HarvardCYale football rivalry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HarvardCYale football rivalry
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HarvardCYale football rivalry
Teams
Harvard Crimson
Yale Bulldogs
Originated
1875
Series
Yale leads 65-54-8
Current victor
Harvard
Trophy
None
Harvard (54)
Yale (65)
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
2007 2008
2009 2010
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
2006
Ties (8)
1879 1897 1899 1910 1911 1925 1951 1968
No Game (9)
1877 1885 1888 1895 1896 1917 1918 1943 1944
The HarvardCYale football rivalry, culminating in the annual game between Harvard University and Yale University, known as "The Game", is the second oldest continuing rivalry and also the third most-played rivalry game in college football history, after the Lehigh-Lafayette Rivalry (1884) and the Princeton-Yale game (1873). As of 2010, the Harvard Crimson and Yale Bulldogs have met 127 times since the first game in 1875, when American football was evolving from rugby.
The Game is played in November at the end of the football season, with the venue alternating between Harvard Stadium and the Yale Bowl. As of 2010, Yale leads the series 65-54-8.
In 2003, Sports Illustrated On Campus rated the Harvard-Yale rivalry the sixth-best in college athletics, although others have more recently claimed that the rivalry has lost its intensity.[1]
Contents
1 History
2 Significance
3 Notable games
3.1 Pranks
3.2 Tailgate
3.3 Miscellaneous
4 Bibliography
5 See also
6 External links
7 References
[edit] History
See also: List of Harvard-Yale football games
The first meeting between the teams occurred on November 13, 1875, at Hamilton Field in New Haven. Harvard won 4-0 by scoring four touchdowns and four field goals (at the time, a touchdown merely gave the scoring team the opportunity to gain one point by converting the field goal).
The rules that governed the early years of The Game were a modified version of the rules of rugby and made the game 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. 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.
In recent years, Yale ended a five-game losing streak against Harvard in 2006, winning 34-13. That Harvard winning streak was third longest in the history of the series, after Yale's 1902-1907 six-game winning streak and Yale's 1880-1889 eight-game winning streak. Harvard has since beaten Yale in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.
[edit] 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 among the nation's most prestigious and oldest universities, 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.
Half-time festivities at The Game, Yale Bowl.
The Game is significant for historical reasons as one of the first football games played between U.S. colleges. The rules of The Game soon were adopted by other schools, such as Rutgers and Princeton, which had been playing soccer (i.e. Association Football) since 1869, making football the archetypal college sport. 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 more interested in games between larger institutions whose teams are made up of scholarship athletes, many of them bound for professional careers. The high attendance at Harvard Stadium or the Yale Bowl for the contest testify that The Game still generates interest beyond the respective campuses and alumni bodies; tickets for The Game generally sell out even in modern times when The Game is played at Harvard, as Harvard Stadium's seating capacity is less than half that of the Yale Bowl.
[edit] Notable games
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 only lost one game he started in since the sixth grade. (Dowling was the inspiration for the character BD in Yale graduate Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury.) The tie left both teams 8-0-1 for the season, inspiring the Harvard Crimson to print the headline "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29".[2] This headline was later used as the title for a 2008 documentary about this Game directed by Kevin Rafferty.[3] One of Harvard's offensive tackles was Tommy Lee Jones, later to find fame in Hollywood. As it turned out, this would be the final tie in the series to date.
[edit] Pranks
Half-time at The Game in 2005, Yale Bowl
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 (Yale won, 34-19).[citation needed]
During the pregame show in 1992, the Harvard marching band attempted to "X-out"[clarification needed] the Yale Precision Marching Band while the Yale band stood in its traditional Y formation; however, the Yale band caught wind of this plan and, as the Harvard band marched onto the field, shifted its formation into a large H, thus making Harvard X itself out.[citation needed] In 2004, Yale students handed out placards to some 1,800 adult Harvard fans; when raised, the signs spelled out "WE SUCK".[4] Harvard, humiliated, won that game 35-3. In 2006, two streakers with MIT painted on their bodies attempted to run around the field during the game. One made it the length of the field before being caught and dragged off the field; the other was tackled by security about ten steps out of the stands.
In 1961, in New Haven, The Harvard Crimson student newspaper distributed a parody of The Yale Daily News with a headline saying that President Kennedy would attend. At the Bowl, the President of the Crimson (Robert Ellis Smith) donned a mask of President Kennedy, had friends dressed as a Secret Service man and a military aide, and walked on the field before the game as the Harvard Band played "Hail to the Chief." Thousands of early arrivals and sports writers were fooled by the prank. President Kennedy, a Harvard graduate, was listening to the game on the radio in Hyannisport, according to later news reports.
[edit] Tailgate
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. The tailgate party was even televised by ESPN in 2004. While most alumni who travel to The Game actually watch it in the stadium, most students and recent alumni treat the tailgate as their primary destination. The tailgate attracts thousands of students and has recently roused the concern of the Boston Police Department, who have cracked down on underage drinking at the student tailgates, as well as moving it further away from the stadium and reducing the space available.[5] This included requiring, in 2008, that all tailgates end at halftime, leading Yale students to shift most of their tailgating to the Princeton game, held the previous week in New Haven.
[edit] Miscellaneous
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).
Before the 1916 Game, Yale coach T.A.D. Jones inspired his players to victory (6-3) when he unequivocally asserted, Gentlemen, you are now going to play football against Harvard. Never again in your whole life will you do anything so important.[6]
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 1875 victory marked its first national championship. Since then Harvard has also won titles in 1890, 1898, 1899, 1910, 1912, 1913, and 1919, while Yale has won 18 national championships: 1874, 1876, 1877, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1891, 1892, 1894, 1900, 1907, 1909, and 1927.
[edit] Bibliography
Bergin, Thomas G. The Game: The Harvard-Yale Football Rivalry, 1875C1983, by (Yale University Press, 1984)
Corbett, Bernard M., and Paul Simpson. The Only Game That Matters (Crown, 2004; ISBN 1-4000-5068-5) is a year-by-year history of The Game; Corbett is Harvard's radio play-by-play announcer.
Smith, Ronald A., ed. Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905, (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.
Smith, Ronald A. Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big Time College Athletics (1988)
[edit] See also
Harvard-Yale Regatta (boat race)
List of Harvard-Yale football games
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
[edit] External links
Series history, from the Ivy League website
[edit] References
^ The Game
^ "Harvard Beats Yale"
^ Documentary
^ Harvard University Says: WE SUCK
^ Yale Daily News - Tailgate relocated to 175 N. Harvard St
^ Quote, Quote, Quote
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