The Harvard football team is one win away from an undefeated season and sole possession of the Ivy League title.

Let’s go through what we know first, and then we can talk about why none of it matters much.

1. The Harvard football team is your 2014 Ivy League champion. With a 34-24 win over Penn Saturday, the Crimson clinched a share of coach Tim Murphy’s eighth Ivy title and moved one game away from a perfect season.

2. Junior Paul Stanton’s 235 rushing yards in the game provided another historical moment this season. He carried the team and still managed to outrun Quaker defenders, finishing with the most rushing yards since 1997 and the most all-purpose yards in the Murphy era.

3. Harvard’s defense had its worst day of the year numerically, surrendering more points than it had in the three previous weeks combined, but it held when it needed to.

Late in the third quarter, Penn had driven to the Harvard 20-yard line, already up by seven. The shade was creeping across Franklin Field as the Crimson’s hopes of an undefeated season dimmed.

On second down, sophomore defensive end Miles McCollum was forced to play coverage against a no-huddle attack. He did so admirably, forcing an incompletion. Junior defensive back Chris Evans then perfectly defended a fade in the end zone, leading to a field goal attempt—which was blocked.

The Crimson did not allow another first down after that point while its offense scored three times to eviscerate what was a seven-point Quakers lead. The rest might be history.

But here is where we get to the “but.”

Week 10. Yale. The Game.

Three years ago, the Bulldogs reorganized their program with a single goal in mind: beating Harvard. They swiped Crimson coaches, recreated Murphy’s system—camo hats and all—and brought in transfers at quarterback and running back to speed up the recovery process.

Now, they are a game away from completing the plan. Yale enters Saturday 8-1, 5-1 in league play, with its lone loss coming by seven points to Dartmouth on a late touchdown.

But that was just a loss in a game—fractionally as significant as a potential loss in The Game.

I’m looking forward to asking Harvard players how they would feel sharing the championship with Yale during media availability Wednesday, though I bet I can already imagine what they will say.

I bet members of the 1974 and 1968 teams would have similar thoughts. Those are the only two years Harvard and Yale have split the title since 1956, though the Crimson lost neither of those Games.

On the other side, Yale entered The Game in 2007 looking to complete an unbeaten season, and Harvard won, 37-6, to steal the Ivy title outright (the Crimson has actually kept the Bulldogs from finishing unblemished the last four times they entered The Game 9-0).