Elis Look for an Upset in the 100th, While Crimson Shoots for an Ivy Title

NEW HAVEN--It's said that the season begins and ends on this day, and in this year, more than most, it does.

More than the remarkable surge of the tied-for-first Harvard football team from a 1-1-1 Ivy record to its current 4-1-1 mark (5-2-2 overall), what's on most people's minds when the 100th kickoff takes place at 1 p.m. in the Yale Bowl is the Elis. And how they have suffered.

No Yale team has ever entered. The Game with a record so terrible--1-8 overall and 1-5 in the league. If the underdog Bulldogs can't pull off a shocker this afternoon, they will go down in history as the single worst Eli team ever.

But if they can do it, they'll be remembered instead for their persistence throughout their unprecedented (in New Haven) eight-game losing streak and their turnaround in the last two weeks to win a Big Three title.

At the same time, if the Crimson falters in front of 70,000 spectators in the Bowl, more than 50,000 of them screaming for an upset, no one will remember how its defense proved itself down the stretch as the best in the league, or how Greg Gizzi came off the bench at midseason to revive the Harvard offense, or how Steve Ernst and Mark Vignali, game in and game out, provided maybe the Ivies' best rushing attack, or how Jim Villanueva supplied the league's most effective kicking game.

Paper Tiger?

What people will remember if there's an upset is the strong-on-paper Crimson team that couldn't cope with a less-talented but fired-up Yale squad. And in the 100th Game, no less.

So that's why they say the season begins and ends today. So much attention has been lavished on this one football game that the rest of the season seems unimportant by comparison.

On the face of it, it's hard to see how Harvard might blow it. The Crimson defensive line has attacked opposing quarterbacks with more ferocity in each game, and the Eli offensive front has been weak all season long. Despite injuries and personnel shifts, the Harvard secondary, led by safety Mike Dixon, has held its own lately; the Bulldog passing game has been lackluster, quarterback Mike Curtin completing fewer than half his passes despite having two fine receivers, Kevin Moriarty and Roger Javens.

Punt, Pass, 'n' Kick

What the Elis hope is that the five keys to their offense--Curtin and his two top receivers, tailback Paul Andrie and fullback Jeff Bassette--will somehow click and pull together the balanced offense the Blue has come close to in several games.

Last week at Princeton, Yale put together its best ground game yet, with Bassette scoring on three touchdown runs in a 28-21 victory. That was against a Tiger defense that has allowed 12 more points per game than Harvard.

If the Eli attack doesn't come through, it will be up to a defense that has surrendered 26.8 points per game--even when you leave out the loss to national power Boston College--to stop a Harvard offense that has been on a roll, stomping on Penn last Saturday, 28-0. The only star on the Bulldog defense is middle guard John Zanieski, the team leader in sacks.

When all the pre-Game hoopla is pushed aside. Harvard fans will be thinking of their team's vastly superior talent and record. The Elis will more likely be leafing through the part of their five-dollar programs that tells of The Game in past years--of the nationally ranked, undefeated 1931 Harvard team that Yale shut out, of the 5-3 Elis squad that trampled (35-0) on a 7-1 Crimson team in 1973, and even of the 1979 Harvard team, not much different from this year's Yale squad, that came down to the Bowl with a 2-6 record and handed the Blue its first loss of the fall, 22-7.

Telepathy

The upsets of the past will be on everyone's mind this afternoon. A share of the Ivy title (with the winner of the Penn-Dartmouth game) or an outright crown (if the Green and Quakers tie) is on the line for Harvard. But more important, the Crimson hopes the 100th Game will be the climax of a successful 10-game season, and not a one-game failure of a season that overshadows the other nine-tenths.