What do you call a squad that went undefeated last season, won its league championship, and this season will return arguably the best running back in its conference, one on track to be the best in league’s history?

Underdogs.

The Harvard football team, which lost star quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick to graduation last year, is ranked only second in the Ivy League, behind the University of Pennsylvania, according to the preseason poll released Monday at the league media day, held in New Haven, Conn.

Both the Crimson and Penn received eight first-place nods from the 16 reporters voting, but the Quakers edged Harvard out for the tentative recognition by a single point, 120-119.

“This is a brand new team, a brand new dynamic, and polls are basically meaningless at this point. That’s why we play the game,” said Harvard coach Tim Murphy. “Whether you’re picked the first or last, it’s how hungry you are and how you’re doing on the field that matters.”

Harvard and Penn were head-and-shoulders above the rest of the league. Each polled for almost 30 points more than the nearest runners up, even in a season in which third-place Brown could be a third contender in the race for Ivy supremacy. Harvard and Penn have held the top two spots in the Ivy League at season’s end for the past four years, and Penn has been a perennial powerhouse.

“[Number] two means you’re getting a lot of respect from a lot of people,” Murphy said.

“As defending champions, they’re the team to beat. Until someone knocks them off, they’re the team to beat,” Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. “From my perspective, they should have been the top team. They’re the defending champs, they have some marquee kids back, and a fair amount of kids returning with skills.”

The reason that a team so dominant in the past season as Harvard didn’t take first has something to do with its losses to graduation—most notably, Ivy Player of the Year Fitzpatrick, who has since inked a three-year deal with the St. Louis Rams. The Crimson has replacements, but none with real time on the field.

“No one’s going to give us any credit at quarterback until somebody proves that we deserve it,” Murphy said. “We certainly have a lot of question marks—only time will tell.”

The Crimson begins preseason practice August 23—time to be spent lifting weights, running drills, and, most importantly, answering big questions about the team’s competitiveness this season.

“By the time we get to our scrimmage game, hopefully we’ll have a better idea where we are at certain positions in terms of competitiveness, quality, and depth,” Murphy said. “We have some concerns about our depth at defensive line, at linebacker, and concerns about developing our quarterbacks in the system.”

In Philadelphia, the Quakers return six All-Ivy players from last season’s squad, which finished 8-2 (6-1), good enough for second in the league. Penn has won six Ivy titles in coach Al Bagnoli’s 13-year tenure.

“Penn, in the last 25 years, has won the Ivy League championship more than any other team,” Murphy said, adding, “There’s going to be a lot of others in the hunt.”

Bagnoli has said he was surprised to see his team ranked ahead of Brown, which finished third in the poll with 91 points. Harvard preserved its perfect season with second-half heroics last year against Brown, rallying from a three-touchdown deficit to win 35-34. But preseason prognostication has the Bears bringing much the same team that had the Crimson’s back against the wall. Brown’s offense is particularly potent in its current incarnation.

“We’ve been going over a ton of Brown film. They have nine All Ivy players returning,” Murphy said, noting that the Bears return junior receiver Lonnie Hill, who led the Ivy League in receptions in 2003 before taking last season off. “Based upon what I know, Brown’s as good as anybody else.”

The nine All-Ivy players the Bears have back include two-time All Ivy first-team rusher Nick Hartigan and league-leading senior receiver Jarrett Schreck. Like Harvard, however, Brown has yet to settle on a quarterback, and its offensive line has lost four players to graduation.

“Their group of skill kids, especially their offense, may be the best in the league,” Bagnoli said. “That doesn’t include the other five teams. In any given week in this league, anyone can beat anyone else. It somewhat surprised me, the distance between Harvard and Penn and Brown, though.”

Elsewhere in the Ivies, Yale, Cornell, and Princeton formed a second tier in Ivy football, finishing in close succession with 66, 63, and 57 points respectively.

Pollees saw no reason that Dartmouth or Columbia should suddenly reverse their skids of recent years to leap out of the league basement, as the Big Green and the Lions rounded out the Ivy League, receiving 36 and 24 points, respectively.

—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.