Escape Hatch
Andrew Hatch in his LSU days
I can’t say I’m surprised… in fact, I have been predicting for more than a year that Andrew Hatch would indeed be on the Harvard active roster for this season.
And today, his name and picture are on the Crimson website along with a nice bio.
Now, we’ll have to wait a little longer to find out if the second part of my long-running prediction will also come true. I believe Hatch will be the starting QB for Harvard when the season begins on September 18th.
Is he going to set the league on fire and guide the Crimson to a 10-0 season?
Not quite, in my opinion. But I do think he will be an upgrade over Collier Winters, a great QB in his own right but he wasn’t able to deliver the big scores when Harvard needed them last year, (really just against Penn, but that was the one game that really counted in 2009), and Hatch has a bigger body and better experience under his belt.
Putting Hatch under center should put some concerns about the Crimson to rest. The offense has some holes to fill on the O-line, but with a backfield of Treavor Scales, Gino Gordon, and the excellent running Hatch… the blocking job will be a lot easier for everyone.
But I do think Tim Murphy may be playing with fire with his decision. If he does start Hatch, that could very well lead to some very angry reactions from Winters and his supporters in the locker room. A good long winning streak would probably erase most hard feelings, but Harvard’s crucial game at Brown is a week two contest before any real momentum can be achieved.
If he goes with Winters and the Harvard offense struggles at all, there will be growing rumblings for Murphy to change his mind. QB controversies can often help players play better, but the unique circumstances of Hatch’s career and his multiple transfers make for a sticky situation in Cambridge.
Meanwhile, over at Yale there’s another QB controversy brewing.
After toying with the idea of quitting football and concentrating on a very promising baseball career, Brook Hart is back with the gridders and poised to take a shot at Patrick Witt’s starting spot.
I thought Witt showed only a few inconsistent flashes of brilliance last season, while Hart never really looked like a top passer in this league to me. But in this case, I think the competition will be good for the Elis. Yale was the weakest team in the Ivies last season, (despite the weird win over the Lions), and a fight for the most important position on the team should fire up the squad as a whole.
THANKS!!!
In July, visits to this blog were up 43.3% from July of 2009! Your interest humbles me.
posted by Jake @ 7:35:00 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Enough about this guy. If he were not a star football player, Harvard would never have readmitted him after he left Harvard after his freshman year and then ended
up as a communications major at L.S.U. What you have here is a often-injured 24 year old professional football player type who has been all over the place during the last seven years. Look at Hatch's 2008 L.S.U. football blog. He's had more issues than 15or 20 Ivy League players combined.
I agree with the first post and Jake. Hatch will need to stay healthy and in that case will have to perform under pressure he really didn't see at LSU. He has the potential to be a great QB, but, has a lot of baggage to go with it. He left LSU because he knew he was not going to get much playing time. I am guessing that is why he left Harvard to go LSU. In anycase, I don't think he will be as big of a factor as people are making him out to be.
Harvard is now almost equal to Penn in my disdain for opponents. The only other coach who would have taken Hatch is Bags. I hope both teams go winless and play each other to a 0 0 tie. The hypocrisy out of Cambridge is nothing new, and the Amaker recruiting binge is the tip of the iceberg.
According to the L.S.U website, Hatch injured his knee playing soccer while on his Mormon mission overseas. He then had his knee surgically repaired in the United States, but instead of returning to his Mormon mission he apparently transferred from Harvard to L.S.U. to play big-time football for the coach who had recruited Hatch when Hatch was in high school in Nevada and that coach was at Brigham Young. After spending two years at L.S.U., Hatch had another reawakening and thanks to the Harvard Athletics Department and glorious Harvard Admissions Office was allowed to re-enter Cambridge for the express purpose of leading the Crimson on their current important spiritual mission to defeat Penn, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Princeton, Cornell and Dartmouth for an Ivy League Football Title. The Hatch Affair is a disgrace to Harvard and the Ivy League.
REmember the book from about 20 years ago, "America, Harvard Hates You"? I do. The current version is "America, Get out of Harvard's Way". I have a shrink friend who loves Harvard for providing him with so many patients, those who went to Harvard and found life thereafter to be a letdown, and those who wanted to go, were rejected, and never got over it. So Jake, in an informal poll of your readers, which school is hated the most, Penn for its insecurity psychosis or Harvard for its superiority/ubermensch psychosis?
Anyone who "hates" either school has a psychosis of their own.
LOOKS LIKE PEYTON MANNING
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