NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Man, they really had us going.
Undefeated Yale was the toast of the Ivy League. As junior tailback Mike McLeod made his assault on the record books and the Bulldogs kept winning, their stock kept rising. By the eve of Saturday's Ivy title game, Yale had risen to No. 11 in the nation.
Lost in the shuffle was a Harvard team that could very well have been undefeated itself. If not for a last-second Hail Mary against Holy Cross, and Lehigh's fumble return for a touchdown 30 seconds from time, the Crimson would have been 10-0.
But as the boys from Cambridge dispatched foe after foe, it was the Bulldogs who got all the attention. Our minds were made up regarding the league's top two teams: Yale 1, Harvard 2.
Saturday's fiasco at the Yale Bowl turned that convenient framework on its head. In the clash of unbeatens, it was the Crimson who stole the show, winning 37-6; the home team looked more like a ragtag Pop Warner squad than the No. 11 team in the land.
Yale was undefeated, yes, but only by virtue of the fact that they hadn't played Harvard yet.
The Yale players deserved most of the praise showered upon them, as well as the nine wins along the way. But before their monumental implosion against the Crimson, they had already begun to slip.
Harvard coach Tim Murphy, specifying beforehand that what he was about to say was an "honest assessment" rather than the coach-speak designed to avoid offending anyone, said: "I think their offensive capacity had diminished a little bit in recent weeks."
That much was on display for anyone who cared to notice.
The Bulldogs cruised through their first five games, averaging 38 points and winning each by at least two touchdowns. Over their next five, that output fell to 20.8 points per game.
The turning point came at Franklin Field against Penn, Yale's sixth game of the season. The Bulldogs looked vulnerable for the first time. They managed just 10 points in regulation.
But beyond any point or yardage totals, that game brought the development that proved a ticking time bomb on Yale's season. In the second quarter, McLeod fractured his big toe, and the Bulldogs' championship hopes came crashing down with their star player - whether anyone recognized it, or not.
After that, McLeod was not the same player who had romped to 15 touchdowns through five games, averaging 199 yards.
"I guess I don't have to hide anything now that the season's over," McLeod said. "It hurts. It limits me. I'd say I was probably about 60 to 70 percent."
That was truly the death knell for an offense as one-dimensional as Yale's. On the season, quarterback Matt Polhemus threw for more than 150 yards just twice. The Bulldogs hit paydirt through the air four times.
No matter how good you are, that kind of reliance is bound to come back and bite you. Against the Ivy middlers, they fared just fine.
But against the best team in the league, they never had a shot. That much was on display, and this time everyone cared to notice.
Ilario Huober is a senior International Relations major from Syracuse, N.Y., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is ihuober@sas.upenn.edu.
