Last year, the Harvard football team came into The Game at New Haven with a chance to win, or at least to share, its third Ivy title in four years. But Yale stole the show--and gave the league title to Penn--with a 17-6 victory.

In 1974, The Game also decided the Ivy title. Yale came in undefeated in the Ivy League, 6-0, looking to post a rare perfect Ivy slate. Harvard was 5-1 in the Ivies coming into The Game, needing a win to tie for the title. When the dust cleared, Harvard had emerged victorious, 21-16, and in partial possession of league honors.

1968 saw, of course, The Game of Games. Both the Crimson and Elis came into the contest undefeated in the league--Yale, in fact, sporting an unblemished 8-0 mark. But a miraculous 15-point comeback by Harvard late in the fourth quarter brought the final score to a tie, 29-29. The Ivy title was shared by unbeaten squads that year.

The list of Games which had an impact on the Ivy title is almost as long as the list of Games.

The Game. The Ivy championship. The two phrases have nearly always gone hand-in-hand.

This year, however, is different. This year, there will be no titles won or lost on the Stadium field.

This year, there will not be the added drama of an Ivy title at stake. This year, the players on the two teams will enter with inglorious records--Harvard sporting a 2-7 record and Yale not much better at 3-6.

This year, they will be playing for pride.

"You can call it pride, you can call it anything you want," Harvard fullback Brian O'Neil says. "The Yale game is always something big. This year it will mean a little bit more." Yale he says, "is the one team we haven't beaten since I've been here."

Harvard hasn't beaten many teams this year. Its two wins have come against Columbia--a squad soon destined to break the all-time NCAA Division I losing streak record--and Dartmouth, a team whose coach was fired during the off-season only to be reinstated by court order. It has not been the best of seasons for the Crimson gridders.

Nor has Yale impressed many of its opponents. In addition to the Lions and the Big Green, the Bulldogs have only managed to edge Princeton--a mediocre squad at best--last week at home by a single point.

A win "would give us a little positive incentive for next year," says Crimson sophomore QB Tom Yohe. "It wouldn't make the whole season. Still, it's a very important game for us."

"I definitely think a win would salvage the season," Harvard Captain Scott Collins says.

Amazingly, this is the first year since 1958 that both squads come into The Game with losing records. The first time in 28 years. No player on the field today was alive the last time this happened.

In the entire post-war period, there have only been three Games between teams with losing records. Three, in more than 40 years.