Men of Harvard and men of Yale find in the occasion of their annual meeting the expression of a sort of national spirit more intimate than political celebrations because it springs from the dearer associations of youth. No truly national festivities are prepared for and enjoyed with more enthusiasm than the Harvard-Yale football game. The great recessional is on, but even into the excited talk of this football game there come confidently the speculations on the next game. And the past mingles with the present in assuring the future happy meetings of Harvard and Yale men.

1947

IT IS COMMON knowledge that the Volstead Act, several depressions, and the invention of four-wheel brakes have become part of history since a Harvard-Yale game settled a major championship or demonstrated the best in football. Almost unendingly one hears that these late November meetings are self-sufficient entities--complete whole football seasons synthesized into three hour, red and blue capsules, to be swallowed only in the Yale Bowl or Harvard Stadium. What more can be said? The 75,000 spectators, the sounds and colors, the brandy and Chanelscented air--all the riotous and mellow components of the Weekend are, above all, tributes to a football game that year after year begins with little, brews for sixty minutes, and produces greatness.

This year the familiar pattern has been unwillingly but faithfully followed. The Harvard and Yale teams have fallen far short of preseason hopes or expectations. But, as in the past, both conscious strategy and the insidious but unconscious aura of the game inexorably combine to save the special play, the hardest tackle, the all-out effort, for today. The explosion that inevitably follows produces exciting football, unexcelled football. It is touched off when two ordinary teams suddenly find their particular niche in the unpredictable common denominator that is football and become part of a legend.

At kickoff time, 75,000 individuals will jam the huge Bowl for the first "formal" New Haven Harvard-Yale Game since before the War. Together with their colored feathers and old fur coats, they bring traditions and memories of Mahan and Heffelfinger, Booth and Wood, Frank and Struck--great names of ten or thirty years ago. But more than that, they come anxious to bask in the spirit and participate in the festivities of the occasion; to join with the two teams in writing a new chapter in the unique legend of this day.

1948

BETWEEN 1:45 and 4 p.m. today 57,000 otherwise steady individuals will blow their tops. The mud flats of Soldiers Field will tremble under the pounding and stampings of the huge audience, and the groans and yips will travel downstream on the Charles. The gentleman who yesterday called the Harvard-Yale game stuff forkids will overnight turn into the noisiest and naughiest kids in the territory. After the game the breath of liquor with hang over the Square like a smog; blond hair and strapless backs will glitter through the night; and Cambridge, seat of culture, will be undistinguishable from any city where the American Legion is raising hell.

Why all the fuss over a game of football? Ever since the big series started in 1875, men have tried to discover the special charm of the late November classic. Bright-eyed moralists, for instance, have gone into a happy glow at the sight of a real clean, healthy (American) sportsmanship. 57,000 fans haven't paid $4,80 and upwards each to see a demonstration of the Golden Rule.

Other thinkers have listed football--and the Yale game--with what William James called the "moral equivalents of war," the safe ways of working off man's aggressive tendencies. Perhaps football is a moral equivalent which will someday save us all, but even this happy prospect cannot account for the standees on the Stadium roof and the 10,000 extra olives at the Ritz.

Some Harvard-Yale fans have credited the cosmic aspects of this certain Saturday to the high quality of the football. Both coaches and both teams have certainly sweated long and hard over drills and diagrams, and the deserve the backing of the fans. But this year, as in many years past, both teams are slamming each other to gain next to last place in a slightly dubious Big Three championship. The men who left the middle West for Harvard Stadium this week could have seen a finer brand of football by staying home.

So we are left with no answer for it all. Some will only shrug their shoulders and tip their snifters. But others will continue to ponder the mystery of the Yale game, remembering the words of the late Professor George Lyman Kitteridge '82, "There must be something to this Yale game, they do it every year."