The Harvard men's cross country team yesterday humiliated a Brown team that looked more like something out of a Montessori school than an Ivy League university.

When the last limping Bruin crossed the line at Franklin Field, the Crimson had racked up a near perfect 15-48 rout by capturing all of the top ten places except for sixth. The harriers accomplished the feat without the services of captain Adam Dixon, who was out with tendonitis, or Andy Gerken, sidelined with a hip injury.

And just to make sure everyone was satisfied, the team avoided the nastiness of having first, second and third place finishers and instead had the top three runners--freshman Peter Jelley, sophomore Paul McNulty, and junior Bruce Weber--lope in together for a three-way tie. The three clocked a time of 31.18 over the boggish ten kilometers. The Crimson thus acquired the peculiar distinction of having four different runners take firsts after just three races. Only Weber has copped the laurels twice.

But the story didn't end with the Jelley-Weber-McNulty trinity. Speeding in fourth with his best time ever was senior Peter Johnson with a 31:48. And a mere three seconds later freshman Cliff Sheehan plowed in to claim his share of the pie.

After Bruin spoiler Tom Jirele--who last year stomped all over his Harvard opponents in the same event--grabbed the sixth spot, coach Bill McCurdy's feeling that "there was no way we could lose this thing" seemed a bit of an understatement.

First, Felix Rippy and Paul Baffes took the seventh and eighth positions, and then Eric Schuler, in his first start of the season after a training-camp ankle injury and a subsequent cold, came in ninth and Andy Regan then pulled in tenth. And there were more runners still.

Of course there was a smirking Bill McCurdy saying afterward, "Well hell, I never find it boring when we're ahead."