The Daily Pennsylvanian
For the past five years, Ivy League football has seemed like a two-horse race. Harvard and Penn have been taking turns at the top, often with the rest of the league trailing far behind.
Last year, the Crimson won the league after compiling the only spotless record in Division I-AA football. The Quakers were only one game behind in the Ivy standings.
The rest of the league seemed to be a step behind the two perennial powerhouses. Cornell, at 4-3, was the only other team with a winning record in Ivy League play.
With neither Harvard nor Penn finishing out of the top two in the league in recent memory, the question to start the year seems to be whether any team can disrupt the balance of power in the league.
"I certainly think any team is capable of beating anybody," Penn football coach Al Bagnoli said.
"We won a couple of very close games, Harvard won a couple very close games right at the end. I think there's a tremendous amount of parity."
So if not Penn, and not Harvard, who could potentially finish the season with the Ivy League crown? Perhaps the best chance lies with the team that came the closest to beating both squads last year.
In their Ivy league opener last season, Brown jumped out to an early 21-0 lead on eventual champion Harvard. Harvard came back to take the lead in the second half, and escaped after Brown narrowly missed a 30 yard field goal to win the game.
Five weeks later, the Bears traveled to Franklin Field to play the Quakers. Brown led for the entire game and appeared on its way to victory until running back Nick Hartigan's fumble on the goal line gave the Quakers life. Penn took it's first lead, 20-16, on a Sam Mathews touchdown run that would seal the game for the Quakers with only 50 seconds remaining.
"If Brown, in the opener against Harvard, would have made the field goal and would have won the game, what would have happened?" Bagnoli said of the Bears season.
The good news for Brown is that the core of its powerful offense should only improve this year.
While Penn tries to find new answers at wide receiver and Harvard attempts to get used to a new quarterback, Brown will be returning the league's most talented receivers, one of the league's best running backs and two experienced quarterbacks.
Hartigan, was second in the league in rushing last year with 1,263 yards and second in touchdowns with a school-record 17.
Wide receiver Jarrett Schreck led the league with 1,035 receiving yards last year, including 253 in the near-miss against Harvard.
Starting at the other wide receiver spot is Lonnie Hill, who led the team with 76 receptions two years ago, but took last year off.
With two returning quarterbacks in Joseph DiGiacomo and Anthony Vita, who split time last year, both with some success, the Brown offense could be very difficult to stop.
"On paper, they have a lot of marquee kids back," Bagnoli said.
Past the Bears, the league seems to drop off again, with Cornell and Yale likely to be the next best teams.
Cornell, which followed a winless 2003 Ivy campaign with a 4-3 record last year, returns most of its starters on offense, including offensive tackle Kevin Boothe, a legitimate NFL prospect.
Dartmouth and Columbia seem to be the popular picks for last in the league, but even they could be teams on the rise.
Dartmouth welcomes back head coach Buddy Teevens, who led them to back-to-back Ivy league titles almost a decade ago, as well as seven returning starters on a defense that was one of the league's best last season.
"I certainly think the coaching change in Dartmouth will help," Bagnoli said. "Buddy Teevens will bring a lot more energy and a lot more focus to that program, so they'll be much better."
While some of these lower Ivy teams may not win the league this year, they could easily provide an upset or two that could help give a team like Cornell or Brown a shot.
"The teams that got picked one and two ... almost got an equal number of points; it's probably based more on past production and past success than anything else," Bagnoli said.
Harvard, despite returning the league's most talented scorer in running back Clifton Dawson, suffered the league's biggest loss in Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was drafted by the St. Louis Rams. Quarterback Richard Irvin, a transfer from Tulane, will take the snaps for the Crimson.
Penn has holes to fill as well, with only one returning wide receiver with more than six career catches, and only two returning starters on defense.
The only question seems to be whether anyone has the talent to capitalize on these weaknesses. Though there are no clear answers yet, it is certainly too early to write the rest of the league off.
