Harvard football is one of the oldest programs in the world. The Crimson represent a tradition stretching back to 1874, when the sport didn't yet have codified rules. The program's golden age came under Percy Haughton (1908–1916), whose 71-7-5 record and three national championships (1910, 1912, 1913) pioneered modern football strategy. Haughton was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951. The modern era belongs to Tim Murphy (1994–2023), who compiled 200 wins—the most in Ivy League history—and captured 10 conference titles. Murphy's 19-10 record against Yale remains among the program's greatest achievements.

Harvard Stadium (1903) was the first large reinforced-concrete stadium in the United States and inadvertently shaped modern football. In 1906, when the Intercollegiate Football Conference proposed widening the field to reduce violent collisions (18 deaths that year), Harvard objected because the concrete structure could not expand. The forward pass was legalized instead—a rule change directly catalyzed by Harvard's stadium design. The stadium was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

Andrew Aurich was hired in February 2024 from Rutgers. In his first season, Aurich won a shared Ivy title. The 2025 season promised to be transformational: the Crimson went 9-1 and looked positioned to claim the outright Ivy championship. Then came The Game. On November 22, 2025, Yale defeated Harvard 45–28 in the 141st edition of the rivalry, ending the Crimson's undefeated season and handing Yale the conference title and automatic FCS playoff berth. Harvard received an at-large bid but lost their first-round playoff game to Villanova, 52-7, ending the season at 9–2. The wound is fresh: a season of excellence was undone by a single moment and then a collapse.

Harvard fans are newly aware of what FCS playoff football demands and of the gap between Ivy dominance and national competition. The 2026 season begins with the weight of that knowledge and the determination to prove that the 2025 campaign was not a mirage but the beginning of a new era.