Inflation, Gimmicks Mark 100th Year Of Harvard Football

"The McGill University Football Club will meet the Harvard Club on Jarvis Field, Wednesday and Thursday, May 14 and 15. The game probably will be called at three o'clock. Admission 50 cents. The proceeds will be devoted to the entertainment of our visitors from Montreal." Notice in the Magenta, 1884.

Harvard celebrates the 100th anniversary of intercollegiate football under the "modern" rules this season, but in spirit only. The game that coach Joe Restic and his boys will be playing on the field will be nothing like what transpired under the Boston Rules a century ago, and the fans will not be able to watch the action for a half-a-buck. Nor will the proceeds go to the entertainment of our visitors--they can buy their own beer.

While the Crimson gridders battle their opponents on the turf of Soldiers Field, the men in 60 Boylston St. will try to tackle inflation and the steadily rising cost of college football.

In addition to such budget cuts as bus trips to Columbia and Princeton instead of plane flights, cutting back on the training table fare and holding down the number of candidates invited back to pre-season camp, the men behind the scenes also plan to repeat last season's series of special promotions. Tickets for the Yale game will be going up $1 (to $8) in another effort to raise more revenue.

The idea of the special day promotions is to fill up the less desirable seats in sections 17-21 by selling them at $1 a shot. The Holy Cross game is billed as Cambridge Day, where residents of the city with the proper ID can get into these sections at a buck a head. The Rutgers game is being called Family Day, which is the same as Cambridge Day only you don't need to be a Cantabrigian to take advantage of the discount.

Cornell comes to town on Employees Day, a concept that has become so successful the past two years that over 8000 employees of the university are expected to turn out.

For the Penn contest, the same offer as Family Day holds, only under the guise of Dollar Day, while the Brown game is a repeat of the Cambridge Day routine only this time for our neighbors in Allston-Brighton.

In addition, for the first five home games students from Greater Boston colleges that do not have a football program of their own, can sit in section 22 for $1. And grad students can once again enjoy Resticball in section 1 for the same small price.

Regular prices for the five contests for non-students will be the same as last year ($3 and $5) while students will receive the coupon books entitling them to several free games and a discount for the others. The Yale game, of course, needs no hype and most everyone in the ticket office is confident of a sellout at $8 a seat.

Part of the reason for the increase of the Yale tickets, according to Sports Information director Dave Mathews, is the loss of revenue resulting from the Harvard-Dartmouth contest being scheduled in Hanover, N.H., this year for only the fourth time since 1882. The Big Green always drew a full house in Cambridge, but Dartmouth is feeling its own financial crunch and demanded a share of the action in Hanover.

For those of you fearful of missing the clash with the Green, rumor has it that the game is tentatively pencilled in for an ABC regional broadcast, depending upon how the two teams fare in the early going. Harvard is already definitely scheduled for a TV appearance for its opener against Holy Cross on September 28. This will be the third time in two seasons that the Crimson have been on the ABC broadcasts. Last season the network brought us the Cornell and Brown games, giving the University some extra revenue.

To publicize all this, the Athletic Department will be running small ads in the Boston newspapers. But these will certainly be nothing like the notices run in the Magenta in 1874.