After the Harvard-Yale game last year, an enterprising Harvard student had T-shirts printed commemorating the occasion. The T-shirts read: "The 1994 Game. No Vin, No Win."
"No Win" is a reference to the 32-13 stomping the Eli handed the Crimson. "No Vin" is a reference to one Harvard player, quarterback Vin Ferrara, and his season-ending knee injury, suffered at the hands of Penn during the previous game.
Ferrara is back at the reins of the Crimson offense this season, though, by his own admission, he is a step slower. A black, metal and plastic brace, padded in both the back and front, announces the reconstructive anterior cruciate ligament surgery and months of rehab about which the Crimson signal-caller now seems unfazed.
"My knee is fine," Ferrara said after a recent scrimmage. "I'm at 90 percent. I'm going to be a step slower. But we went live today [i.e. game conditions], and there were no problems."
No problems indeed. In an intrasquad scrimmage, Ferrara looked comfortable behind a revamped offensive line, leading the now-familiar Tim Murphy offense like the Vin Ferrara of old. He executed the plays, hooked up with senior receiver Mike Halligan for a 30-yard touchdown pass and, surprisingly, ran the option.
In short, he did everything one would expect a healthy Ferrara to do.
"I think that Vin has done a tremendous job coming back from reconstructive surgery," Harvard coach Tim Murphy says. "He's in shape and he's had an excellent preseason. He's an outstanding athlete, so it's not like we're taking a slow guy and making him slower.... He's just not quite as quick and agile as he was."
Outstanding is a good way to characterize Ferrara's performance in his nine starts last season. Ferrara was the second-rated quarterback in the league, behind Columbia's Jamie Schwalbe. He completed nearly 60 percent of his 211 attempts, racked up 1500 yards in the air and rushed for another 128. He threw 10 touch-down passes and averaged 12 yards per completion, although opponents intercepted eight of his tosses.
As good as the numbers sound, Ferrara's real assets are his knack for quick thinking and his leadership abilities. It was those qualities that Harvard missed most in the Yale game. And, thankfully for the Crimson, knee injuries do nothing to dampen them.
"With Vin, so much of his Ferrara focused on keeping that mental sharpness in the offseason. He spent a lot of time improving his reads on defenses and coverages. He watched game film, over and over and over again. When a quarterback spends day after day on the exercise bike, what else can he do? "I'm just trying to get better," Ferrara says. In fact, Ferrara has a tendency to overdo it. So happy to be back on the field again, Ferrara threw too much this summer in preparation for the preseason. Because the coaching staff felt he should rest his "tired" arm, Ferrara did not play in the Crimson's exhibition game against American International College. Ferrara and coach Murphy aren't doing anything differently this year, despite his non-appearance in the scrimmage. The offensive plan is still 50 percent pass, 50 percent run and 100 percent intensity. The fact that the game plan is still the same speaks volumes about Ferrara's readiness. "I'm not worried about Vin," fellow New Jersey-native Eion Hu says. "He's going to be fine." Nevertheless, just because the team is confident Ferrara will hold up does not mean that he will escape the 1995 campaign unscathed. Although backup quarterback Jay Snowden matured considerably in the offseason, many Harvard football fans will be holding their breath whenever
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