In the other corner, there was Harvard.

“I remember [team captain and halfback] Victor Gatto [’69] telling us in the bowels of the stadium that we were going to be undefeated, and I remember sharing skepticism with my teammates on that,” said Crimson offensive guard Tommy Lee Jones ’69.

The 1968 Harvard team did go undefeated, but, for an offense rebuilding after graduating a strong senior class, games were not won with style points.

A suffocating defense held all Ivy League opponents to 14 points or fewer, but relying on defense also meant that the Crimson never routed opponents the way that Yale did.

“We were more of a blue-collar team that wasn’t expected to be good,” said Harvard defensive end John Cramer ’70. “I think we were picked for the second division of the Ivy League that year. Somehow, we kept winning, and not by a lot. We ended up having a pretty good defense, which is what I think carried us through much of the year.”

But the impressive victories Yale racked up throughout the season carried with them a sea of momentum. Two weeks before The Game, Harvard squeaked by Princeton, 9-7. The next week, Yale downed Princeton handily, 42-17.

“Everybody believed that Yale was by far the dominant team,” Gatto said. “They had that kind of notoriety, and obviously when you’re the great offensive team, you have a lot more publicity. So they had all of that going for them. Everybody expected that they’d roll us.”

THE GAME

In a sold-out stadium in Allston, the stage was set for the most prolific offense to meet the most stifling defense in the league.

“We all got complimentary tickets, and back in those days, some people were able to scalp their tickets for 50 dollars a piece (worth over $300 in 2012), which was outrageously high-priced back then,” Cramer said.

Forty-thousand people packed into Harvard Stadium to watch the hyped-up action, and at first, the game didn’t deliver.

“Sports Illustrated called it one of the 10 greatest games in college football history, but you know what? I don’t think it really was,” Cramer said. “It was a pretty boring game for the first 59 minutes. Yale was so dominant, they kind of pushed us around.”

The Bulldogs jumped out to a 22-0 lead by the second quarter, and Harvard coach John Yovicsin decided that it was time for a change. He pulled starting quarterback George Lalich ’69 from the game and put backup Frank Champi ’70 in his place.

Lalich had quarterbacked the team through the season, while Champi had only seen action in garbage time.

“[Champi’s] from one of the places up on the North Shore and has a really thick Boston accent,” Cramer said. “So when he got into the huddle, he was a little nervous, and he had this Boston accent, and nobody could understand what he was saying. We couldn’t understand the play he was calling because he was nervous and had this funny accent.”