Remembering November 18, 2006

We all knew that Harvard was going to win on Saturday. We also knew that would happen last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. In fact, Yale's football team is so objectively bad that we at Flyby aren't quite sure why we have a game at all if the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Still, without competition on the field, Harvard-Yale weekend is nothing but revelry and schadenfreude, and where's the fun in that? Anticipating yet another (inevitable) Crimson victory is the best part of the tradition, so let's not cancel next year's game just yet.

But before we get too carried away, let us take a moment to sympathize with our battered Bulldog friends, who must at this very moment be licking their collective wounds. Let us help them begin to memorialize what generations of Yalies will surely see as a sacred and solemn day for years to come. Let us remember that once upon a time, it was Nov. 18, 2006, a day that would go down in history as The Last Day Yale Won The Game.

At that time, so very long ago, gas cost an average of $2.23 per gallon and Jay-Z's "Show Me What You Got" was debuting at the top of the charts.

Back then, Harvard cost just $43,655 per year (compare that to this year's $54,496 price tag), and students were gearing up for a twelve-day winter break and a January reading period.

The first model of the Nintendo Wii was just hitting the North American market, and Britney Spears had just publicly dumped Kevin Federline from her MySpace buddies list.

Barack Obama was the junior senator from Illinois, and Sarah Palin had not yet been sworn in as governor of Alaska.

And on that day, so many years ago, it was okay that Harvard had a Bad Day because it could use the year's most popular song to get over its loss.

Perhaps the Bulldogs should consider finding their own conciliatory song that better stands the test of time. Yale's going to need it.