Last year, Harvard's football team lost just two games - one on a 40-yard pass with 19 seconds remaining to Holy Cross, the other on a fumble return for a touchdown with 30 seconds left against Lehigh.
In the Ivy League, the Crimson rolled to six straight victories, setting the stage for an epic matchup with 9-0 and 11th-ranked Yale to determine the 2007 Ancient Eight champion.
And to finish a great season, the Crimson decimated their archrival, winning the 124th meeting between the New England schools, 37-6, in New Haven, Conn.
So as the Crimson start their 2008 season on Saturday against Holy Cross, the question is, what do they do for an encore?
Early signs point to another conference championship for coach Tim Murphy (who did not return repeated interview requests).
The Crimson return their starting quarterback senior Chris Pizzotti, who finished 2007 as the Ivy League's top-rated passer, earning first-team all-league honors. He threw for 2,134 yards, second in school history, and completed 63.1 percent of his passes, good for third best all-time at Harvard.
In fact, the Crimson return a lot of their key talent from last year, bringing back 12 players on offense and eight on defense who started at least one game last year.
That defense will be quite experienced, as all of the front seven and half the secondary are seniors. The line will be anchored by Carl Ehrlich, who had four sacks last year, and Peter Ajayi, who had six; returning linebackers Eric Schultz and Glenn Dorris were first and second in tackles last year.
This carryover has been noticed by the pollsters, who ranked the Crimson in their preseason Top 25.
In the latest installment of the FCS Coaches Poll and The Sports Network Poll, Harvard missed the cutoff by one spot, but that's only because other teams have a few games under their belts.
And the Ivy League preseason poll had the Crimson tied at the top spot with Yale, setting up the possibility of the 125th playing of The Game to be just important as last year's battle.
