It was not just pride at stake that afternoon. For Harvard, it was a shot at perfection

After dominating Penn the week before, the Harvard football team charged into the last game of the season against Yale as Ivy League Champions.

Harvard (9-1, 7-0 Ivy) steamrolled through the Ancient Eight on the way to its first league title since 1987, setting up a showdown with the Elis (1-9, 0-7) that was as hotly contested as any in the 114-year old rivalry.

Whether Yale would ruin the Crimson's only unblemished Ivy campaign in its 123-year history was the only thing to be determined at the Yale Bowl in the last game of the 1997 season.

Murphy's First

The Crimson's position atop the Ivy was the unlikeliest of situations, considering Harvard's inability to post a winning record since its championship 1987 season. Despite beating Yale in the previous two iterations of The Game, the Crimson was painfully aware of its traditional troubles against Ivy opponents going into the season.

"Those seniors were getting kicked around for a few years," senior fullback Grady Smalling said. "They were a close team, but couldn't get the wins."

Smalling is a member of the last class able to bear witness to Harvard's domination during the '97 campaign. He and other seniors recall a tough team intent on shedding its loser label and bringing a championship to Cambridge.

"They were a mean team," said captain Mike Clare. "Those seniors taught us a lot about pride and how to set goals and try to go out and systematically make them happen."

Those seniors were Harvard Coach Tim Murphy's first recruiting class to spend its entire career in his program. Murphy, coming from the University of Cincinnati in 1994, posted a disappointing 10-20 record in his first three years in Cambridge.

But this was Murphy's team--the first completely constructed during his watch.

"Coach had to go into [1997] wanting a title badly," Clare said. "These were his recruits, he had his guys in there making plays."

It was also Murphy's player who would captain the squad.

Although captain Brendan Bibro went down in the fifth game of the year against Holy Cross, he dressed for the rest of the games to lead the team by example.

While Murphy's seniors were the leaders of the team, no one could question the talent of the sophomores on the squad. Superstar running back Chris Menick '00 enjoyed a record-setting year at tailback, setting Harvard marks for yards in a season (1,267) and touchdowns (14). His efforts were rewarded with a selection to the All-Ivy First Team.