Chilled bubbly

Harvard can toast a victory well earned

It was a day of chapped cheeks and stiff fingers, with a freezing wind blowing steadily across Harvard Stadium and tailgates shutting down early. A day when one touchdown might be as good as three, just as it was when these ancient rivals began playing in 1875.

So Harvard's football team did the prudent thing yesterday afternoon, stuffing Yale headfirst into a Sub-Zero fridge and keeping the Bulldogs on a starvation diet, blanking them, 10-0, to win this 125th meeting before a shivering crowd of 31,398 and share the Ivy League title with Brown.

"There's so much parity in our league, it doesn't seem we ever had an easy game," said Crimson coach Tim Murphy, whose varsity (9-1, 6-1 Ivy) won its final eight games to capture the crown (or a piece thereof) for the fourth time in eight years.

This one wasn't easy, despite what the stat sheet said. Harvard controlled the ball for nearly 40 minutes, ran nearly twice as many plays, and gained more than four times as much yardage as Yale, with sophomore tailback Gino Gordon running for 168 and the only touchdown on 39 carries.

Yet the game wasn't decided until the final two minutes, when linebacker Eric Schultz's blindside hit jarred quarterback Brook Hart loose from the ball and tackle Carl Ehrlich recovered on the home 13-yard line to let the offense run out the clock.

"If you showed me the statistics at the beginning of the game, I would have thought it would have been more like last year [Harvard, 37-6]," said Crimson captain Matt Curtis, whose fellow defenders shut out the Bulldogs for the first time since 1992. "But Yale's an amazing team, very tough. Right down to the last second, they were fighting."

The Elis (6-4, 4-3), who lost The Game for the seventh time in eight years, just couldn't dent the scoreboard.

"Our defense played a great game," said coach Jack Siedlecki, whose squad was held scoreless for the first time in 11 years. "We just never got anything going offensively."

Yale managed only 90 yards of total offense, completed just four passes, fumbled three times, and missed a 20-yard field goal. And by the time the Bulldogs took their first snap, only 3:25 remained in the first quarter and Harvard already was up a touchdown after recovering a pooch punt that did (or did not) bounce off Yale return man Gio Christodoulou.

Christodoulou insisted the ball never touched him.

"Not at all," he said.

Bobby Abare agreed.

"I didn't see it hit anybody," the Yale captain said.

The Harvard players, who joyfully pointed to the Bulldog end zone, thought otherwise.

"I definitely thought that it touched the leg of a Yale player," said linebacker Glenn Dorris.

The record will show that the Crimson were awarded the ball on the Yale 13 and that Gordon ran in from the 4 on third down for the only points the hosts needed. Then, after recovering an onside kick at its 46, Harvard kept the ball for nearly five minutes more before missing a field goal attempt.

"I asked one of our guys in the box, 'How many plays have we run? Are you sure?' " said Murphy.

Yale had one good scoring chance before halftime and couldn't cash it as kicker Tom Mante, who had been perfect from inside 30 yards, missed left.

It wasn't until the final four minutes, after Patrick Long had put Harvard ahead, 10-0, with a 23-yard field goal, that the Bulldogs got another chance, when Christodoulou returned a punt 48 yards to the Crimson 8 and a pass interference call on fourth down gave Yale a first down on the 2.

Instead of handing the ball to star back Mike McLeod, who had been getting stuffed on short yardage, Hart threw again to tight end John Sheffield, who was wide open in the end zone but couldn't hang on.

"We had it, we threw it behind him," said Siedlecki. "It was a tough day to throw the football. A tough day to do a lot of things."

What the Crimson needed was a sack, and Schultz promptly delivered, charging in to deliver the killing blow.

"That kind of play you dream about your whole career," he said, "about being able to make that play at the end."

The end was bitter for the Bulldogs, who were coming off huge victories over Brown and Princeton, allowing just 3 points.

"This is definitely not the way we wanted to end our careers," said cornerback Casey Gerald, one of 35 seniors on the squad. "Losing to Harvard is never acceptable in this program."

For Harvard, though, beating Yale has become a delightful habit. Not since the Crimson won 8 of 9 between 1912 and 1922 have they had this kind of a run. As Percy Haughton could have told them, blue obscurity never becomes monotonous.

John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com