Tenacious Bulldog

Yale captain Bobby Abare earns Harvard's attention

NEW HAVEN - Bobby Abare probably could get away with it. He and kid brother (by five minutes) Larry may not look as identical as the gymnastic Hamm twins, but they're close enough to fool most folks. So why couldn't Bobby slip on Larry's jersey next year and play a game or two?

"Why not, right?" ponders Yale's football captain. "Right now, we've got a facial-hair thing going on, so people can't really tell the difference. People who know us well can tell us apart, but people who've only met us a couple of times have no clue."

Larry, who missed almost all of last season with a knee injury, gets another 10 games next year. Bobby's college career ends Saturday at Harvard Stadium, where the Bulldogs take on the Crimson for the 125th time before a full house with a piece of the Ivy title at stake.

"I can't wait to see him go," says Harvard coach Tim Murphy. "I've said that about a few Yale players, but I can't remember saying it any more than about Bobby Abare."

Murphy and half a dozen other Ivy coaches may well turn up here next May just to make sure that the linebacker from Acton, Mass., gets his diploma. It may be the only time they'll ever see him standing still. No defender in the league has created more havoc over the last four autumns than Abare, who has run back three of his 10 interceptions for touchdowns.

"He's always on the ball," says Princeton coach Roger Hughes, who watched in dismay three years ago as Abare dashed 27 yards with a recovered fumble to set up the winning touchdown in Yale's last-minute road shocker, then saw him set up last week's killer score at Yale Bowl with an interception. "He does a great job in getting to where he needs to be."

Even if it's not theoretically where Abare is supposed to be. His best quality, teammates and rivals attest, is his football instinct, his ability to sense what's likely to happen as soon as (if not before) the ball is snapped.

"Someone once asked me what the play call was," Abare says. "I said, 'I don't know. Just go play.' "

That's what Abare did on both sides of the ball for four remarkable years at Acton-Boxborough, which won a state-record 50 straight games and four Super Bowl titles, with Bobby rushing for a school-record 4,100 yards. He and Larry, who starred at both wingback and safety, had multiple options for college, with most schools happy to take them as a package.

"We went to all the places and we liked them all," says Abare, who checked out Harvard along the way. "When we came here, we said, 'Yeah, this is the place for us to be.' "

Turnaround takes hold

Part of the attraction for the Abares was to help jack up a program that hadn't won an Ivy title in five years or beaten Harvard in four.

"They'd had success in the late '90s and it seemed to be falling off," Bobby says. "Larry and I thought we both could bring a positive attitude that had been lacking just a little bit. We weren't going to turn it around by ourselves, but we had some great classmates."

When Yale lost four of its first six games in 2005, it came as a shock to Abare, for whom defeats had been as rare as a blue moon.

"It was disheartening and discouraging," he recalls. "We had a bunch of losses that were a lot like this year, by a touchdown or less. Larry and I and a couple of other guys got the rest of the freshmen together and said, 'We're not going to be like this the next three years.' We were the rebellious freshmen. We didn't want to go that way for the rest of our career here."

The Princeton victory that year, with Yale scoring two touchdowns in the final 74 seconds, was the first glimmer of a turnaround. The following week, Abare found himself starting for the first time against Harvard and promptly jarred the ball loose from Clifton Dawson, the Crimson's All-America tailback, saving a touchdown.

"It was pretty surreal, being in front of 50,000 for your first start," he says. "I don't think I've ever been more excited for a game."

Despite taking an 18-point lead, the Bulldogs ended up on the wrong side of a triple-overtime decision, but the program clearly was on the rebound. The breakthrough came the next season with an overtime triumph against Pennsylvania, whom Yale hadn't mastered in six years.

"Penn had been a dominant team," Abare says. "When we beat them, that was the turning point. We said, 'We've got a shot to do something special this year.' "

The Bulldogs went on to whip Harvard in the Stadium for their first Ivy title since 1999, then won their first nine games last year before the Crimson wrecked their undefeated season with a 37-6 throttling in the Bowl. This autumn, with three losses in the first six games, admittedly has been bumpier.

"Early in the season, we put a little too much pressure on ourselves instead of just going out there and playing," Abare says. "Maybe some of us thought, 'Let's go undefeated.' It's not that simple."

Difference-maker

The league may have more depth and balance this year than ever, with half of the eight teams still in contention for a piece of the title and one Saturday remaining. After stifling unbeaten Brown and blanking Princeton for the first time since 1937, the Bulldogs are in the hunt. The nation's stingiest defense has been the difference, and Abare has been the difference on the defense.

"Bobby plays with such a passion," says coach Jack Siedlecki, who thinks that Abare could be the best defender in Yale history. "He just loves the game. He'll never let anybody quit. It doesn't matter how down anything could be."

Abare still plays with the same concussive abandon, the same fierce energy, the same irrepressible optimism, the same belief that he can determine the outcome.

"That's always been a constant of his character," testifies Larry, who starts at safety.

In this season's double-overtime triumph over Holy Cross, Bobby picked off two passes, returning one for a score. In a 12-10 loss at Fordham, he ran 86 yards with a recovered fumble for the Bulldogs' only touchdown. Last week, his second-quarter interception set up the touchdown that put Princeton away.

"Bobby thinks he can win the game," says Siedlecki. "He has that mentality, and it's so hard to instill in kids. You talk to players all the time, telling them they can make the difference, but Bobby plays that way. He plays like every play could be the biggest play of the game."

Abare's intensity doesn't end in November.

"In our first offseason lift after last year, Bobby and I were working together, says fullback Shebby Swett. "He put his weights on and I put my weights on and he looks over and says, 'That's it? Really?' I said, 'Yeah, I think so.' And he said, 'No, you can do more.' "

Nobody on the team does more than Abare or expects more of himself, which makes him a superb captain, along with his acceptance that most of his teammates can't match his passion for the game.

"When I was first thinking about being captain, I thought I'd like to have everyone be intense and have the same attitude as I do," says Abare, whose teammates voted him the squad's hardest-working, most competitive and toughest player. "As time went on, I thought, that's not the way it really goes. People prepare differently, especially at a school like Yale where you have kids who are involved in anything and everything. So I tell them just to go about it their own way. Be ready to go. That's the bottom line."

Once the Harvard Stadium clock runs out Saturday afternoon, Abare will have done all he can for Yale. Unless, of course, his twin will let him be his body double for a game or two next year.

"I'm sure Bobby would love to do that," says Larry with a chuckle. "I'd definitely consider it, but I'd probably be a little selfish myself. But I'd give my uniform to him if I could."

They've been twinned up on the gridiron ever since their Pop Warner days, when Larry remembers Bobby writing "Run Hard" on his pants.

"It'll be strange after the Harvard game, win or lose," Bobby acknowledges. "Either way, it'll be tough to experience. I can't imagine coming back to the game next year and seeing him out there."

John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com