The Game and The Race

On a typical fall evening 32 years ago, Al Gore '69 was seated in the corner of the Dunster House dining hall, talking to football players Tommy Lee Jones '69 and John Tyson '69. It was especially difficult this week to concentrate on studies, because it seemed all the world waited in eager anticipation of the epic battle: the Harvard-Yale Game. The year was 1968 and both Harvard and Yale were undefeated. For the first time in modern Ivy football history, the winner of the Harvard-Yale game would claim the Ivy League title.

Tommy Lee Jones (now, of course, the movie actor) was Gore's roommate and a linebacker on the Harvard football team. Gore, not quite of Jones' caliber, nevertheless played with enthusiasm and intensity on the Dunster House team, also slated to face off against their Yale House counterparts in an intramural contest the coming weekend.

Looking about the Dunster House dining hall, one might also see Roger Rosenblatt '63, who then was senior tutor and now is senior writer for Time Magazine. Two weeks ago, Rosenblatt wrote the Time election special article championing Al Gore, while former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan made the case for Bush, the Yale counterpart. One might also have seen Jerry Roberts '70 in the Dunster dining hall that night; Roberts is now managing editor of The San Francisco Chronicle.

The Yale football team was favored, though only slightly. Their legendary quarterback, Brian Dowling, had never lost a football game in which he started. Today Dowling is best known as the rabidly Republican comic strip character BD, in Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury. Trudeau was an undergraduate at Yale at that time. The Yale football team was also lead by Calvin Hill, who later helped the Dallas Cowboys to a Super Bowl victory, and whose son Grant Hill is now a star NBA basketball player.

The hype surrounding the Harvard-Yale Game could have not have been more intense had it been a presidential election. Few dared to predict the outcome. Yale surged to a commanding first-half lead, and held the lead well into the fourth quarter. With but minutes to go in the game, Yale was confidently marching down the field, holding onto a seemingly insurmountable 16-point margin. To many observers, especially on the Yale side, it might have seemed the graceful thing for Harvard simply to concede victory to Yale. The game seemed all but lost.

But suddenly, the unthinkable happened. Harvard cornerback Rick Frisbie '71 tackled Calvin Hill with such jarring force that Hill fumbled. Harvard took over, still trailing by 16 points. Harvard coach John Yovison astounded the fans with a daring decision--he inserted third-string quarterback Frank Champi '70 into perhaps the most most high-pressure situation in Ivy League sports history. The decision proved not only bold, but prescient. Champi, though he had played but a few minutes in his entire Harvard career up to that point, methodically picked apart the Yale defense and reached the endzone with a touchdown toss. Forty-two seconds remained in the game and Harvard now trailed by 10 points.

Harvard immediately connected on a two point conversion and then recovered the ensuing onsides kick. All of Harvard stadium, shivering in freezing November weather, seemed mesmerized by the sheer improbability of what they were witnessing. Champi, with eerie calm and utter precision, once again marched Harvard down the field, and with but a few seconds left on the clock, had but one final play to reach the endzone.

For a seeming eternity, Champi danced behind the line of scrimmage unable to find an open receiver, but finally drilled a shot to Harvard captain Vic Gatto '69 to bring the team within two points, time having expired. On the final play, Champi defied all laws of probability and again drilled a perfect pass to tight end Pete Varney in the Harvard endzone, culminating one of the most improbable comebacks in all sports history. The next day the banner headline in The Crimson screamed, "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29."

Today a nation stands transfixed as once again two presidential candidates representing Harvard and Yale square off. The parallels and improbabilities seem surreal. One can only hope that one day, when we look back at this moment in history, we will feel something approximating the sense of wonder that surrounds the memory of that great contest in 1968.

The morning after the game, in one of the most extraordinary confessionals ever recorded, Harvard's improbable hero Frank Champi confided that the night before he had a dreamlike premonition of what would happen the next day. For all the eeriness and surrounds both that Harvard-Yale football matchup and this Harvard-Yale presidential contest, perhaps, just perhaps, we can take some measure of comfort in knowing that there is a larger, guiding force that will see us through this contest--hopefully with the same sense of calm that Champi exhibited 32 years ago.

John F. Ince is the First Marshal of the Class of 1970. He is now a freelance writer living in Sausalito, Calif.