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Home , Fake punt, Ivy League, Touchdown pass, Yale Bowl

john harvard’s journal Stinging the Blues to do a lot of re- grouping.” Yale saved its best for last. So did Harvard. Mixing rushing and passing plays, The bulldog got stung again in the final Harvard’s offense minutes of The Game. To football-loving moved the well, Old Blues, these acts of Harvard waspish- but couldn’t get into ness must seem to repeat themselves like a the . Its recurring dream. first drive expired at The archetype is the 1968 game, when midfield when junior Harvard scored 16 points in the last 42 sec- Col- onds to gain the famous 29-29 tie. In 1974, a lier Winters fum- 95-yard drive gave the Crimson a 21-16 win bled after a 10-yard AERIAL ATTACK: with 15 seconds remaining. A year later, scramble. A second- Quarterback Collier with 93 seconds to play, a wobbly field period drive ended Winters threw two late scoring passes goal won it for Harvard, 10-7. In 1995, Har- when Harvard faked to pull out a 14-10 vard marched downfield in four plays to a and had victory at . snatch a 22-21 victory with 29 seconds on an attempted pass the clock. Fast-forward to 2005, when Yale batted by Yale safety Larry Abare. At again. This time receiver Chris Lorditch led at halftime, 21-3, only to have Harvard the start of the second half, a 79-yard drive raced to the goal line and cosseted a per- tie the game in the last three minutes and brought the ball to Yale’s one-yard line, fectly thrown pass from Winters. The play then win it, 30-24, in triple . with three chances to punch it in. But a res- covered 32 yards and gave Harvard the lead. Harvard’s 14-10 victory in the 2009 olute goal-line stand kept Yale’s lead intact. The Yale stands, noisily exuberant for game was another one for the books. Not The Blue had the upper hand until mid- most of the game, were now silent. since 1954 had a Crimson team come back way through the final period, when Win- With 1:32 on the clock, Yale still had time to win The Game after being shut out for ters handed off to tailback Gino Gordon to score. The Blue drove to midfield on a three periods. ’11 on a fourth-and-four at the Harvard pair of passes by quarterback Patrick Witt, Yale entered the game as the decided 30-yard line. Yale cornerback Adam Mon- but a third attempt was intercepted by se- underdog. The Blue had won only two Ivy ey appeared to have Gordon trapped at nior linebacker Jon Takamura. League games, hadn’t beaten a team with a the , but he spun away Harvard had no timeouts left, and with winning record, and had the league’s poor- for a 19-yard gain. Gordon’s breakaway half a minute to play Yale got the ball again est rushing statistics. Harvard had lost to changed the flow of the game. Two plays at its own eight-yard line. But the Crimson’s the previous weekend, but later, Winters threw a high, arching pass swarming defense kept the Bulldog at bay. had defeated all other Ivy comers and was to receiver Matt Luft ’10 for a 41-yard Head coach Tim Murphy said after the leading the league in rushing and scoring. . With less than seven minutes game that he’d given his team a “charac- Yet the Eli played like champions for to play, senior Patrick Long’s extra-point ter check” at halftime. “We were fortu- most of the game. On a balmy November kick cut the Eli lead to 10-7. nate today,” said Murphy. “But you do get day at Yale Bowl, the Blue jumped off to an On Yale’s next series, a holding penalty a little more fortunate if you play hard all early 10-0 lead, scoring a 26-yard field goal and a by linemen Ehr­ the time.” and a short-yardage touchdown on its lich and John Lyon ’12 forced the Blue into first two possessions. Front-line blocking a fourth-and-22 at their own 25-yard line. Murphy’s team had been less fortunate opened after hole for sophomore back From formation, Yale audaciously at the a week earlier, when Har- Alex Thomas, who carried nine times on tried a , with freshman defensive vard and Penn contested for Yale’s first two drives and finished the back John Powers taking the ball on a re- supremacy. “We take it for granted,” Mur- game with 124 yards on 26 carries. verse and sprinting for the sideline behind phy had said at a preseason press confer- “We didn’t think three blockers. Defend- ence, “that the road to the Ivy champion- they were going to run Game by Game ers Collin Zych ’11, ship will go through Penn.” In recent years on us,” Harvard captain at Holy Cross L 20-27 Dan Minamide ’12, and there’s been no alternate route. Carl Ehrlich, a defen- Brown W 24-21 Anthony Spadafino ’11 If football were geopolitics, Penn and sive tackle, would say at Lehigh W 28-14 broke through the in- Harvard would be the league’s superpow- after the game. “They at Cornell W 28-10 terference and stopped ers. Since the 2000 season, each has won came right at us, with Lafayette L 18-35 Powers seven yards four Ivy titles, and in each of those years a lot of inside runs, Princeton W 37-3 short of the first-down the winner of the Harvard-Penn game and just kept running Dartmouth W 42-21 marker. went on to win the league. Over the last the ball. They ran hard at Columbia W 34-14 Taking over on Yale’s decade, the superpowers have split their and blocked hard. They Penn L 7-17 40-yard line, the Crim- match-ups, 5-5, while posting a combined had us on our heels for at Yale W 14-10 son offense needed only won-lost record of 99-21 against the six a long time. We needed three plays to score other Ivy teams.

56 January - February 2010 Left: The ball that broke the Bulldog’s back. With a minute and a half to play, Chris Lorditch beat Yale defender Adam Money on a 32-yard pass that gave Harvard the game-winning touchdown. Below: Coach Murphy got a Powerade shower as time expired.

out of Cornell one Big leg: Yale’s Tom Mante, the league’s week later. Har- best kicker, punted three times during the vard finished in game, averaging 51.3 yards per kick and second place, with booting a 69-yarder into the end zone at Yale settling into the start of the second quarter.…Mante a sixth-place tie attempted a 62-yard field goal late in the with Dartmouth. quarter, but his kick went wide. H a r v a r d h a s Still a few seats left: Attendance at The won eight of the Game was announced as 52,692. The cur- last nine meetings rent capacity of Yale Bowl is 61,446. with Yale, and has Top gun: Junior Collier Winters, in his taken five straight debut season as a starting quarterback, at Yale Bowl. That passed for 15 and had the Ivy means the Crim- League’s best passing-efficiency rating, as son now leads the Blue, 29-24- well as the fewest (seven) Final Ivy League Standings 1, in games played since Ivy among playing 10 games. In Ivy and overall records Points for/against League competition was for- the Yale game Winters completed 19 of 26 Penn 7-0 8-2 214 95 malized in 1956. Yale still leads passes for 211 yards and two touchdowns, Harvard 6-1 7-3 252 172 the all-time series, 65-53-8. while rushing for 51 yards. For his play at Brown 4-3 6-4 241 197 Yale, he was named Ivy League player of the Columbia 3-4 3-6 225 220 Tidbits: Tom Williams, Yale’s week.…The 77-yard touchdown pass from Princeton 3-4 4-6 129 265 first-year coach, defended the Winters to Chris Lorditch in Harvard’s Yale 2-5 4-6 173 166 risky fake-punt call that gave 37-3 win over Princeton was the fifth-lon- Dartmouth 2-5 2-8 161 282 Harvard a short field with two gest scoring pass in Crimson annals. Cornell 1-6 2-8 171 268 and a half minutes of playing Pitch, catch: Lorditch was the team’s time. “We’re playing to win premier receiver, with 30 catches for 545 Harvard won the Ivy championship the football game,” Williams said after- yards and five touchdowns.…Senior Matt outright in 2007, shared it with Brown in ward. “We’ve done it all year. Our whole Luft wound up his career with a 2008, and had hopes of a third consecu- idea was to keep our foot on the pedal and per-catch average of 16.3 yards, a Harvard tive title in 2009. For the fourth time since not play scared.” He noted that Yale had record. In 2008, Luft caught 53 passes for 875 2000, both Harvard and Penn had league converted two fake punts in earlier games, yards and five touchdowns. Tightly covered records of 5-0 when they met on Novem- including one for a touchdown. The real this season, he was held to 17 catches for 214 ber 14. In a driving rainstorm, the Quakers game-changer, said Williams, was Gino yards and two touchdowns. scored on a 51-yard pass play three min- Gordon’s 19-yard gain on Harvard’s previ- Picks: Linebacker Jon Takamura’s late- utes into the game, built a 17-0 halftime ous series: “If we make lead, and emerged with a 17-7 victory. that play, we win.”…A Road closed. former Stanford line- Penn’s top-ranked defense, which had backer and captain, allowed just 11 points per game, proved Williams was an assis- superior to a league-leading Harvard of- tant coach for the Jack- fense that had averaged 28 points a game. sonville Jaguars before The lone Harvard score came in the third coming to Yale. At his period, on a 45-yard pass from Winters to introductor y press Chris Lorditch. With less than three min- conference a year ago, utes to play, a last Crimson drive put the he said his first priority ball inside Penn’s one-yard line. Winters would be to reclaim the tried twice to take it in for a score, but the Ivy title, which Yale had Quaker defense was unyielding. Harvard shared in 2006. “And hadn’t had been held to a touchdown secondly,” declared since the Penn game of 2002 (Penn 44, Har- Williams, “we’re going vard 9). to beat Harvard. We’ve Penn’s win was its first at the Stadium got to turn The Game since 2003. The Quakers captured this back into a rivalry. It’s year’s Ivy title outright with a 34-0 shut- been a little one-sided.”

Photographs by Jon Chase/Harvard News Office 57 ’s journal

game, as both rusher and receiver.…Freshman S t r o k e s Treavor Scales, alter- nating with Gordon at in Glass tailback, rushed for 120 yards and two touch- This new sculpture, Endurance, downs against Dart- which hangs near the roof of Weld mouth. Not since 1999 Boathouse, depicts part of the trail had two Crimson backs behind a single scull: the shell’s wake rushed for 100 yards or in the center and puddles from suc- more in the same game. cessive oar catches at the sides. All-Ivies: Gordon, foster Rendered from four-foot-long rods d a second-team all-Ivy avi of flameworked borosilicate glass, d selection in 2008, made the piece was commissioned by the Friends of Harvard for Weld’s centennial the first team in 2009, as did offensive in 2006. There was a party then, but the Friends felt that a more lasting memento tackle James Williams ’10, guard Ben Ses- was also appropriate; the work took three years from conception to completion. sions ’10, and defensive backs Collin Zych Sculptor Ellen Kennelly ’85, M.Div. ’90, rowed at Radcliffe and is an elite masters and Derrick Barker ’10. Williams was also sculler who has won the Head of the Charles 10 times in the single scull. Many types a first-team selection in 2007 and 2008. of boats are launched from Weld’s docks, but Kennelly says the larger shells create Fourteen other team members, including an unaesthetic turbulence in the water. “The single,” she asserts, “is the only one that Ehrlich, Long, Lorditch, Scales, Takamu- leaves behind something pretty.” vc.l. ra, and Winters, earned second-team or honorable mention citations. Scales was game against Yale was his and a touchdown in the final period of the also named Ivy rookie of the year.…Zych, fourth of the season. He’d previously made Princeton game. When sidelined, Ho was of Plano, Texas, and , will a key interception in Harvard’s 24-21 vic- the team’s most spirited cheerleader. “We captain the 2010 team. The winner of this tory over Brown, and had scored on a 60- could not have won back-to-back champi- year’s Crocker Award as the team’s most yard interception return in the 28-14 win at onships in 2007 and 2008 without Cheng,” valuable player, Zych made a team-high Lehigh. said coach Murphy. 73 tackles and led the Ivy League with 12 Team player: Senior Cheng Ho came to Grind it out: Gino Gordon was the pass breakups and 14 passes defended. He the from Taiwan at 12, not team’s most productive running back, av- helped force the decisive tackle on Yale’s speaking English and unfamiliar with eraging 5.5 yards per carry and leading the pivotal fake punt in the fourth quarter of football. Harvard’s leading rusher in 2007, league in yardage (632) and touchdowns The Game. he was injured for parts of the 2008 sea- (eight).…In Harvard’s 42-21 win over Dart- Streaking: Crimson teams have now son and was used sparingly this fall. But mouth, Gordon rushed for 119 yards and won seven or more games in each of the Ho made the most of his playing time. He three touchdowns, and caught four passes past nine seasons—an Ivy League record, rushed for a career-high 132 yards and two for 103 yards. No Crimson player had ever and Harvard’s best nine-year run since the touchdowns at Lehigh, and had 73 yards broken the century mark twice in one seasons of 1902–1910. v“cleat”

Hits, Heads, Helmets In October, the issue of football-in- credibly dangerous and can even be fatal.” duced concussions and related brain trau- Among those testifying before Con- “I can think of two hits in particu- ma reached Congress, where former play- gress was former Harvard defensive tackle lar I took at Harvard that would qualify ers and neuropathologists testified before Chris Nowinski ’00, whose 2006 book Head as concussive episodes, although I didn’t a House committee and legislators took Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis described say anything to anyone,” says Vin Fer- (NFL) commis- his own traumatic experiences and spot- rara ’95, who quarterbacked the 1994 and sioner Roger Goodell to task on the mat- lighted the issue. Nowinski wasn’t diag- 1995 Crimson varsities. “So of course they ter. “In the last three years, there’s been nosed with a concussion on the gridiron, weren’t diagnosed.” Ferrara, who earned an an explosion of awareness of how severe but he took blows to the head in his sub- M.D. and M.B.A. from Columbia in 2004, concussions and even sub-concussive sequent career as a pro wrestler. (“The founded a company, Xenith, that year to trauma truly are,” says Times re- difference between a real kick and a ‘pro manufacture a new type of football helmet: porter Alan Schwarz, who was nominated wrestling’ kick can be three inches,” he one that could help insulate the brain from for a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for his articles on explains. “Sometimes they land for real.”) the sudden movements of the head during football concussions, a topic he continues He blacked out at times in the ring, and impact that result in concussions. In the to cover. “It used to be considered just a says his last concussion left him with five last few years, the sports world seems to rite of the game. Now we’re finding out years of “post-concussive syndrome.” Only have caught up with his product. that getting ‘dings’ or concussions is in- in the last year have Nowinski’s head-

58 January - February 2010