Harvard Always Wins

Editor’s note: This column continues a yearly tradition in which sportswriters on The Harvard Crimson and The Yale Daily News write dueling articles in advance of The Game. The column written by The Yale Daily News can be found here.

It’s hard to get to Yale.

Yale students, be sure to read that carefully. It’s hard to get there, not so hard to get in. Of course, you could drive if you’re coming from a reasonable distance, but if you’re from anywhere outside of a six-hour radius that trek becomes unreasonable.

Most people fly, but even if you fly, there’s not really an airport close to New Haven. Some people fly to LaGuardia and then take either a train or a two-plus hour shuttle ride through New York traffic.

The Hartford airport — if you want to call it that — is closer, but still just far enough that it’s pretty unreasonable to take an Uber, though your driver would probably give you five stars for taking the lengthy trip. If you choose to do that, you’re stuck footing a $60 (that’s like eight Felipe’s burritos), 45-minute Uber from the city to the campus in addition to the cost of your plane ticket. Compound that with the $73,180 cost of attendance for a worthless degree (ranked 1270th by The Economist, yikes...) and getting to Yale is just unnecessarily expensive.

Boston, however, has an airport — like, an actual one. For some strange reason, people tend to build airports in places people actually want to go.

Despite the ease of access to Cambridge, the Yale football team has opted to forgo a plane ride and instead limp into this week’s penultimate contest. Look at the roster and look at the box scores. Even accounting for injuries that have recently plagued the squad, this isn’t the same Bulldog team of the last two years.

In fact, this year’s team is reminiscent of those Saybrook College students from two years ago, standing naked on the stadium walls in the freezing cold: they don’t quite measure up.

No question, last year Yale was nice, but this week the Bulldogs will be making use of a backup’s, backup's, backup quarterback. Junior starting quarterback Kurt Rawlings — author of Harvard’s 2017 loss with 177 yards and a touchdown in the muddy contest — bowed out for the season after suffering a leg injury against Penn.

Sophomore running back Zane Dudek — who led the 2017 rushing onslaught, earning one touchdown and 64 yards — has battled injuries all season. The second-year hasn’t been dished the ball since the team’s contest with Columbia on Oct. 27.

Even Yale’s captain is a backup.

All in all, the Bulldogs might be the only thing coming out of New Haven that is more in shambles than the students’ social lives.

Harvard, on the other hand, has sophomore Aaron Shampklin in the backfield. Oh, by the way, he leads the Ivy League in rushing. The second string back? Senior Charlie Booker, 2017 first-team All-Ivy running back. Behind him sit two dynamic sophomore backs, Devin Darrington and BJ Watson. That’s four solid running backs.

Harvard’s defense? It’s third in the nation on first-down defense and fourth on third-downs.

Use whatever metric you want: Rhode Scholars, Nobel Prizes, Ivy League championships, presidents, famous alumni, respective height of mountains for which the school serves a namesake, acceptance rate, Supreme Court justices, pop culture references, people from any random country that have heard of you. Harvard wins. Every time.

Look, I get it, understanding things is hard. Perhaps you’re the Poopetrator and you can’t figure out how bathrooms work. Perhaps you’re the Sports Board of the YDN and you can’t figure out how to write a smack talk column. Perhaps you’re the Yale football team and you can’t figure out how to win more than two years in a row. Perhaps you go to Yale and you don’t understand basic math.

In any case, the writing on the wall is clear, assuming you can read. Harvard will win tomorrow’s football game and Harvard will always win, at everything. Why?

Because Harvard is simply better.

—Staff writer Cade Palmer can be reached at cade.palmer@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @THC_CadePalmer.