Harvard and Dartmouth, two teams few people had expected to be fighting for the Ivy League football championship, are locked in a first place tie with matching 4-1 records and just two weeks remaining in the season.

Pre-season favorites Penn and Yale, plus a surprising Brown team, are tied just one game back with 3-2 records. Columbia, 1-4, Princeton, 0-5, and injury-ridden Cornell, 2-3, are apparently out of the tight race for the crown.

Saturday, Harvard will travel to Providence, R.I., to do battle with a vastly improved Brown squad. Brown, which hasn't defeated Harvard since 1969, last week beat Cornell, 17-7, despite unimpressive league statistics that place it fifth in total offense and sixth in defense.

Harvard, coming off a 19-14 victory over Princeton last Saturday, needs wins over both Brown and Yale to guarantee itself at least a share of the Ivy crown. The Crimson rank second in the league in offense but a distant seventh in defense with an average 305 yards yielded per game.

In other match-ups this weekend, Dartmouth will aim for its fifth victory of the season when it hosts Cornell. After three straight early season losses, Dartmouth came back last week to defeat Columbia, 24-6. The Big Green, behind a balanced running attack and the passing of quarterback Tom Snickenberger, have lost only to Penn in league play this season.

Jostling for Position

Princeton, which gained new respect in the league last week for its determined effort against Harvard, will face the league-leading defense of Yale Saturday. Princeton ranks fifth in the league in both total offense and defense and can play the role of spoiler for Yale, which needs a victory to keep alive its hopes for a tie for the title.

Penn, which was bumped out of the first place slot last week in its 24-21 loss to Yale, will play a dismal Columbia team in New York. Penn leads the league in total offense, while Columbia ranks at the bottom in both offensive and defensive statistics.