THE MALCOM X-FACTOR: Get To The Game Early, Stay Late

I knew what I was getting myself into when I came here. I really did.

It wasn’t about the sold-out football games, the packed arenas for conference tournaments, or the front-page national news coverage.

No, I knew that wasn’t going to be the case at Harvard. I knew that, for most games, no matter how much I cared, the contest itself would take a backseat to everything else.

That is, for most games.

But there’s one game every year, one day, when people get excited about Crimson sports. One day, a few weeks into November, when a game—The Game—takes precedence over everything else.

At least, I thought that was the case.

But as it turns out, there are some people who can’t even get excited for Harvard-Yale football.

The Recent Graduates Committee of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA), usually a vehicle by which old graduates of the Crimson make their bi-annual pilgrimage back to the stadium for three hours of athletic bliss, is infringing upon sacred ground this year.

Not because they’re holding a Recent Grad Post-Game party at Gordon Track on the day of the game (if the game itself is the showcase, the “refreshments” are the second-biggest draw for fans), but because of when they’re holding it. You see, the party isn’t scheduled for a specific time—it’s scheduled to start at the end of the third quarter.

No, you didn’t misread that.

They want to have a friggin’ party while The friggin’ Game is still going on.

Set aside, for a moment, the fact that there’s a good chance that an Ivy League title will be on the line. Forget, for just a second, about last year’s absolutely unbelievable 30-24 triple-overtime win in the 122nd edition of The Game in New Haven, a game in which Harvard trailed 21-10 after there quarters. Pretend, temporarily, that Harvard won’t be trying to win for an unprecedented sixth straight time against Yale, just the latest in a number of firsts in a series that originated played in 1875.

Leaving a game at the most crucial juncture of the contest? Has that ever happened? Maybe I’m naive to the ways of the non-fan folk, but I was raised to see the damn thing through until the end. And what if it’s one of the biggest games in college sports (that’s right, I said it) and the most prominent event at this school every year?

Well, let’s just say if you aren’t getting there early with the intention of leaving late, then you’re missing the point.

Because whether you look at it from a football perspective or not, The Game is unique in the world of athletics. It’s the only venue I’ve ever encountered that so beautifully brings together the most die-hard sports fans and the most athletically illiterate humans on Earth and every combination in between. It’s an atmosphere that you can’t capture via a highlight, from a story from your friend, or when you’re not there to see the end of the magnificence.

I try to explain to my non-Harvard and Yale friends what it means. They never quite get it, and apparently, neither does the HAA. This horrendous attempt by an organization that claims “to promote the welfare of Harvard University,” a prominent and usually rational Harvard-affiliated organization, should not be tolerated.

So how can we show them the ridiculousness of their action? Easy: don’t go to their so-called party. That’s not much of a problem for most of us, who either aren’t 21 or aren’t alumni, but if you’re either, stay away. And if you know somebody who is, tell them they must, under all circumstances, boycott this event. For the good of the most sacred of sacred events, nobody bother with this asinine attempt to steal fans away from what we’re all really there for: The Game itself.

The flyer for the HAA’s party promotes cheering “the Crimson to victory over Yale!” At least they’re right about that, even if they’re horribly and extraordinarily wrong about where those cheers should be coming from.

Don’t get me wrong, either. You have all morning, all evening, and all night to party it up, and by all means, indulge. But beginning at noon on November 18, you have a duty, as a member of the Harvard community, to go, for all four quarters, to the one event every year that unites us all in the knowledge of at least one thing: we’re better than Yale.

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.