This weekend, the eyes of college football fans throughout the country will be on two teams from local schools that are usually grabbing headlines on the front page rather than the sports page. Harvard University and MIT are both undefeated heading into action tomorrow — and both have plenty on the line. MIT faces a division three playoff matchup with Maine's Hussan University and Harvard squares off with their old nemesis — a rivalry heavily steeped in tradition.
It doesn't have the national draw, today of, say, Alabama-Auburn, or even the pomp of the annual Army-Navy game, but there is arguably not a more storied rivalry in all of college sports than the annual Harvard-Yale football game.
"I think I speak for all players that participated in this game," said WCVB sportscaster Mike Lynch, who played for Harvard in the 1970s. "You can vaguely remember your games against Dartmouth, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia — but you remember every score, you remember almost every play of every Yale game you ever participated in. It sticks with you for the rest of your life."
Traditionally the final game of the year for both teams, it all started way back in 1875. Over the years, the schools essentially invented college football, from mascots to marching bands. Heck, the first rules of American football were even written by a Yale grad. As for memorable moments? Take your pick.
There was 1968: Harvard and Yale were both undefeated. Heavily-favored Yale led by 16 with less than a minute left. Harvard scored twice in 42 seconds and lined up for a two-point conversion with no time left on the clock. The improbable comeback tie felt like a win. The Harvard Crimson headline the next day said it all – “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.”
Then there was 1975: "It was a freezing cold day," Lynch said. "Winds were swirling in the Yale Bowl. And you knew it was going to be a low scoring game and it was."
Tied 7-7 with 33 seconds left, Lynch - Harvard’s kicker that year — lined up for the potential game winner.
"I had dreamed about this all week long," he said. "It had gone through the uprights a thousand times in my dreams and in my daydreams. My only fear was shanking one in front of 68,000 people."
He didn’t. Lynch’s kick gave Harvard its first-ever undisputed Ivy League title. But perhaps the most enduring moment in Harvard-Yale history, came courtesy of another school, located just a few T stops away — MIT.
"It was unbelievable, and still to this day one of the most memorable events I’d ever seen," said longtime Boston sportscaster Bob Lobel.
For years, big-brained pranksters at MIT had been attempting so-called hacks at the Harvard-Yale game. In 1982, they hit pay — big time. During eight secret, wee-hour trips to Harvard Stadium, they planted a device under the field.
"Suddenly it happened, a balloon with MIT written all over it popped out of the turf at the 46-yard line, and grew and grew and grew," Lobel said the next day, describing the fateful moment.
Never a football powerhouse, MIT has won as many Nobel prizes — 80 — as they have football games in the past 70 years. But they just completed their first-ever undefeated season, and this Saturday enter the Division III playoffs. Not to be outdone, Harvard and Yale are Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, at the top of the Ivy League. Saturday, they tangle for the Ivy League crown at Harvard Stadium. ESPN will be there, broadcasting live. And so will Mike Lynch, who likes the Crimson’s chances.
"I see Harvard winning again," he said. "They’ve beaten Yale seven straight times and I see it going to an eighth. Go Crimson."
The annual Harvard-Yale football game — 139 years of gridiron rivalry — kicks off tomorrow afternoon at 12:30, but the festivities promise to start much earlier than that in Harvard Square.
Watch the 1982 MIT prank
