It’s a lot like Harvard-Yale. This animosity runs deep.

And of course you’d never dream of rooting for the other team.

Until you move away from home. You watch from afar as your precious college team struggles and falls to a team from a nowhere conference like the Sun Belt. Wham, bam—a couple bad plays and that bowl berth is looking pretty slim.

But the season is young, and you need a team to follow. So you start sneaking glances at the scores of your rival team. They’re doing pretty well. It can’t hurt. It’s not permanent, you’re still faithful. Hey, it’s got the same word in the name. You gotta have state pride, right?

So it starts. And it only escalates.

Neither of your state teams is in contention? Conference pride, baby! The SEC is going down!

How does this relate to Harvard-Yale? I’m getting to it.

I’m well aware that the Ivy League does not send a team to the D-I AA playoffs. The possibility of Harvard or any Ivy team entering any kind of tournament is slim to none.

But suppose, in a parallel universe, that the Ivy Champion did go to the playoffs. And suppose that—still suspending belief here—one season that team was Yale. The big Bulldogs, going up against a D-I AA titan like Southern Illinois.

Do you cheer for Yale?

Don’t respond so quickly.

When you’re filling out those tournament brackets for March Madness—basketball being a team that is permitted to participate in the norms of college athletics—don’t you pick the Ivy entry to win in at least the first round, regardless of seed?

You don’t pick Goliath over David. You didn’t want to see the Yankees win the World Series this year, even if you found the Marlins as appealing as plain yogurt and even if you stopped watching in disgust after the League Championship Series (unless you are of that mutant breed known as Yankees fans).

Ivy League pride, anyone?

Because even if it’s our arch-nemesis, the better showing an Ivy team has in the real world of big-time football, the better it is for the legitimacy of Ivy football—and Harvard football. Well, that’s all very nice, but how does this relate to The Game?