Gridders Must Tame Tigers to Stay in Ivy Race

This is it.

Five Saturdays remain in this Ivy football season, but if Harvard doesn't best Princeton at the Stadium today, Crimson fans can pack it in.

Sure, they can get excited next month in New Haven for a day. But no team has ever won a league championship with fewer than five wins, and if Harvard's 1-1-1 gridders lose again in the Ivies, it's all over.

Between Harvard's 1975 Ivy title and last year, the Crimson struggled through an era of several four-win seasons. Four times between titles the Crimson finished 4-3 or 4-2-1--good enough for a solid middle-of-the-pack finish.

Having tied an inferior Cornell team and collapsed before the charge of a fired-up (as always against Harvard) Dartmouth, squad, the Crimson is on the verge of slipping back down that path again.

Harvard is favored this afternoon, as in all its league games so far. But the Tigers, who looked before the season like the Ivies' worst, have lately showed the staff it takes to bump off a contender like the Crimson.

After an opening-day loss to Dartmouth, according to form, Princeton reeled off three straight wins before a 37-29 loss to a tough Navy team last weekend. At halftime of their second game of the season, having scored three points in six quarters and trailing Bucknell, 28-0, the two standouts of the Tigers' offense suddenly came to life. Sophomore quarterback Doug Botler and senior tailback Ralph Ferraro led Princeton to a 46-point rally; the New Jerseyans have scored 91 points in their last three games.

Butler, rated fifth among BCAC Division I-AA signal-callers, has the best pass-completion percentage of any Ivy QB, .622 in league games. Last week against Navy he set an NCAA record (for all divisions) for the most passes in a game (55) with no interceptions.

Injuries Plague Crimson

His backfield partner, Ferraro, has averaged 134.3 yards per game in the league, easily the best Ivy mark; he's third in the same category in ECAC I-AA.

As if that weren't enough to worry about, the Crimson has yet to get over the wave of injuries that preceded the Dartmouth game. QB Brian White is still recovering from removal of a blood clot in his throwing arm; senior Chuck Colombo, will start again. With Robert Santiago questionable and Paul Sharon out of commission, Bill Saleeby may start at fullback. Defensive lineman Barry Ford will probably miss his fourth game, and linebacker Andy Nolan is possibly out for the season.