Gridiron Traditions Wax and Wane But Liquor Runs as Steady Favorite

Sometime at today's game, a fellow in a sweater is going to run his lips over the mouth of a bottle of rye. Another follow with white shoes and a red-head is going to pour four chilled martinis complete with pearl onions, Chances are that six characters wearing straw bats will also consume a case of been during the three hours they occupy their Soldiers Field seats.

This sort of stuff is a tradition at Harvard-Yale football games that not even prohibition could spoil. Although the WTCU will tell you that nobody could get hold of liquor in those days, old alumni insist that Stadium swizzhing never reached its peak until the 1920's. The CRIMSON of 1927 reported that "today's Yale contest is the last of the season. From now on the boys will have to do their drinking indoors."

As liquor became more prominent over Yale weekends, mass cheering techniques diminished, but from 1900 until 1920, the student body, officers, and alumni had really knocked themselves out in backing up the team.

Handkerchiefs

The handkerchief stunt was big stuff in that period. Certain students in sections 31 and 33 got tickets marked "RED HANDKERCHIEF" before the Yale game. Rushing to Brine's, Leavitt and Peirce, the Coop, etc. these fellows bought crimson handkerchiefs to keep in their pockets until the half.

When the band struck up, strangely enough, the Marseillaise, out came several thousand red and white handkerchiefs, forming a huge fluttering "H" in the Harvard stands. Everyone was also supposed to have an individual megaphone at his side at all the time, and cheers in those days were not only shouted, but aimed as well.

University Parades

The University marched down to Soldiers Field for the Yale classic en masse in that era. It also showed up for final practices on the Thursday before the big clash. Old CRIMSONS in 1909 report that over 1500 students cheered at scrimmage that year, and even more than that clogged newly-motorized Cambridge traffic on the night before the game.

In 1874, the CRIMSON, at that time the Magenta, was trying to push an annual football game between Harvard and Yale. This materialized for the first time in 1875 when the Crimson won the first contest in the newly-started series.

Rules in those days varied with each team. Magenta sports editors were a little confused about the rules on "players picking up the ball and then being chased." But even without Bill Bingham, rules and regulations were soon worked out.

Relations Touchy

Rivalries followed rapidly, and feelings between the Crimson and Blue got touchier and touchier. Relationships were broken off for three years just before the turn of the century, but the game was too good an excuse for a big weekend, and the classic was reinstated.

Post-game football riots over the goal-posts got their first start in those early days. They were somewhat more extensive in the early 1900's than now since local police have finally wised up and now place cordons of blucoats around the posts. There once was the time when you rolled up your sleeves in the final period if your team was losing and eyed the opposite stands eagerly. You can't see the other side now--fifty cops are in the way.

Fifty years ago chances are you would have left the field with a black eye; now you're satisfied with a popsicle. This is a classic with modernized, 1948-model color. Once it featured mustache cups and megaphones, raccoon coasts and pearl-handled umbrellas. Now it's got television, and Dixle Belle, and martinis--chilled--complete to the onion.