Object: Two teams with 11 players on the field attempt to score points by putting the ball behind their opponents' goal line in various approved ways. The game is won by the team scoring more points in the allotted time.

Football is science. It is rules and regulations, charts and calculations, weights and measures, X's and O's. Football is physics, math, and above all chemistry.

The Game, however, is not just football. It cannot be reduced to science. The Game is more like art.

So take the statistics and graphs and paint them over with streaks of crimson and blue. Drown them out with victory marches and fight songs. Douse them with a cold beer and get your artistic juices flowing.

This is The Game.

For the uninitiated, the first clue to the importance of The Game is the capital letters. Subtle yet unmistakable. Upper-case letters at the beginning of both words. (Incidentally, T and G are key letters when reversed this weekend.)

Not every letter in The Game is capitalized, however. That would sink The Game to the level of some cheap carnival sideshow (Come see THE GAME! Don't miss THE AMAZING CRIMSON!!!).

No, the tasteful capital letters elevate this football match into something vaguely historic, like The Hundred Years War. The Game is capitalized, as if it were a philosophy like Taoism or a nation like America.

The Game is capitalized as a proper noun because it is very, very proper. It is like The Country Club: everybody who matters knows that it is in Brookline. Most of these same people know that The Game is The Game.

The Game does not need redundant modifiers. When Stanford plays California, promoters dub the match-up "The Big Game" because everybody knows it isn't.

In 102 games, Yale has averaged 12.15 points, Harvard 9.83. The Crimson is 1-9 in years ending in 6.

Every conceivable useless statistic in The Game has been hunted down, skinned, cooked, swallowed and digested.

All of them don't amount to crap.

Strange things happen in The Game, things that defy mathematical analysis.

A current NFL tight end, John Spagnola--who weighs more than most linemen--holds The Game record for throwing Yale's longest scoring pass.