Things just keep getting better for Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05.

After leading his Buffalo Bills to a 3-0 start, the former Crimson quarterback has gone from a player little known outside Harvard Yard and upstate New York to a national media darling in a matter of weeks (as an example, if Fitzpatrick’s Google Trends chart were a polygraph, he would have been accused of recently telling more lies than Pinocchio).

(Continued)

Harvard football alum, Eric LaHaie ’02, has headed to the Sahara Desert to race in honor of his late teammate and friend, Niall Murphy ’02.

LaHaie and Murphy were best friends and both All-Ivy defenders for the Crimson.

Murphy, who was also a hurdler on the track and field team, suffered from diabetes at a young age and passed away suddenly in February due to complications from juvenile diabetes.

(Continued)

Buffalo Bills and former Harvard quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05 has enjoyed quite a bit of attention recently for leading a perennially underachieving team to an unblemished 3-0 record. After Fitzy’s heroics against the Patriots, ESPN named the former Crimson star as the top player in this week’s Cross-Sport Power Rankings.

That was just one of several ESPN features on Fitzpatrick in recent weeks. Another that has grabbed the attention of many (including our very own Greg Mankiw) was an interview with Fitzy during ESPN’s NFL Sunday Countdown.

Rachel Nichols sat down with Fitzpatrick to talk about what everyone else talks to Fitzpatrick about: what it means to play in the NFL without having come from Auburn, LSU, Florida, etc. Instead of letting this bit be like the hundreds of interviews that discuss how hard it is for a Harvard man to throw a football, the segment added a new twist.

Find out after the jump!

(Continued)

Our alumni tracker for the week again remains focused on Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05, who completed Mission: Impossible on Sunday, when he led Buffalo to victory over New England for the first time in eight years.

The Harvard alum, who is currently leading in ESPN.com’s poll for AFC East Player of the week, threw for a season-high 369 yards, completing 27-of-40 throws with two touchdown passes. With the help of running back Fred Jackson and a couple of key interceptions by his defense, Fitzpatrick directed a come-from-behind win to give the Bills’ their first 3-0 record since 2008.

(Continued)

The artistic folk aren’t normally the kind to make a big splash at a football game.

But at Friday night’s football game, a pair of on-field performances caught the attention of the 18,565 in attendance.

Entertainment during pauses in games has been around almost as long as the sports themselves. Still, the Harvard Crimson Dance Team may have taken its mandate to entertain a little too far. The troupe came on at the end of the first quarter, but as the Crimson and Brown made their way back onto the field, the dancers didn’t move.

And for a solid 30 seconds, the dancers and the football players shared the gridiron, much to the confusion of the fans and apparent bewilderment of the referees.

The stranger performance of the night came from Brown’s band at halftime. It started just like any other band performance—unfamiliar fight songs, two-year-old cultural references—when it took a rather peculiar turn.

They arranged themselves like, well, what looked like a male sex organ that spanned most of the length of the field. I’m not sure if they meant to give Harvard the shaft.

So, without further ado, readers can choose their cheap one-liner about the picture from the following options:

1. It definitely looked smaller than when they practiced. Must’ve been cold.

2. 25-second routine? That’s about right.

3. Insert your own joke based on the fact that the name of the school is, hilariously, Brown.

It was an exciting game, and it was much tighter throughout the contest than the final score indicates. But there really is nothing quite like a little fifth-grade humor to make a rainy football Friday game that much better.