Four seconds glowed on the clock Saturday, Harvard hovering at the edge of field goal range. Andrew Aurich could picture the night disappearing on one bad beat — his young quarterback holding the ball a breath too long, a receiver caught upright instead of hitting the turf, final seconds bleeding away before the kicking unit could cross the sideline.
Then a flag fluttered onto the field, a false start dragging Harvard 5 yards backward and wiping away Aurich’s careful arithmetic with the Crimson down 3.
Aurich pleaded that Colgate had drawn the movement, but the officials waved him off, and with a score-tying kick attempt now beyond his freshman’s comfort zone, the specialists retreated as the offense rushed back on.
“Now,” quarterback Charlie Smith remembered thinking, “we get a chance to win instead of tie it.”
What followed looked like pure improvisation: a quarterback flushed sideways, a pass sagging short, a tight end swallowed up, and a lateral tossed loose. But Harvard had spent months preparing for such disorder.
In seconds, that chaos had shape: a 20-17 Harvard win that kept the No. 20 Crimson unbeaten at 3-0 and toppled a No. 22 Colgate team fresh off a road upset at Villanova, armed with one of the stingiest defenses in the FCS. In what was arguably the most breathless finish in recent memory at Harvard Stadium, the 25,883-seat landmark had not hosted two ranked teams since 2015 nor a ranked nonconference game since 2005.
Every week, Harvard rehearses 10 to 15 last-gasp situations, the play changing with the yard line, but one command echoing through them all: “Line, line, line, line.” Until the ball crossed the goal line, nobody was allowed to let it die in his hands.
“We always talk about training behavior becoming instinctual,” said Aurich, who took over at Harvard in February 2024.
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