Compare those numbers to the 53 teams which compete for the NCAA water polo crown or the 26 which vie for the NCAA Division II field hockey title.
In fact, only 35 schools will compete with Harvard this winter for the NCAA hockey title.
And surely no one would claim that the battle for the NCAA hockey championship will be unexciting because only 36 teams are involved.
So maybe the fault lies with the NCAA. Harvard's run-ins with the national governing board of college sports are well chronicled and seem to be growing in frequency. Harvard won its appeal of the Stephen Hall (a freshman soccer goalie from England) eligibility case this fall, but the very fact of the appeal indicates some of the friction between Harvard and the NCAA.
Or maybe Harvard's drought is linked to the fact that the NCAA didn't control women's athletics until 1981. Before that year, the National Association for Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) governed women's sports as kind of a poor sister to the NCAA.
The Harvard (formerly Radcliffe) lacrosse and crew programs have historically fielded strong teams--yet for years there was no NCAA title to reward their efforts.
So the fault--if you can sub-divide 81 years of blame--seems to lie with the men's programs.
But ask Bill Cleary and Grant Blair if any of this matters. For Harvard hockey, the past consists only in last year's quarterfinal loss to Minnesota-Duluth, and the defeat at the hands of Wisconsin in the NCAA finals three seasons ago.
Without a doubt, the Crimson men's hockey team has come the closet of all Harvard teams in recent years to snapping the NCAA jinx.
But despite 10 final-eight appearances in the past 30 years, the pucksters have never won it all.
The 1904 Harvard golf team--the last Crimson squad to win it all--is now a forgotten part of Harvard history. The Myopia Hunt Club, located in South Hamilton, Mass.--about 20 miles north of Boston--is still there, still gaining renown for the polo competitions it sponsors.
The team members dispersed and are all known to have died.
All, that is, with the possible exception of Captain H. C. Egan '05. Because, while The Crimson clearly lists Egan as the team leader, the Harvard Alumni Office can't find any record of his whereabouts or even--for that matter--his membership in the Class of '05.
And you can't help but wonder if he hasn't been wandering about the area these past 81 years, somehow trying to preserve his team's grip on the title, "the last Harvard NCAA champion."
So if the Harvard hockey team sees a suspicious old man lingering around the Providence Civic Center--site of the 1986 Final Four--next March, it better be careful.