Bulldogs look to spoil The Game

The last time The Game was played at the Yale Bowl in 2007, Yale entered undefeated in the Ivy League, ready to win the League championship.

But Harvard had ideas of its own, upsetting the Bulldogs, 37-6, to win the title itself.

Now Yale can exact revenge as the teams meet tomorrow in the 126th edition of the rivalry in New Haven, Conn.

Though the Bulldogs (4-5, 2-4 Ivy) are eliminated from the Ivy race, Harvard (6-3, 5-1) can still earn a share of the League crown with a win and a Penn loss. So tomorrow’s contest will mark the 26th time that The Game has had direct Ivy title implications (that’s an impressive 48 percent of all Ivy seasons).

“We have a shot at our ninth straight season of at least seven victories — something that’s never been done in the Ivy League,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said in the Ivy media teleconference. “We have an outside shot for an Ivy title … So there are plenty of tangible things to play for.”

Yale owns the better record in the series, 65-52-8, and has outscored the Crimson all-time by 150 points. But Harvard has dominated the series as of late, winning seven of the last eight and three in a row, including the 2007 upset and a 10-0 shutout in a blisteringly cold game last year.

Princeton (3-6, 2-4) at Dartmouth (2-7, 2-4)

Halfway through the season it appeared that Dartmouth was destined to finish near the bottom of the Ivy standings.

But with a 2-2 record in its last four games, the Big Green have positioned themselves so that a win tomorrow at home against Princeton will guarantee them at least a tie for fourth in the conference at season’s end.

Both the Tigers and the Big Green (as well as Yale and Columbia) sit at 2-4 in the conference. So with Penn, Harvard and Brown guaranteed to finish at least 4-3, the winner of the Sawhorse Dollar — a framed 1917 dollar bill given to the winner of the Dartmouth-Princeton game since 2002 — will finish in the top half of the League.

Brown (6-3, 4-2 Ivy) at Columbia (3-6, 2-4)

As Brown ends its 2009-10 campaign tomorrow at Columbia, the Bears must be asking themselves, what if?

What if they had scored on one of two chances in the final 10 seconds of a 24-21 loss to Harvard? What if one of their three missed field goals against Penn had sailed through the uprights in the 14-7 OT loss?

Instead, Brown can only console itself with a top-three-finish (of which it’s guaranteed).

The Lions, meanwhile, have lost 11 out of the last 12 against the Bears, and have lost five of their last six this year.

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