When it comes to “The Game,” precedent has no say. The annual Yale-Harvard ritual evokes a rivalry that transcends the ages, as well as the win-loss record of the season’s previous games. So it was in 1979 when the heavily favored undefeated Yale Bulldogs fell to the Harvard Crimson in the season’s ultimate game by the score of 22-7.
Even the final score means nothing. In 1968, when Harvard scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds to earn a tie, the Harvard Crimson headline read: “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.”
This year, the 136th edition of The Game was much anticipated. ESPN had it moved up an hour to a noon start since the Yale Bowl has no lights. Yale, with a record of 8-1, scoring an average of 37.4 points-per-game and fighting for the Ivy League title, was the odds-on favorite to defeat Harvard, losers of four straight. Was anyone surprised, then, that the first half ended with Harvard beating the Bulldogs by a solid 15-3 margin?
The halftime show changed everything.Continue Reading “Should Yale (and Other Elite Colleges) Require Students Take a Kobayashi Maru Test?”
To The Tables Down At Yorkside… (Wherever That May Be)
That tells you everything you need to know. There may be other contests throughout the fall sports season. There may be other seasons throughout the year. But only one singular event towers above all. It is the ultimate game (or at least it used to be—but more on that in a moment) of the Ivy League football season. It is the world’s second-longest continuous football rivalry (behind only Yale-Princeton). Students, alumni, and affiliates of New Haven and Cambridge eagerly await the finale between Yale and Harvard.
But it’s not just “a” game; it is “the” game, as in “The Game.”
People don’t go merely to watch a classic eleven-on-eleven gridiron clash. They go for Continue Reading “To The Tables Down At Yorkside… (Wherever That May Be)”