Mishaps at the Game: Harvard-Brown

The artistic folk aren’t normally the kind to make a big splash at a football game.

But at Friday night’s football game, a pair of on-field performances caught the attention of the 18,565 in attendance.

Entertainment during pauses in games has been around almost as long as the sports themselves. Still, the Harvard Crimson Dance Team may have taken its mandate to entertain a little too far. The troupe came on at the end of the first quarter, but as the Crimson and Brown made their way back onto the field, the dancers didn’t move.

And for a solid 30 seconds, the dancers and the football players shared the gridiron, much to the confusion of the fans and apparent bewilderment of the referees.

The stranger performance of the night came from Brown’s band at halftime. It started just like any other band performance—unfamiliar fight songs, two-year-old cultural references—when it took a rather peculiar turn.

They arranged themselves like, well, what looked like a male sex organ that spanned most of the length of the field. I’m not sure if they meant to give Harvard the shaft.

So, without further ado, readers can choose their cheap one-liner about the picture from the following options:

1. It definitely looked smaller than when they practiced. Must’ve been cold.

2. 25-second routine? That’s about right.

3. Insert your own joke based on the fact that the name of the school is, hilariously, Brown.

It was an exciting game, and it was much tighter throughout the contest than the final score indicates. But there really is nothing quite like a little fifth-grade humor to make a rainy football Friday game that much better.