The Shock Of 1979

David slaying Goliath, the Greeks at Thermoplylae, the American Revolution, the Six-Day War, the Miracle Mets, and now chalk up one more to the underdogs: The Game of 1979.

It was that big. On a clear blustery Saturday one year ago, in a place called New Haven, a Crimson team that looked like the worst in a quarter of a century took on the undefeated Elis with the top-ranked defense in the nation, the whole nation, and buried them by a score of 22-7.

Before The Game, Carmen Cozza's Elis had racked up eight victories and had already clinched the Ivy title. Their offense featured stand out quarterback John Rogan and running back Ken Hill, who paced Yale to an average of more than 23 points per game.

Harvard had to its credit a six-game losing streak which it had snapped only the week before against hapless Penn, and the incredible loss of five QBs, two to academic troubles and three to injuries.

The Las Vegas pundits set the spread at Yale by 13-and-a-half.

But when the Crimson gridders emerged from the tunnel that runs from the locker rooms into the Yale Bowl, they did so with a galvanized spirit that few would have considered even remotely possible given their record.

"All season long we knew we could do it," said team captain Mike Brown. He added that it was others who needed to be shown.

Behind first-string signal-caller Burke St. John, who had recently returned to action following a season-opener knee injury that his doctors thought might sideline him for the year, the Crimson assumed its battle stations before 72,000 spectators and did what no other team had managed against Yale.

For starters, they took the kick-off on the 26 and marched 74 yards to paydirt with fullback Jon Hollingsworth plunging the final four yds. in the face of an Eli defense that had not yielded a single point in the first quarter all season.

Tack on to that Dave Cody's extra point, and two Eli drives frustrated by a fired-up Crimson defense, hitherto considered lackluster. New Haven was wondering.

Then the gridders put together a nine-play, 70-yd. drive that culminated with St. John hitting running back Jim Callinan in the endzone. Before the half expired, the Crimson defense buckled down on an impenetrable goal line stand which started with Yale at first and goal on the four, and Peter Coppinger intercepted a wayward Rogan pass. Yale was unconscious at the half, the score 13-0.

Multiflex wizard Joe Restic's game plan was working as perhaps he only knew it could. By foregoing the services of stellar split end Rich Horner, who was on the verge of going down in the books as the second-greatest receiver in Harvard history, and instead utilizing previously unknown quantities of Callinan and Hollingsworth, Restic befuddled the Elis.

When it opened up the second half with a convincing TD drive engineered by alternate QB Dennis Dunn, Yale looked as though it might effect some "return to normalcy." But the stonewalling Crimson defense shut Yale down for the rest of the game.

Harvard tallied its other scores in the fourth quarter. A Dave Cody field goal padded the gridders' lead by three. When Rogan fumbled at mid-field, St. John maneuvered the squad downfield and appropriately sneaked in with the final score.

Coppinger snagged an Eli pass minutes later to halt Yale's last-gasp effort, and the stands--the Harvard side that is--erupted in a frenzy. Fans poured down onto the field and soon toppled the uprights as the most astonishing Harvard performance since the 29-29 "victory" of 1968 came to an end