Clifton Dawson stopped and started. He zigged and zagged. He rumbled and stumbled. After 55 yards, he had rewritten the Ivy League record book.
And when he picked himself up off the sun-baked turf at Franklin Field, the Ivy League's all-time leading rusher celebrated the only way he knew how. He went back to the huddle.
No stopping the game for a ceremony. No visit to the sideline for hugs. Dawson couldn't be bothered.
He had a football game to play.
It's the same way he's played for the better part of four years at Harvard.
"He's always been a team-first guy," Crimson coach Tim Murphy said. "He's always been about class and integrity. I'm just very happy for him and proud of him, not just for today, but for his entire four years."
Dawson has put together a body of work that he never would have neared had he stayed at Northwestern, where he red-shirted the 2002 season.
In 2003, he set the Ivy League record for rushing yards by a freshman. The following year, he helped the Crimson run the table en route to an Ivy League title. And along the way, he's broken nearly every Ivy rushing record.
And the big one came on his second carry of the day Saturday.
"It's great to break such a record," Dawson said. "But to be honest, it's something that I won't give any thought to until after next week."
A second title will prove to be a longshot at this point. The Crimson needs to beat 5-1 Yale next week and hope for Dartmouth to win at Princeton to take a share of the Ivy League crown.
Without a win and some help, the Ivy League's all-time leading rusher and leading scorer will end his career disappointed. That's just the kind of player he is.
"The biggest thing is that we lost this game," said Dawson, 23 going on 35. "This was one that we really needed. This was one that I really wanted for my own individual goals, [but] I wanted first and foremost to win the Ivy League championship."
If the dream doesn't come true, the Ontario native will have to settle for being one of the best the Ivy League has ever seen and a player whom Quakers coach Al Bagnoli called an ambassador for Ivy League football.
Dawson set a record that will always hold an asterisk the size of one of the offensive linemen who have been clearing his holes for four years.
He's going on four years of 10 games each, while Ed Marinaro - the previous record holder - played three seasons of nine games each, including his senior year, when he finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting.
But Bagnoli framed the asterisk in a very interesting light.
It's not easy to play four full seasons.
Other than the second and third games of his freshman season, he's reached double digits in carries in every one of his games.
During the third quarter Saturday, Dawson was escorted off the field with a shoulder injury, and Bagnoli thought his team had sidelined him for the game. He was back on the same drive.
"To carry the ball for four years and not really get knocked out of a game is incredible," Bagnoli said. "You've got to respect his toughness and his durability."
And it wasn't like he found a miracle cure on the sideline.
He just had a football game to play.
Zachary Levine is a senior mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
