Stop me if you've heard this one before.
The Dartmouth football team entered the fourth quarter trailing (stop!) Columbia by four points before turning on the turbo boosters and blowing past the unusually roaring Lions.
Jay and the Miracles have now gone to the fourth quarter with a lead just twice -- against Yale and Bucknell -- but are still riding a four-game winning streak to stretch their record to 5-3 overall, 4-1 in the Ivy League.
What a fun, freaky team. They haven't had a boring game for a month and although they may make you sweat, you still have to love them.
Dartmouth has done its part the last few weeks. By the sheer force of their collective wills -- with a little luck thrown in -- the Big Green have scratched and clawed their way back into the Ivy League race.
Second place is theirs for the taking. Dartmouth needs "only" to win its last two games against Brown and Princeton to guarantee sole possession of second.
And for many teams that would be considered a great season. But not the Big Green, who were the consensus pre-season selection to four-peat as Ivy League champions.
Speaking of Ivy League champions, allow me to digress for a minute. Let's all take our hats off to the outstanding women's soccer team, who learned yesterday that their 12-2-1 overall record and 7-0 Ivy mark led them to their first-ever invitation to the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament.
The women earned the third seed in the four team Northeast bracket and a date this Saturday in Amherst, Mass., with the University of Connecticut, a team that clipped them 2-1 in overtime early in the season. But that was before the real emergence of an extraordinary freshman class that has accounted for a hefty chunk of the team's goals. Two wins and the women advance to the final four.
Football gets most of the attention come each weekend, but the Big Green women's soccer squad is really an amazing team. Not only did it go undefeated in league play, but it didn't have a single goal scored upon it in the process.
So congratulations to women's soccer, good luck this weekend and now ... back to football.
Dartmouth must now pray for a miracle more astounding then either of their comeback victories the last few weeks, a miracle over which they have absolutely no control.
The University of Pennsylvania Quakers must lose.
Penn has dominated the Ivy League this season. Take away its opening day 10-6 defeat of Dartmouth and Penn's average margin of victory over Ivy League foes is an amazing 37 points.
Princeton, previously undefeated in the Ivy League, and senior running back Keith Elias, barely phased the Quakers.
How stupid does Elias feel? Before the game, he said that many of the Penn football players were not smart enough to get into Princeton.
Nice brain work yourself, Keith. Like Penn needed any other reason to be psyched for this game, played before more than 35,000 fans during Penn's Homecoming.
Elias, who entered the game as the Division I-AA rushing leader averaging 180 gazillion yards a game, was held to 59 yards by a vicious Quaker defense and Penn swamped Princeton, 30-14.
Penn has the best defense and the best offense in the Ivy League, and has the fourth and sixth place teams left to play in the season to knock the Big Green off their throne.
This weekend, Penn travels to Harvard (1-4 in the Ivies) for Harvard Coach Joe Restic's final home game after 23 years at the helm of the Crimson.
Harvard could be riding an emotional high.
Penn could come up flat after an emotional victory over Princeton, after which their fans rushed the field and tore down the goal post.
Harvard's multi-flex offense could cause the Quaker defense some problems.
Penn might be due for a loss.
Harvard is due for a win.
Not likely? How likely does a team fail eight different times to punch the ball in from the one-yard line and lose, 13-7? Dartmouth lost the second game of the season against Holy Cross for this very reason.
How likely is a blocked extra point returned for two points? Joe Perry '94 did just that three weekends ago against Cornell.
How likely is a 17- point comeback with 16 minutes left in the game? The Big Green managed a victory two weekends ago against Harvard during Homecoming.
How likely is the perennial doormat of the Ivy League guarding a lead against the three-time defending champ going into the last quarter? Dartmouth faced that situation last weekend against Columbia.
This is the Ivy League. And this is Big Green football. Strange things happen each and every week.
And it seems to me like a Harvard upset would be fitting for all the Penn fans who tore down the goal post and tossed it in the Schuylkill River after the victory over Princeton. Still got two games to go folks -- calm down just a bit.
So now the Big Green must hope this increasingly strange Ivy League season takes one more turn for the weird.
Stranger things have happened. And how strange will this next line be?
Go Harvard.
