The story starts even before “the other guy” left.

“The other guy,” of course, is how Harvard coach Tim Murphy refers to Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05, the 2004 Ivy Player of the Year who captained the 2004 Harvard football team to a 10-0 season and became the first Ivy quarterback to be drafted since 1984. It’s unfair, Murphy said, to put a new signal caller up against

that standard.

But before Fitzpatrick made his triumphant departure, and before last year’s perfect season was even completed, the fight to fill his vacancy was already begun. It has continued from last fall’s junior varsity games through winter conditioning, from spring ball to summer practices and into the 2005 preseason.

The season begins Saturday. The quarterback search has been narrowed to two.

The story? Not even close to over.

FIRST AND TWO

Sophomore Liam O’Hagan had the chance to play Division I-A ball. A standout two-way athlete from the Breck School in Minnesota, he was recruited as a safety by Boston College, Colorado, Minnesota, and Vanderbilt.

His heart lay with the quarterback role, however. As a senior he threw for 55 touchdowns and 3,812 yards, leading his team to a state championship. He was considered the top Minnesota prospect at that position and a top 40 recruit nationwide.

When Harvard came calling, the offer of a job solely on the offensive side of the ball was too enticing to pass up.

“There’s nothing like running around hitting guys, tackling guys, making interceptions and stuff,” O’Hagan said, “but being the leader of the team and being in charge out there is really something that I love doing.”

Last fall, while the Crimson embarked on its title campaign, O’Hagan was essentially the third man on the depth chart, behind Fitzpatrick and senior Garrett Schires. He didn’t attempt a single pass in his three games of garbage time. His practice came with the JV squad, where he was in competition with classmate Chris Pizzotti for that third quarterback slot.

Like O’Hagan, Pizzotti saw almost no action in 2004, with his one appearance coming at the end Harvard’s season-opening 35-0 blowout of Holy Cross. And like O’Hagan, the 6’5 native of Reading, Mass., boasted an impressive high school resume. He was the Reading Memorial school record holder with 40 career touchdowns and 3,300 passing yards.

During the 2004 season and the winter conditioning that followed, the identity of Fitzpatrick’s successor was far from settled. Nevertheless, said offensive coordinator Dave Cecchini, “it was going to be definitely those two guys competing.”

Between the Ivy championship and the first practice of spring, two things would happen to change that. One was that Pizzotti would injure his back lifting the week before spring practices started, putting him out of commission until fall.