PHILADELPHIA-- It was an unenviable situation. The Harvard football team and Coach Tim Murphy had no outs.

With fifteen seconds left in the fourth quarter against Penn, trailing 36-35, Harvard was faced with fourth down on Penn's 16-yard line. Any hopes of an Ivy League title rested on the one thing the Crimson had not done well all season--field goals.

One month earlier, freshman kicker Robbie Wright had had his 27-yard game-winning attempt blocked by Cornell, giving Harvard its only Ivy loss coming into Saturday's game. Shortly after the Cornell loss, Murphy had declared the Crimson a four-down team.

But Wright had made a few field goals the weekend before against Columbia, and so there were no hesitations in sending him out to kick a 33-yarder into a strong wind. The snap was good, the kick went untouched, but Wright's kick was wide left, not even close.

Harvard will not win the Ivy League title.

"It's a huge disappointment, obviously," Murphy said. "Barring mistakes, and an aberration against Lehigh [a 45-13 loss], we can beat anybody. We didn't play our smartest game."

The missed kick was an unfortunate end to a game that had seen big-play offenses and timely defenses. Penn (6-5, 5-1 Ivy) and Harvard (5-4, 4-2) racked up almost 1000 yards of offense between them.

But in a way, the odd ending was the perfect fit to the best Ivy League game played so far this year.