If watching football is anything like playing, I think I have a pretty good idea of what it felt like for the Harvard football team on Saturday against Lehigh.

I arrived early, before the Lehigh team bus, even, to fire up a grill, break out the chips and toss a pigskin at a tailgate. A brat, two burgers and several dropped fly patterns later, I made my way into Harvard Stadium, just as the sun took the bite out of the brisk October air.

I smiled as Harvard took to field and felt something rare inside me as the team came together in a frenzied mass of energy reminiscent of the excitement and confidence of the 1997 season when Harvard ran through the Ivy schedule like a freight train on a mission.

However, by the time I had wrapped up the post-game press conference three-and-a-half hours later, I was so fatigued and despondent that I did not feel up to eating solid food.

The same miraculous change seemed to come over the actual participants in Saturday's war of wills.

Watching Coach Tim Murphy face the media after the game--shoulders hunched forward, staring straight ahead--was almost painful.

"I really can't disagree with any of that," he said when responding to criticism of his team's performance in a monotone that characterized all his remarks.

Harvard did come out with the fire and energy that has been lacking throughout the 1998 season. For 21:35, Harvard dominated play, going up 17-0.

Even after Lehigh marched down the field, consuming 4:48 for its first score to cut the deficit to 17-7, Harvard appeared to answer, taking just three plays to move across midfield with under four minutes in the half. But senior wideout Jake Heller fumbled the ball off a 20-yard reception that would have put Harvard within field-goal range, and Lehigh recovered.

On the scoreboard, Harvard escaped unscathed when Lehigh missed a field goal wide right in the final minute of play, but in the battle of momentum and confidence, the scales had shifted irreversibly in favor of the Mountain Hawks.

Last season the energy never waned. Down 12-8 in the fourth quarter in a bone-chilling rain against Princeton, then-sophomore Mike Giampaolo kicked two fourth-quarter field goals--including a career-long 43-yard game-winner--to pull victory from the jaws of defeat.

By contrast, this year's team cannot seem to find a reason not to roll over.

Injuries and losses have made it difficult to be confident in this year's team. Last year, the Crimson never faced adversity to the same extent as this year.

This season, it had better learn how to do justthat, or a very good football team is going tofind its season over before it begins.

It is as if 60 minutes of football is just toounbearably long to endure.

"Sometimes I think [junior quarter-back RichLinden] misses Colby and Jared out there, butthey're long gone now," said Murphy of graduatedreceivers Colby Skelton '98 and Jared Chupaila'98.