The Yale Game

Between 1:45 and 4 p.m. today 57,000 otherwise steady individuals will blow their tops. The mud flats of Soldiers Field will tremble under the poundings and stampings of the huge audience, and the greans and yips will travel downstream on the Charles. The gentleman who yesterday called the Harvard-Yale game stuff for kids will overnight turn into the noisiest and naughiest kids in the territory. After the game the breath of liquor will hang over the Square like a smog; blond hair and strapless backs will glitter through the night; and Cambridge, seat of culture, will be undistinguishable from any city where the American Legion is raising hell.

Why all the fuss over a game of football? Ever since the big series started in 1875, men have tried to discover the special charm of the late November classic. Bright-eyed moralists, for instance, have gone into a happy glow at the sight of real clean, healthy (American) sportsmanship. But 57,000 fans haven't paid $4.80 and upwards each to see a demonstration of the Golden Rule.

Other thinkers have listed football--and the Yale game--with what William James called the "moral equivalents of war," the safe ways of working off man's aggressive tendencies. Perhaps football is a moral equivalent which will someday save us all, but even this happy prospect cannot account for the standees on the Stadium roof and the 10,000 extra olives at the Ritz.

Some Harvard-Yale fans have credited the cosmic aspects of this certain Saturday to the high quality of the football. Both coaches and both teams have certainly sweated long and hard over drills and diagrams, and they deserve the backing of the fans. But this year, as in many years past, both teams are slamming each other to gain next to last place in a slightly dubious Big Three championship. The men who left the middle West for Harvard Stadium this week could have seen a finer brand of football by staying home.

So we are left with no answer for it all. Some will only shrug their shoulders and tip their snifters. But others will continue to ponder the mystery of the Yale game, remembering the words of the late Professor George Lyman Kitteridge '82, "There must be something to this Yale game, they do it every year."