He was a perfect 3-for-3 on the day.

He had made eight of his last attempts dating back to the second week of the season.

But as Princeton kicker Derek Javarone stood 41 yards out with a chance to end Penn’s almost three-year-long hold on the Ivy League, everyone from Philadelphia to Cambridge knew what would happen next.

Wide right. The Quakers win, 16-15.

Somehow, despite outrushing Penn by 105 yards, holding a nearly eight-minute advantage in time of possession and only giving the Quakers four full second-half possessions—two of which ended in turnovers—Princeton still managed to lose the football game.

If you want a quick overview of the Tigers recent history, just take the brief recap above, fill in a different Ivy team and then fill in a different heartbreaking way to lose. Makes a great game for dinner parties and bar mitzvahs.

Speaking of folding like a cheap card table, Yale watched a 17-7 second quarter lead turn into a 24-17 defeat at the hands of Brown in Providence. Bulldog quarterback Alvin Cowan’s 419-yard performance—36 more yards than the Bears gained total—was wasted as barefoot kicker Andrew Sullivan missed three field goals after connecting on his first attempt of the day. Since Ivy League kickers seem to be having enough trouble with their shoes on, I don’t think there’s any reason to be adding a degree of difficulty.

As the dust cleared on Saturday, Penn and Harvard still reigned supreme with 5-0 league marks and sat two games ahead of Cornell—the only other team with a winning record in league play.

One more time. Cornell is alone in third place in the Ivy League.

Can the Big Red stay there? Let’s take a look at this weekend’s action and find out:

YALE (4-4, 2-3) vs. PRINCETON (4-4, 2-3)

No matter how hard they may try, both of these teams cannot lose this game. They became aware of this last year when Princeton gave up a 22-yard touchdown as time expired, allowing Yale to force overtime.

After trading touchdowns in the first extra session, the Bulldogs settled for a field goal in its half of the second. Tiger wide receiver B.J. Symanski—now an overpaid member of the Cincinnati Reds organization—caught the first pass for Princeton during its half of the second overtime period, but seeing the endzone just 12 yards in front of him he alertly fumbled the football to clinch the loss for his side.

Crisis averted.

From here, I feel it’s instructive to take a quick glance at the introduction to the weekly release for the Yale-Princeton game, reproduced here (with my editorial comments in brackets.)

“Neither Yale nor Princeton is playing for an Ivy title [because they are not good at football], but plenty [a generous exaggeration] is on the line at Yale Bowl this Saturday in the nationally televised (YES Network, 4 p.m.) [and what percentage of the nation receives YES?] contest. In addition to pride [forever lost after losing to Cornell]…the heated rivalry and the fact that most Old Blue consider the Big Three the only games that really matter [easy to say when you’ve been eliminated from the Ivy title hunt for a good month now], the Elis and Old Nassau need some momentum [because they’ve been especially terrible of late] heading into the off-season for recruiting [which these teams need to do a lot of] and team spirit. The Bulldogs and Tigers kick it off at 12:35 p.m. [and fumble the kickoff at 12:36 p.m.] and can be heard in Connecticut on WELI (960 AM) and WYBC (1340 AM) [begging the age old question, if a football game is broadcast over airwaves, but no one is tuning in to hear it, does it actually make a sound?].”

I’m going to pick Yale here by three, only because I’m convinced that Princeton will find some way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

COLUMBIA (1-7, 1-4) vs. CORNELL (3-5, 3-2)

There’s nothing offensive about this game.

To put it in terms the betting folks out there would understand, unless the over/under on this contest is in single digits, take the under.

Currently, it sits at 34 points. These two teams don’t have a chance of combining for 34 points in eight quarters much less four. This is quite possibly the easiest money in sports, short of betting on “positive” for Portland Trail Blazer drug tests.

Columbia might come out a bit energized this weekend after vacationing in Cambridge during their self-imposed bye week. The trip culminated in a light scrimmage on Saturday against Harvard, during which quarterback Jeff Otis got some much needed rest—after being pulled in the third quarter—as did the offense, which took it easy en route to scoring zero points.

If it weren’t for the statistical outlier that is Dartmouth, the Lions would be the joke of the Ivy League. Regardless, they’re still the weekly joke of this column.

Cornell will win this game by two touchdowns, because the sport is football and the opponent is Columbia.

DARTMOUTH (0-8, 0-4) vs. BROWN (5-3, 2-3)

It’s a bit unfair to ridicule the Cornell and Columbia scoring woes without mentioning Dartmouth, the queen bee of offensive impotence.

Over the past six games, the Big Green has scored just six touchdowns and no field goals. Dartmouth has also failed to record a successful point-after conversion on three of those six scores.

The Big Green ranks worst in the league in a variety of statistical categories, including but not limited to scoring offense, rushing offense, total offense, passing efficiency, turnover margin, first downs, field goals made and third-down conversions.

Brown will take this game by a comfortable two touchdown margin, moving Dartmouth one loss away from becoming the first 0-10 Ivy team since the Bears in 1992.

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu. His "Around the Ivy League" appears every Friday.