Grid Season Ends on Disappointing Note

There was once a time that if a Harvard football team won three games and tied one, its season would be considered a success--especially if one of the victories was over Princeton. But this year's Crimson team, its brief flashes of brilliance against UMass, Columbia, and Princeton notwithstanding, closed the season Saturday on a very disappointing note.

The loss to Yale was especially bitter to Lloyd Jordan and his squad because no matter how loud angry fans might have yelled after losses to Cornell, Dartmouth, and Brown, and the disgraceful tie to Bucknell, victories over Princeton and Yale would have made the season a successful one.

This year there were more optimists in the Crimson camp than in any other recent year. Their logic was completely understandable--with victories over good Princeton and Yale teams and a tie against a strong Brown eleven in November last year there was no reason to suppose that a squad composed of the same backs and a strong line led by All-American candidate Bill Meigs would not win the Ivy League title. The experts all picked Yale and Cornell, but the Harvard man winked when the same experts said the Crimson was the "dark horse" of the league.

Dying Alumnus' Hops

And on the first Saturday in October, it looked like the magic of Lloyd Jordan's unspecticular single-wing attack would be powerful enough to defeat almost anyone in the League. A mediocre UMass team which had miraculously beaten the Crimson 13 to 7 in 1954, was slaughtered, 60 to 6, by a squad that brought rays of hope to the dying alumnus who thought he had seen the last championship Harvard team.

The next Saturday a Cornell squad that had lost to Colgate the week before was coming to Cambridge, and the Crimson was favored. It was thought that the Harvard line could stop some speedy Big Red backs. But in the rain and muck of Soldiers Field Bill DeGraaf and Dick Jackson ran wild over the varsity.

That was a sobering week for undergraduate enthusiasts, but on an even wetter Saturday the Crimson front wall pushed Columbia all over Baker's Field, and the score was 21-7 Harvard. But then the luck of Jordan ran out. Dartmouth upset the varsity 14-9, and on a beautiful Saturday in late October a very poor Bucknell eleven scored three times in the third period, was robbed of two downs by an absent-minded referee, and tied the varsity, 26-26.

On the first Saturday in November, the rains came, and the Crimson line stood up to the Tigers, and the final score was Harvard 7-6. The old November spirit had returned, and the jubilant Crimson fan looked forward to the Yale game with a sly grin. It looked like '54 over again. Brown was up for its game and beat Harvard, 14-6, but that didn't matter much. For it was Yale next, but it was also Yale last. If the Crimson had beaten the Elis, the season would still have been a season of fond remembrance, the fair 4-3-1 record to the contrary.

The Crimson seemed to play two separate schedules this year--one against UMass, Princeton, Yale--and a secondary one. Against the first schedule the team was way up, and always hustled. Against the other teams it seemed able only to go through the motions. The philosophy of the season seemed to be revenge UMass, and win the Big Three. But this in itself does not lead to a successful season, and next year, when the team is in the official Ivy League it will have to realize that a win over Dartmouth will count as much as one over Yale--no matter how unbelievable this may sound