Male Individual Performance of the Year: Treavor Scales vs. Yale

Senior running back Treavor Scales couldn’t sleep. He was normally sound asleep by 10 o’clock the night before games, but this time was different. As the hours ticked away before Scales’ final collegiate contest in The Game, all he could do was stare at the ceiling.

The night before, the Georgia native explained the importance of the game during the team’s senior speeches.

“At six seconds per play, you got about 60 plays out there,” Scales remembers telling his team. “That’s six minutes of actual playing time you’ve got left in your career. Use those six minutes to the fullest.”

Thinking about those six minutes kept Scales up until around midnight, and he was back awake by 6 a.m. on the cool November morning, raring to go. The stakes for the day were clear.

The Game would be his perfect stage. In front of 30,000 fans stuffing Harvard Stadium and many more watching the national television broadcast, Scales and the Crimson would take on Yale, led by former Harvard assistant Tony Reno.

Scales had functioned mainly as a third-down option during his first two seasons before serving in a rotation with then-freshman Zach Boden in 2011. His senior year was the only time he served as the workhorse back he always wanted to be, and though he started the year strongly, his production had tapered off as the season neared its end.

In the five weeks prior to The Game, the Crimson had lost its spot atop the Ivy League, going 3-2 as Scales averaged just over 60 yards and gained 90 yards only once, in a devastating loss to Princeton. Scales now had one final chance to establish his Harvard legacy.

Leading up to kickoff, there was a lot on Scales’ mind.

“It was pandemonium,” Scales says. “All kind of butterflies…. It was almost rattling.”

Scales recalls hoping that everything would go right in his final Crimson chapter. It didn’t. He accrued just 13 yards in the first quarter and entered halftime with fewer than 40 yards. Both offenses struggled in what was a 3-3 stalemate after 30 minutes.

Scoring opened up in the second half, but Scales wasn’t the one making things happen. In the third quarter, he only had five carries and only gained more than four yards on one of them.

He finally got things going in the fourth quarter. Back-to-back-to-back handoffs to Scales on the Crimson’s first possession of the fourth quarter netted Harvard 25 yards and set up a play-action touchdown pass on the following play.

Then the ball was taken out of Scales’ hands. He got just one touch over the next eight and a half minutes as the Bulldogs and Crimson battled back and forth, each grabbing the lead only to surrender it back.

At that point, it was unclear how many more active seconds of Harvard football Scales had left.

“I just wanted a shot,” Scales recalls. “Inside my head I’m like, ‘I can’t wait to get my shot more than anything. As soon as they do hand me this ball, I’m going to make something happen.’”

The next time Scales showed up in the play-by-play came with the Crimson holding a 27-24 lead, attempting to run out the remaining 3:19 on the clock. On the first play of that drive, he was called for holding, negating a seven-yard rush by senior quarterback Colton Chapple and forcing the Crimson into a first-and-20 situation. One play later, Scales made up for the error, protecting the football after Chapple fumbled it.

“Those minutes with that start to a drive was kind of rattling,” Scales says. “You think about all those college football games you’ve watched where it’s like epic comebacks in the last few minutes of the game, and you’re like, ‘This cannot be one of those situations.’”

After a three-yard rush set up third and 13 at the Harvard 37, Scales was tasked with making sure Yale wouldn’t have a chance to pull off the comeback. The ensuing play lasted just 10 seconds out of the roughly six minutes of field action Scales estimates he saw weekly, but it would come to define his Harvard legacy.

The play call was “stud right 26 flipback.” It was an inside zone run that highlighted the strengths of the Harvard offense: Chapple keeping the defense honest, the dominant offensive line creating a seam up the middle, and do-everything H-back Kyle Juszczyk coming across to block a charging defender. That left Scales to do the rest.

Breaking through the line, he remembers thinking the run would probably net the team the requisite 13 yards but little more. Yet Scales shook an oncoming defender and junior wide receiver Andrew Berg blocked another downfield, allowing Scales to bounce the run to the outside. When he got there, he was surprised by what he saw.

“After I made that cut to the outside, my eyes bugged,” Scales says. “I was like, man, there is nobody out here. There is not a soul out here…. At that point I was like, well, there is one thing you can do here, and you better not get caught.”

Though the crowd was going crazy at that point, Scales couldn’t hear anything but the rattling of his face mask and his striding legs.

Then he heard the breath of the defender chasing him and felt the diving Yalie clip his heel, sending Scales struggling to keep his balance as he neared the goal line.

When his hearing returned, he was standing in the south end zone of Harvard Stadium, mobbed by teammates and cheered by fans.

“It was one of the greatest runs I’ve ever seen,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy says. “It was unbelievable.”

With his final run as a Crimson football player, Scales had put The Game out of reach, as Harvard emerged victorious, 34-24, after stopping Yale on the ensuing possession.

At the same time, Scales achieved a personal milestone. The back had entered the contest with 825 rushing yards on the season. Joking with Juszczyk pre-game, he made a serious declaration.

“I was telling him, ‘Juice, I have every intention of getting 1,000 yards this season,’” Scales recalls. “‘I have to get it.’”

After Harvard gained its 24-20 lead, Scales was reminded that he had about 60 yards left to achieve the milestone. He remembers thinking it wouldn’t be easy to get there. A few plays later, his final 63-yard carry pushed him over the mark. He finished the season with 1,002 yards.

Ironically, it was Scales’ own mistake, the holding penalty he committed earlier on the drive, that set the team back 10 yards and allowed him to achieve the feat. On that day, everything ended up going right for Scales, as his final chapter ended in storybook fashion.

“It was unreal,” Scales says. “It was really a surreal moment to be a part of.”

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacobfeldman@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @Jacobfeldman4.