Senior quarterback Quinn Epperly will lead Princeton at home against Harvard this week in a match-up of two of the three teams that remain unbeaten in Ivy League play. A dynamic Dartmouth squad surprised Yale in New Haven last weekend to stay even with Epperly’s Tigers and Hempel’s Crimson.

You know that inevitable scene in House where all the young doctors think their patient has Lupus? Or maybe you’d relate better with CSI, and that moment you know is coming 30 minutes in when they bring in a suspect. It’s never Lupus, and that first guy never did it.

That scene always seems so scripted, right? So fake. But it’s not. It’s probably the most realistic scene in the series. That scene is all around us, playing out every day.

Don’t believe me? Just look at where we are five games into the Ivy League season (you were wondering when we’d actually get to the football, weren’t you?).

If we were doctors, here is the evidence we’d have to make a diagnosis.

The League appears to have separated into two tiers. In the bottom half, Penn, Brown, Cornell and Columbia are a combined 3-17, with the only Ivy win among the group coming when Penn (1-4, 1-1 Ivy) beat Columbia (0-5, 0-2 Ivy). The Bears (2-3, 0-2 Ivy) will likely rise to the top of that bunch, with their two losses coming to Harvard by eight points and Princeton by 11. But the rest? Forget them.

The other four teams have presented piles of contradictory evidence that we as crime investigators would have to sort through to identify the best team. Here is each’s resume:

Yale (4-1, 1-1 Ivy) beat FBS-level Army, has scored 30 points in every game with the best rushing offense and passing offense in the game, and has an offensive line that has given up only five sacks.

As impressive as the Bulldogs have been, Dartmouth (4-1, 2-0) beat them in New Haven, 38-31, on Oct. 11 after beating Princeton at the end of last season. The Big Green also boast some of the league’s most dynamic individual players, with conference-leading returner Ryan McManus, everywhere-linebacker Will McNamara and electric quarterback Dalyn Williams.

Princeton (3-2, 2-0) has two losses, but both were on the road and out of conference. The Tigers are the only team with a top-three scoring offense and scoring defense thus far, and Harvard coach Tim Murphy said that’s for real. While Princeton has needed to rack up points  to win in years past, the Tigers are a balanced team with talent everywhere now. They’ve given up just 1.7 yards per rushing attempt.

Harvard’s (5-0, 2-0) defense has been flat-out dominant, giving up just over 10 points per game. But the Crimson has yet to play a team that currently has a winning record, so how much do we really know?

With so much conflicting evidence and so much missing evidence, we fall back on what we know, just like the doctors diagnosing lupus or the cops going after the guy who already has a rap sheet.

Harvard and Princeton shared the Ivy title last year, which was the biggest reason they were “1a” and “1b” in the preseason media poll. Five games in, there is no compelling reason to change that.

But as Dr. House knows, the easy, established answer is rarely the right one. That’s why we love sports, too. It starts out looking the same each year, but as we run more tests and gather more evidence, something unique emerges.

The truth will come out over the next five weeks, starting Saturday when Harvard travels to Princeton. But the full diagnosis might not be clear until the final week of the year. With Yale coming to Cambridge and Dartmouth playing the Tigers, the schedule sets up for as much drama as any primetime show on FOX.

Here are my predictions for the first full week of Ivy play.