Most of what is laudable in the Harvard-Yale rivalry occurs directly on the playing field. The final whistle leaves the losers dejected at best, but usually still able to congratulate their vanquishers. In the twentieth century most outings have involved little if any intentional violence. Cynics might argue that opponents want to leave this final game on good terms with one another because they will soon be meeting again in corporate board rooms and top-level government offices, but this does not demean the players' on-the-field composure.

Even while the teams prepare for the second half in their locker rooms, the Harvard-Yale rivalry continues on the field in a battle between the two schools' marching bands. This year, the half-time presentations comprise less attack and counter-attack than in several recent years. The Yale band presents a bawdy description of the current national state of affairs, while Harvard's program claims as alumni a variety of historical figures ranging from Moses to Shakespeare, in a routine perceived more as humorous jest than pretension, at least by those from Harvard and Yale. Still, both bands find opportunities for genial sparring. Yale's marchers form a huge drum and carry a fifteen-foot-long drumstick across the field while bemoaning the pitiful size of much of Harvard's equipment. And the Harvard band takes advantage of twentieth century technology by flying a plane over the stadium with a banner reading, "Yale Band Eats Moose."

Throughout the second half the game remains low-scoring, as much from the lack of offensive sharpness as from defensive toughness. Many in the crowd of 67,000 comment that this 100th anniversary game will not register as one of the most brilliant or spectacular games in the rivalry. Nonetheless, in the fourth quarter the tension steadily mounts. The game is tied 7-7. Each threat by either Harvard of Yale evaporates; a pass is intercepted, the defensive line holds. In the final minutes Harvard mounts a drive and fights its way down to the Yale nine-yard line. With 33 seconds left on the clock, Harvard kicker Mike Lynch toes the ball barely over the goalpost crossbar. Ten thousand, perhaps 15,000 men and women of Harvard drown the Yale Bowl with their cheers and screams. Harvard wins, 10-7, for its first undisputed Ivy League championship since the modern league was formed in 1956.

After the game Harvard's players and fans celebrate in New Haven, and in autos, trains and buses going back to Boston. On the train, one group of former football players sings songs and drinks continuously during the entire three hour ride. The mood on Yale's campus is a bit more somber. Harvard students celebrating in Yale's dining halls are conscious of their laughter. The line at Morey's is not what it might have been, though several dozen people wait outside, huddling against their dates or spouses for warmth, occasionally calling to demonstrative Harvard fans, telling them to go back to Massachusetts.

At night, student overseers at all but one of the dances enforce a dress code. Swing and ball-room music dominates at a few affairs. At another semi-formal, students contort themselves to the latest discotheque tunes in a hall so dark that it would have been impossible to distinguish between tuxedos and clean football jerseys. Many at the semi-formal compare the atmosphere to that of the 1920s. "It's the same old song put to different music," one student complains. "Why couldn't I have been here six years ago when Yale and Harvard didn't mean tie and jacket?" But there are reminders that, in certain ways, more than the superficial has changed. Women, though certainly not accepted completely at Yale and Harvard, two of the bastions of male chauvinism, are not singing the song that Smith and Vassar women made their craze in the 1920s: "Was I drunk? Was he handsome? Did my mummy give me hell?"

"You are about to play football for Yale against Harvard," coach "Tad" Jones told his boys before the start of the game. "Never in your lives will you do anything as important." These sentiments seem out of place today, but they still have some applicability. The fate of Harvard's alumni contribution fund depends in large part on the success of its athletic squads, particularly on how the football team performs against its Ivy League competitors. Lynch's last minute kick on Saturday may well have been a $64,000 connection. Who can even estimate the economic value of coach Percy Haughton who reversed Harvard's losing ways in the early 1900s, and whose defensive hand signals were later used during World War I by the U.S. Army?

Posterity may in fact regard coach Joe Restic as a greater fund raiser than President Pusey. But these are idle and self-indulgent speculations, the concern of those whose spirits rise and fall with the size of Harvard's coffers. There are those for whom the game is a sacred ritual, and others for whom the game is a meaningless display of wealth and violence. What one likes and dislikes about the Harvard-Yale game on the occasion of its 100th anniversary is probably a close approximation of how one feels about this university.