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 Chanel-scented 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 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 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 poundings 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 for kids will overnight turn into the noisiest and naughtiest kid in the territory. After the game, the breath of liquor will 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 cleam, healthy American sportsmanship, 57,000 fans haven't paid $4.80 and upward 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 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 soldiers and tip their snifters. But others will continue to ponder the mysteries of the Yale game, remembering the words of the late Professor George Lyman Kittredge '82, "There must be something to this Yale game, they do it every year."

1966

THERE ARE A FEW LINES of fine print on the back of Harvard football tickets which, if anyone took them seriously, would put an end to one of the biggest booms in Boston's economic history: ticket scalping.

"Under Massachusetts laws," the fine print reads, "this ticket is a revocable license. If sold or offered for sale at a premium, it becomes void." During most of the year, this warning is about as relevant as the Nineteenth Amendment. As the Yale game approaches, ticket scalping becomes hysteric, and nothing can stop it.

This year, according to seasoned observers, the ticket situation is tighter than ever. People at the Harvard Ticket Office, who (seem to) sigh with longing for a return of the bad old days, point out that the team is good this year and alumni want to see it. Yale tickets are not made available to the non-alumni Boston public, but the local newspapers have built up the hometown boys as the heroes of the Hub.

The search for tickets, on bulletin boards, in the Crimson, by the grapevine, began early this year. "Feel free to think in terms of $15," one classified said optimistically. There was no surprise when a reporter masquerading as a scalper called and offered a pair for $45.