The Football Notebook

The Ivy League played its only non-league weekend of the season last Saturday.

Final Score: Non-Ivy Division 1-AA schools 227, Ivy League schools 120.

Eight times the Ivy League faced non-league opponents. Six times it lost. In the two wins (Penn 38, Bucknell 35; Cornell 17, Colgate 14), the margin of victory was only a field goal.

If Holy Cross didn't score on the final play of the game against Princeton, maybe a 3-5 record against non-Ivy teams last weekend would have been respectable.

Then again...maybe not.

The only way the Ivy League will ever earn respect among Division 1-AA schools is by winning its non-Ivy games.

Scores such as Connecticut 41, Yale O won't help.

Pollin' Along: This week's Lambert Trophy Division 1-AA Top 10 poll is out, and UPenn (after defeating Dartmouth and Bucknell) is the fifth-best team in the East.

UMass, after defeating Harvard, 45-28, last Saturday at The Stadium, is tied with Holy Cross--the Crimson's next opponent--for the number seven slot.

Who Cares?: Minuteman quarterback Dave Palazzi, who threw three touchdowns against the Crimson, takes a rather lackadaisical approach when it comes to learning about an opponent's offense.

"I just go out there and do my job," Palazzi said. "I could care less about what the other offense is like."

Okay, Dave.

Gimme That: Harvard tight end Dan Gajewski knows how to make a catch even when he doesn't make it.

With 4:25 left to play in the third quarter and Harvard down, 24-14, Harvard quarterback Tom Yohe was looking for Gajewski in the end zone. UMass linebacker Drew Comeau had different ideas.

Comeau looked like he picked off Yohe's pass, but Gajewski snatched it away from Comeau, turning an interception into a touchdown.

Offensive Machines: Led by Yohe's 312 yards in the air, the Crimson racked 512 yards of total offense against the Minutemen. The most yards Harvard has ever piled up in one game is 550, set in 1977 against the Qaukers.

Yohe now has 3 233 career yards in 19 games as the Crimson's quarterback.

Tony Hinz, who ran for 105 yards and led all Crimson receivers with 157 against UMass, collected his career high in total offensive yards.

Holy, Holy Facts: Gordie Lockbaum is not around anymore, and the Holy Cross Crusaders are not dominating Divsion 1-AA football anymore, either.

For the first time since 1985, the Crusaders lost two consecutive games this year. Princeton almost handed Holy Cross its third straight loss last weekend.

One more inauspicious fact: quarterback Jeff Wiley has thrown nine interceptions in the Crusaders's first four games.

Where's Mickey Mouse? It felt like the Super Bowl last Saturday at The Stadium when the UMass marching band took the field at halftime.

This wasn't a band, it was a Walt Disney "Up With College Football" extravaganza. UMass even brought xylophones.

By the way, 7500 scpectators attended last Saturday's game. Five thousand were the UMass band.