Upsets, Scoreless Games, and Slaughters Spot Gala 70-Year Crimson-Blue History

When the Crimson and the Bulldogs get going tomorrow afternoon they'll be playing the sixty-second content of one of the oldest college football series in America--one that began in 1875, only three years after Yale, first of the two teams to get onto the gridiron, donned its tasseled caps and canvas jackets for its football debut.

Every other history-of-the-series story ever written has revealed at length that anything can happen in a Harvard-Yale game. As a matter oft fact, almost anything can happen in any football game, with the large number of upsets in this series being a result primarily of its length.

Upsets Plentiful

That is not to say that there haven't been outstanding unexpected triumphs. Within the last decade alone one great team from each of the participants has met defeat at the hands of an underrated opponent. In 1939 Torby Macdonald's powerhouse eleven waltzed into the Bowl to be overwhelmed 20 to 7 in a contest in which the visitors could not score until the final seconds of the game. Even more spectacular was the 13 to 6 defeat of Clint Frank's undefeated squad in 1937 by a well-coached Crimson aggregation.

Yale's Howie Odell has seen the rivalry from both sides of the fence, having been, like many New England coaches, an assistant to Dick Harlow. It was Odell who, in his last year as a Crimson mentor, scouted that 1937 Frank eleven, thereby paving the way for the surprise triumph by the Cantabs.

Poetic Justice

Careful analysis and second-sighting on previous encounters seem to reveal that the outstanding tendency is not one for upsets as such but instead for tremendous personal disappointments in a sort of poetically justified way, with the far-famed Barry Wood-Albie Booth rivalry of the turn of the twentieth century's third decade providing one of the outstanding examples.

Wood, the Crimson back, was tall, dark, and powerful. Booth was small, crafty, and famous for his kicking ability. Both men played in their Sophomore year--1929, and Booth flubbed a field goal attempt as Harvard triumphed, 10 to 7. Wood made it two successive rounds for him the following year with a 13 to 0 victory.

Poetic justice for Albie arrived in 1931. Wood and company marched into the Stadium with a spotless record and an abundance of confidence, but after sixty minutes of play the Elis were on top by a score of 3 to 0--the lone and determining field goal having been contributed by Mr. Booth.

Another of these encounters that seem on the pages of the record book to be going out of their way to spoil something was the one that officially opened the new Bowl. 1914 was the year; the score: Harvard 36, Yale 0. Just to prove that it wasn't a freak, the Crimson made it 41 to 0 the following year.

Yale, we are sorry to admit, has the better record despite that unsuccessful beginning for the Bowl. They have won 34 games in the series to the Cantabs' 21, 6 of the contents having ended in ties, all of them, incidentally, being 0 to 0 affairs. Most of that lead, however, comes from an early start.

The Crimson won that first 1875 encounter by 4 to 0, but the Ellis sneaked by with a 1 to 0 victory the next fall and were beaten only 3 times in the 26 years following, rolling up a 52 to 0 tally in one of them, 1884, for the high water mark of the rivalry.