PROVIDENCE, R.I.--Only two teams remain in serious contention for the Ivy football title. Penn (5-0 Ivy, 6-1 overall) is one and Harvard (4-1, 5-2) is the other.

Harvard's comeback here against Brown to turn a 17-6 deficit into a 25-17 victory over means that Penn will have company atop the Ivy standings as the race enters its final three weeks.

With games at Harvard in two weeks and at home against lowly Dartmouth in three, the Quakers are in a commanding position to grab at least a piece of their fourth straight crown and join the Green as the only Ivy school to cop four straight titles.

Harvard, with Penn after Holy Cross Saturday and The Game in New Haven on the final weekend, can share the title with the Quakers by winning both of its league contests.

The Elis, who suffered a shocking tie at the hands of Dartmouth this weekend, are now 2-1-1 and have to count on Penn to lose to Harvard and tie or fall to winless Cornell at home on the final weekend for a shot at the crown.

But with less than two minutes left in the third quarter Saturday, the Quakers were on the verge of wrapping up their second consecutive outright crown. Brown was leading the Crimson, 17-6, and had just recovered a Harvard fumble at midfield.

The 10,600 fans at Brown Stadium were on their feet cheering the home side defense which had held the Crimson to just 64 yards total offense in the 43 minutes of play. IVY STANDINGS Team  W  L  T Penn  5  0  0 HARVARD  4  1  0 Yale  2  1  1 Princeton  3  2  0 Brown  2  3  0 Dartmouth  1  2  1 Columbia  0  4  0 Cornell  0  4  0

Harvard had opened the game with drives of minus one, plus three and minus three yards and hadn't improved much in the following quarters.

Brown had dominated the contest, racking up 17 points, despite a strong Harvard defensive effort. The Bruins would have been farther ahead, but the Crimson defense held for four downs after the hosts had a first-and-goal from the Harvard four.

Captain Brent Wilkinson made the crucial hit on Brown tailback Jamie Potkul on fourth-and-one at the goal line.

"You come out of there, you don't make the fourth-down gamble," Harvard Coach Joe Restic said. "That's the most devastating thing to you as a football team is when you gamble fourth down deep in that end and you don't make it."

The Bruins had coughed up a pair of costly fumbles inside their own 20, setting up two Rob Steinberg field goals (24 yards--off a great hold by Bill Koehler--and a career best 44).

As the stands roared their approval after Harvard's third quarter fumble, Brown took control at midfield. On the first play, quarterback Steve Kettelberger handed the ball to tailback Jamie Potkul (who was in the midst of a 154-yd. afternoon).

But Potkul fumbled the ball and the stadium fell silent. Three plays later, Harvard quarterback Brian White found tight end Jim Morris streaking across the middle all alone and the visitors trailed, 17-12. After a penalty on a two-point conversion effort, Steinberg missed a long point-after try.

After an exchange of punts, the Bruins fumbled again. Charging defensive end K.C. Smith forced Kettelberger to cough up the ball at his own nine.

Crimson fullback Robert Santiago, on his way to an 84-yard performance (69 in the second half), pranced into the endzone on a trap and the Crimson led, 18-17, although Harvard again botched its two-point conversion attempt. dominated city council debate and the CCA platform for several years. The CCA-supported policy which regulates rent in low- and moderate-income city housing, was finally passed into law in 1969, but the liberal party lost substantial support in the process.

"Towards the end of the 60s, most people became more socially conscious, and the CCA simply joined this enlightened awareness," says Elaine Kistiakowsky, active in the association for 25 years and currently one of its vice presidents. "To have not changed meant you had to be very unconcerned with people."

Since then, the CCA has continued its support of progressive policy by endorsing slates of candidates for election to the nine-member city council and the seven-member school committee.

Recent issues of concern for the group have included a civilian review board for the Cambridge Police Department, in the wake of charges of racial discrimination by the force, and the perennial problems of Cambridge's tight housing market.

"We haven't lost our focus on government, we've just added the concern for social issues," says City Councilor David E. Sullivan, a CCA-endorsee.

This year, however, the association is facing yet another split in its supporters. A new group known as Coalition '85, many of whom live in rent-controlled buildings and have traditionally supported CCA-endorsed candidates, are running three candidates of their own this year.

In addition, the CCA is faced with increasingly hostile attacks from Cambridge realtors, who say that rent control policies actually force up city rent levels, and urge residents to vote for one of the Independent candidates. The Independents, who form a looser coalition, are generally more conservative and tend to have deeper roots in city neighborhoods.

The issue of rent control becomes crucial because of the form of city government. Most legislation requires a five-member majority on the city council, but rent control issues require six votes to institute change. For years, neither the CCA nor the conservative faction has been able to gain a majority on the council.

Before 1953, the CCA regularly elected five of the nine councilors, yet since then the number has averaged four--not enough to engineer any major legislation. All four current members of the council who received CCA endorsements are running for re-election, along with two newcomers. Outside competition for the liberal votes of Cambridge could result in several of the candidates losing the election, or even the CCA losing one of its four council seats.

"It's a major challenge, but I think the CCA will meet it," says Sullivan. "A lot more heat is being generated by a few defectors from the CCA than is merited by their political clout."

"They're people who haven't participated in the CCA for years--they're relics of a past generation," Sullivan says, adding that in his opinion the controversy has proven beneficial to the CCA by forcing the association to define its position on issues such as condominium conversion; issues on which the organization earlier was reluctant to take a stand