct, however, there is a strong chance the 2005 Crimson could be hoisting the trophy once again. But to do so Harvard will have to topple a familiar rival: the Pennsylvania Quakers.
In the preseason media poll unveiled Aug. 8, the Quakers edged the Crimson by a single point. They accumulated 120 points in a vote by 16 media members representative of each of the eight Ivy League schools. Harvard finished with 119 points, though each school garnered eight first-place votes.
Few were surprised by the results. The two schools have finished 1-2 in the League in each of the last four seasons, and since 1997 Penn has won four League crowns and Harvard has won three. The only interruption came in 1999, when Yale and Brown shared the title.
“I think there’s Penn and Harvard and then there’s the rest of us,” said second-year Cornell coach Jim Knowles, whose Big Red improved from 0-7 in the League in 2003 to 4-3 last season. “I think the whole League is going to be pretty competitive, but until someone else comes along people are going to pick Penn and Harvard because they’ve had so much success.”
Last season Harvard finished 10-0 overall, 7-0 in the Ivy. Penn, in what head coach Al Bagnoli referred to as a rebuilding year, went 8-2 and 6-1.
The Quakers, who return the vast majority of their skill players and the fiercest linebacking unit in the League, do have recent history on their side. The last time Penn went two consecutive years without winning the Ivy League crown was 1996-97.
“We were a young team last season,” said Bagnoli, who had to replace seven first-team All-Ivy performers in 2004. “I think we’re in better shape this season.”
Bagnoli was quick to add, however, that he hardly expects to cruise to another title.
“Harvard is going to be very tough. They return a number of outstanding players, and Brown probably returns more lettermen than anyone,” Bagnoli said. “I think last year we all escaped with some very narrow victories. You have to be a little bit lucky to dodge a few of those bullets. It’s a competitive League.”
That much is reflected in the remainder of the preseason poll. At No. 2, Harvard returns preseason All-America running back Clifton Dawson and a number of stalwarts from the League’s second-ranked defense — behind Penn — but lost 2004 Ivy League Player of the Year Ryan Fitzpatrick, a quarterback drafted by the St. Louis Rams.
Behind the Crimson is Brown, which came closest to defeating Harvard in 2004, falling 35-34. The Bears (6-4, overall, 3-4 Ivy in 2004) collected 91 points in the preseason poll and boast all-Ivy running back Nick Hartigan, who is 500 yards away from setting the school record for rushing yards.
The rising parity in the League is best evidenced in the competition for the fourth spot. Yale (66 points) got the nod, edging out Cornell (63) and Princeton (57). The Big Red went 4-6 overall last season, 4-3 in the League, while the Bulldogs and Tigers finished with identical marks of 5-5 overall, 3-4 in the League.
“There is such balance that we feel we have the ability to go up and line up against anybody in the League,” said Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens, whose team was picked seventh in the preseason poll with 36 points. “Obviously there is Penn and Harvard at the top, but the differential between the top teams and the teams at the bottom is not as great as a lot of places I’ve been.”
Teevens represents the League’s only turnover at head coach. The former Steve Spurrier assistant at Florida led Dartmouth to a League crown as a player in 1978 and as a coach in both 1990 and 1991 before leaving for head jobs at Tulane and, from 2002-04, for three years at Stanford. He will try to turn around a Big Green squad that went 1-9 (1-6 Ivy) in 2004.
Third-year head coach Bob Shoop faces a similar task at Columbia, which was tabbed eighth in the preseason poll with 24 points. But the Lions (1-9, 1-6 in 2004) lost four games by a touchdown or less last season, and Murphy said he wouldn’t be surprised if one day soon they claimed the trophy he’s about to lock in a closet.
“My general sense is that the next couple of years in the Ivy League is going to be more wide open, with more parity than there’s been the last eight years,” Murphy said. “In the last few years it’s been largely Harvard and Penn, but in the next few years I think you’ll see a lot of other teams adding their names to that trophy.”
--E.J Crawford
|
|
Related Schools: No Associated School
|
|
Related Sports: Football
|
|
*This Article has been archived.*
|
Click here for a printer friendly version
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
 |
|
|
