The Game.

It means many things to many people.

For some, it's the latest installment of one of the oldest rivalries in college football. For others, it's another opportunity to prove Crimson supremacy over its New Haven counterpart.

For senior Doug Anderson, it's the big payoff.

"This is my ninth season playing football," the 6'3", 160-pound defensive end says, "and all of the work I've ever put into [football] is going to be worth it for the second half of the Yale game."

"Come [tomorrow] night, the only thing I've got left to do is play," he says. "I don't have to worry about lifting, I don't have to worry about meetings. I'm ending my football career doing what I've spent all this time getting ready for--to go out on the field and play."

But The Game has been a long time in coming for Anderson.

A three-sport athlete and valedictorian of his senior class at Barrington (III.) High School, Anderson wasn't highly recruited by Harvard.

"I came to Harvard not sure how good I was--you've got all of these studs from high school and I was just an average Joe," he says. "I came in thinking I was out of my league."

But during his freshman season, a starter at defensive end broke his finger and was unable to play. One of Anderson's coaches converted him to that position, where he has played ever since.

Two consecutive 3-7 seasons followed for Anderson and the Crimson. In the meantime, he was Quadded (he and his friends joke, "At least we live in Currier and not Cabot."), he declared himself an engineering concentrator, and he had the Harvard experience of a lifetime.

He lived in the 10-man.

Asked to describe life in Currier's infamous 10-man suite in a word, Anderson responds, "Numbing."

"Things don't bother you anymore," he explains. "Freshman year, I was arguing with my roommate about leaving shampoo in the shower, and now people are clogging the toilet and leaving stuff all over the floor. Or you come home at 2 a.m. and your roommate's sitting on the couch with some girl and you say, 'Uh, I'm going to bed.'"

"By the end of the year you've seen it all," he says.