The Game (college football)
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| Yale (64) | Harvard (50) |
|---|---|
| 1876 1878 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1886 1887 1889 1891 1892 1893 1894 1900 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1909 1916 1923 1924 1926 1927 1931 1932 1934 1935 1936 1939 1942 1945 1946 1947 1949 1950 1952 1955 1956 1957 1960 1963 1967 1969 1972 1973 1976 1977 1978 1980 1981 1984 1985 1988 1990 1991 1993 1994 1998 1999 2000 | 1875 1890 1898 1901 1908 1912 1913 1914 1915 1919 1920 1921 1922 1928 1929 1930 1933 1937 1938 1940 1941 1948 1953 1954 1958 1959 1961 1962 1964 1965 1966 1970 1971 1974 1975 1979 1982 1983 1986 1987 1989 1992 1995 1996 1997 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 |
| Ties (8) | |
| 1879 1897 1899 1910 1911 1925 1951 1968 | |
The Game (always capitalized) is a title given to several U.S. college football rivalry games, but most particularly the annual contest between the Harvard University "Crimson" and the Yale University "Bulldogs" or "Elis". The Game is played in November at the end of the football season, and the venue alternates between Harvard Stadium and the Yale Bowl. In 2003, the rivalry was rated the sixth-best in college athletics by Sports Illustrated On Campus (after Alabama-Auburn, Duke-North Carolina, UCLA-USC, Army-Navy, and Cal-Stanford). As of 2005, Yale leads the series 64-50-8.
History
The first meeting of the teams occurred on November 13 1875 at Hamilton Field in New Haven; Harvard won 4-0. In the early years The Game was played under rules resembling modern rugby, and was particularly brutal. In the second half of The Game of 1892, Harvard introduced the flying wedge formation, devised by chess master Lorin F. Deland, which so devastated Yale players that it was outlawed the following season (nevertheless, Yale won 6-0). After The Game of 1894, about which newspapers reported seven players carried off the field "in dying condition", the two schools broke off all official contact including athletic competition for two years. Since resuming in 1897, The Game has been played annually except during the First and Second World Wars. The first known reference to "The Game" occurs in an 1898 letter by former Harvard captain A. F. Holden (class of 1888) to Harvard coach Cam Forbes on the occasion of The Game being permanently moved to the end of the season ("it also makes the Yale-Harvard game the game of the season"). But capitalized reference to The Game appears to have been first made by columnist Red Smith in the late 1940s, and it first appeared on the cover of The Game program in 1960.
2005 was the 122nd playing of The Game, making Harvard-Yale the third-most-played college football rivalry, after Lehigh-Lafayette and Princeton-Yale. The 2005 Game was one of the series' most dramatic games. Harvard came back from being down 21-3 at the half to tie it up at 24 with a Liam O'Hagan two-point conversion. After three overtimes that saw two fumbles and two interceptions, Harvard running back Clifton Dawson '07 scored the winning touchdown. The 30-24 victory was Harvard's fifth straight in the series.
Significance
For many students and alumni of Harvard and Yale, The Game is an important event. The schools are located only a few hours' travel from one another; and, perhaps because they are generally regarded as among the nation's most prestigious (as well as being two of the three oldest), the rivalry is intense. Beating the rival is often considered more important than the team's season record. Furthermore, since Ivy League schools do not participate in post-season football games, The Game is usually the final game of the season (except for 1919, when Harvard beat Yale 3-0 and went on to the Rose Bowl, where they defeated Oregon 7-6); since most Ivy League football players do not go on to professional careers in the sport (the league does not offer athletic scholarships), it is almost always the graduating seniors' final organized game.The Game is significant for historical reasons. The schools that would become the Ivy League played a large part in the development of American football in the late 19th century; football's rules, conventions, and equipment, as well as elements of "atmosphere" such as the mascot and fight song, include many elements pioneered or nurtured at Harvard and Yale. For many years, The Game was also likely to determine the Ivy League championship, although recently it has been rare to find both schools enjoying a strong season simultaneously. The Game receives relatively little national attention today; most college football fans are now more interested in the quasi-professional games at the larger institutions whose teams are made up of scholarship athletes, many of them bound for professional careers. The huge seating capacities of Harvard Stadium and the Yale Bowl, however, testify to the vast crowds, including many "locals" without official ties to either university, who once attended The Game.
Trivia
In what is usually considered the best Game, in 1968, the Harvard team made a miraculous last-moment comeback, scoring 16 points in the final 42 seconds to tie a highly-touted Yale squad. Yale was coming off a 16 game winning streak and its quarterback, Brian Dowling, had not lost a game he had started since the sixth grade. The tie left both teams 8-0-1 for the season, inspiring the Harvard Crimson to print the headline "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29!!" [link] The Harvard offensive tackle was Tommy Lee Jones, later to find fame in Hollywood.The Game is an inviting target for pranksters. The most famous exploit was carried out at Harvard Stadium during the second quarter in 1982, when a Harvard score was immediately followed by a huge black weather balloon, previously installed under the 45 yard line by students from MIT as the letters painted on its side proclaimed, slowly inflating until it exploded, spraying talcum powder over the field (Harvard won, 45-7). On November 18, 1990, during the third quarter of The Game, MIT students carried out a less surreptitious assault by firing a rocket which hung an MIT banner over the goal post. In 2004, some Yale students impersonated the (non-existent) Harvard pep squad, handed out placards to some 1,800 adult Harvard fans, and alleged that by holding up the placards they would be spelling out "GO HARVARD." Instead, the signs spelled out "WE SUCK"[link]. Despite this, Harvard won the game 35-3.
The Game has also become known for the large, joint Harvard-Yale tailgate parties that run throughout The Game in the fields next to the host stadium every year. While most alumni who travel to The Game actually watch it in the stadium, many students treat the tailgate as their primary destination. The Tailgate attracts thousands of students and has recently roused the concern of the Boston Police Department.
The Little Red Flag is a Harvard pennant which, since 1884, has been waved by Harvard's "most loyal fan" after each score by Harvard during The Game. As of 2005, the honorary position is held by William Markus of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who attends every Harvard football game.
Counterfeit tickets for The Game were first discovered in 1891 when it was played in Hampden Park in Springfield, Massachusetts (Yale winning, 10-0).
Apocryphal tales assert that before the 1908 Game, Harvard coach Percy Haughton strangled a bulldog to death in the locker room to motivate his players. Whether this is true or not, Harvard did win 4-0, the culmination of a 9-0-1 season.
Harvard's 1890 12-6 victory marked its first national championship. Since then Harvard has also won titles in 1898, 1899, 1910, 1912, 1913, and 1919, while Yale has won 12 national championships.
On November 22, 1992, the first Wild Turkey Breakfast was held on the morning of the Game. An annual gathering, Wild Turkey Breakfast typically involves 100-150 celebrants, bourbon, bagels, beer, and a couple of rock bands.
Bibliography
- Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905, edited by Ronald A. Smith (University of Illinois Press, 1994; ISBN 0-252-02047-2) is Harvard head coach Bill Reid's daily diary of the 1905 college football season.
- The Only Game That Matters, by Bernard M. Corbett and Paul Simpson (Crown, 2004; ISBN 1-400-05068-5) is a year-by-year history of The Game; one author went to Harvard, the other to Yale.
External links
- [Unofficial website], maintained by alumni
- [Series history], from the Ivy League website
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