The Big One

In recent years, it had seemed to Harvard football players that they were awash in seas of indifference. Pre-game rallies, a kind of Nuernberg spectacle on many campuses, usually proved duds at Harvard. Only once a year did the mask of indifference drop--the weekend that Harvard met Yale. Then past Crimson heroes, old and out-of-shape, revisited Cambridge to talk do-or-die. This year, Harvard had imported Art Valpey (formerly one of Fritz Crisler's aides at Michigan), and the old order changed.

Besides Michigan football tricks, Coach Art Valpey brought along some Michigan collegianism. All season long, the Harvard boys had whooped it up--and still had plenty left for Yale, the arch-enemy (Princeton, which has beaten both Harvard and Yale this season, came second*).

When Harvard met Yale last week, no less than 22 teams collided. On Friday, some 500 minor-league footballers from the two schools grunted & groaned. Harvard's freshmen plowed Yale under, 32-13, and the Harvard jayvees won, 27-6. Sixteen other teams in action were intramural squads from eight Yale colleges and eight Harvard houses.

Bulldog & Champagne. Kirkland, the champion Harvard house, was matched against Yale's best, Berkeley College. Before the game was over, half the Harvard team had paused for either a smoke or a beer: it was that kind of game. Kirkland won, 21-12. But before the sun went down on the Charles River, seven Yale college teams had beaten Harvard teams. That night in Boston nightspots, the strains of Bulldog, Bulldog drowned out Fair Harvard, possibly because Yale men go in more for that sort of thing.

In Harvard's sacrosanct Varsity Club, the Harvard first team sipped champagne--an old pre-game ritual. By tradition, the first toast is given by the captain of the last Harvard team to whip Yale (Fran Lee of the '41 team). But Lee failed to show up, and a substitute was pressed into service. It may have been a favorable omen. Next afternoon, on the first play of the game, a crimson-shirted Harvard halfback cut back through tackle and raced 80 yards to a touchdown.

Letters & Goal Posts. When Yale forged ahead in the second quarter, 7-6, Harvard's mannerly rooters sat subdued until the final period. Then their team, which had been either very good or very bad all season, got its dander up. Two Harvard touchdowns made the score 20-7. Just before the gun, a wave of substitutes ran in (a Harvard man does not get his letter unless he plays against Yale--and one play is enough). As the tide turned toward Harvard, some of the students went native, shot up crimson flares that looped across to the Yale rooting section, completed their afternoon's work by tearing down the goal posts.

* In Harvard lingo, proxime accessit.

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