Last Year: Game Decided

This is the way it should be, you think. The day so cold you can barely feel your feet. The wind swirling. Two teams playing for a championship.

You bring all the warm garments you can find--wool hat, ear muffs, ski mask, long underwear, electric blanket. And, still, you are cold. You bring all the warm drinks you can pour into thermoses--hot chocolate, coffee. You tuck a pint of something your mother would be ashamed of you for drinking into your coat pocket. You take a swig. And, still, you are cold.

You sit in the bleachers of the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Conn. You are waiting for the game--no, The Game--to begin. You would be warmer if you were lying naked atop an igloo, you think. And, still, you think, it is worth it. It is worth losing a few toes over. This game means something. This game is for the Ivy League championship. This is The Game.

The Harvard football team is not supposed to contend for the Ivy League title in 1987. The Crimson finished the previous year with a 3-7 overall mark. In the 1986 campaign, Harvard used a handful of quarter-backs before settling on Tom Yohe. The running game was a shambles. The defense did the best it could. But after the 1986 season, the defense looked like the sides of beef Rocky used to punch in meat coolers.

As Coach Joe Restic surveys the gridiron landscape, he has reason to be pessimistic. Last year's team, battered and bruised, should have been nicknamed the Black and Blue, not the Crimson. And maybe the best designation for this year's club is the Green. Yohe, who started only a couple of games in 1986, is an elder statesman on this unit.

"When I look at where we're at coming back--only two starters returning on offense and four on defense--it worries me," Restic says in a preseason press conference.

But youth has its day--several of them. Harvard rolls to a 3-0 start, knocking off Columbia, Northeastern and Bucknell.

Yale, the home team, the mighty Blue and White, takes charge of The Game in the early going. Bulldog quarterback Kelly Ryan, who turned down scholarships to bigtime colleges like Miami and is the owner of every major Yale passing record, stakes his club to a 10-7 halftime lead.

With just under two minutes gone in the second quarter, he finds Mike Stewart streaking down the sidelines and gets him the ball. Cheers roll around the Yale Bowl. You take a sip of the strong stuff. With halftime 10 seconds away, Yale kicker Dave Derby attempts a 44-yd. field goal. No way he makes it, you say. He does--the longest boot of his career.

"By halftime, we hadn't played very well offensively," Ryan would say later. "But we were ahead. I felt really good then because I knew that we were capable of playing much better football."

The Cornell game in early October is an abberation. The Big Red turns the football into a beachball, batting it as high as it will go and then swooping under it and catching it for touchdowns. With under two minutes left in the game, Red wideout Shaun Hawkins takes a pass down the right sideline. He tips the ball into the air. He runs under it. He tips it into the air again. He runs under it. He catches it. He scores. A minute later, Cornell scores again. The final: Cornell 29, Harvard 17.

Harvard's first Ivy loss is its last, however.

In the second half, Harvard Captain Kevin Dulky plays like Los Angeles Raiders Captain Kevin Dulsky. He is bigger than his 200-lbs. He is taller than his 6-ft., 1-in. He is a pro in an amateur's game.

He shuts down Ryan, his friend and the guy who shares the cover with him on the Harvard-Yale program. He gives an opening to his quarter-back, Yohe. Yohe takes it.

With 10 minutes remaining in the third quarter, Yohe finds running back Tony Hinz in the right corner of the endzone.

Thanks to Dulsky and friends, Harvard's 14 points are enough.

You mingle with the crowds on the field. You feel the blood coming back into your feet. Your feet feel like dancing. Penguins would grow stiff in this cold. But you are as warm as Florida beach. This is the way it should be.

This article first appeared in the 1988 Commencement Issue.