The Game Of All Games: The 1968 Match

Sports fans, sportswriters and athletes are all involved in the fabrication of myth. Past contests, battles ingrained in athletic lore, become legendary over time. Usually, it takes many years and many remembered and enhanced details for one particular event to be spun into the fabric of sports legend.

The November gathering of two teams on a playing field in either New Haven, Conn. or Cambridge, the complete spectacle that accompanies the football contest known as The Game, has contributed more than its share of yarn. But in the 110 years that the Yale and Harvard eleven have faced each other, there is one game that stands out, one game that became legendary the second after the final two points made their way onto the scoreboard in The Stadium.

That Game happened in 1968. And on this, its 25th anniversary, it is time once more to piece together the scraps of paper that recount the story, to pour over photographs that capture the moments. In short, it is time unravel that Game's thread and in so doing strengthen its fabric.

With 3:31 remaining in the contest, it appears that Yale is on its way to its second straight win in The Game. The Bulldogs' amazing quarterback captain Brian Dowling has just tallied his second touchdown run of the day, and Yale's 29-13 lead seems altogether secure. The Old Blues wave the symbolic white handkerchiefs and chant "You're number two," as Harvard fans contemplate an early departure.

On the field, reserve signal-caller Frank Champi leads an offense missing captain Vic Gatto and starting halfback junior Ray Hornblower because of injuries.

With the ball on its own 12-yard line, the Crimson gets a drive going with a 17-yard gain on a reverse. A holding penalty erases the Elis' sack of Champi on the next play, and the quarterback from Everett. Mass. keeps the drive going when he finds junior Bruce Freeman for 17 more yards.

After an incomplete pass and a sack, however, Champi faces an imposing third and 18. As the play develops, fans in the stands, players and coaches on the sidelines begin to realize that something special is happening. Champi scrambles and eludes the Yale pass rush before lateraling the ball in the general direction of a Harvard player. The player who picks up the ball is tackle Fritz Reed. He gathers the bouncing sphere and makes his way 23 yards, just inside Yale's 20.

The Crimson cuts the Elis' lead to 10 points when Champi passes to Freeman for the score on the next play. Harvard needs the two-point conversion, and when Varney fails to catch Champi's pass, it looks as if Harvard's score will turn out to be mathematically futile. But the officials call pass interference on Yale and Harvard gets another chance. This time senior fullback Gus Crim plows his way in for the conversion.

The Crimson has cut Yale's insurmountable lead to eight points. Just eight points...

"The news hounds couldn't stop talking about that game back then, and until this day, they're still calling," Yale football Coach Carm Cozza says.

This season is Cozza's 29th as head coach of the Bulldogs, and that number 29 is just another reminder of the one Game he wants to forget. Cozza led an undefeated Yale team into The Stadium on that fateful day in November of 1968. He led the famous Brian Dowling, the same Brian Dowling who provided the inspiration for B.D. in Gary Trudeau's comic strip, Doonesbury.

In his career, Dowling attained magician's status in his native state of Ohio, around the Ivy League and in New Haven. Going into the game, Dowling had led the Elis to 22 victories. His overall record through high school and college was 57-0.

The man could not be beaten, and in the previous year's Game, Dowling showed that all he needed was a small opening to guarantee victory. With only seconds left in the game, the quarterback threw a 65-yard touchdown pass to give the Elis a 24-20 win.

"Dowling was a Walter Mitty-type back then," Gus Crim `69 says. "He was larger than everything around him."

Yale also boasted the legendary Calvin Hill, a powerful 215-pound halfback who would become an NFL rookie of the year.

"Carm [Cozza] has always said that Hill is the only player he has ever seen who can play any of the 22 positions on the field and play them well," Dowling says.

With Dowling, Hill and Bruce Weinstein, who would also play professional football, the Elis rolled to a perfect season in 1968.

Led by the late coaching legend John Yovicsin, Harvard also put together an unexpectedly undefeated season, boasting one of the nation's best defenses, dubbed by journalists the "Boston Stranglers."

When the Crimson and Elis met on Soldiers'Field, the game promised to be one of the mosthyped ever. The demand for tickets was so greatthat Harvard did not provide passes for allHarvard alumni who graduated after 1949.

Of course, the contest's pre-game hype couldnot match up to what actually happened.

With 42 seconds left in the contest, Harvardmust address itself to the Crimson gods--Harvardneeds nothing short of a miracle. The Crimson isstill down 29-21 and it desperately needspossession.

Harvard safety senior Tom Wynne wouldusually kick the ball off. But, in this situation,defensive back Ken Thomas, the Crimson's onsidekick specialist, readies.

Thomas boots the ball. It squibs along thegrass for about 10 yards and then, perfectly,shoots up into the air. Yale's Brad Lee bobblesthe ball and gets hit by Harvard's Joe McKinney.Crimson sophomore Bill Kelly jumps on the ball togive Harvard possession at the Yale 49.

Champi, takes the field. On the series'first play, the quarterback does what comesnaturally to him. He scrambles and picks up 14yards, and a facemask penalty on Yale adds 15more. With 32 seconds left in regulation, theCrimson has first and 10 on the Eli 20-yardline.

Champi throws two consecutive incompletepasses, and Gatto, the Crimson's captain, returnsto the game, ignoring a painful leg injury.

Crim gets the call on a draw play, gapes atthe enormous hole in front of him and gallopstowards the endzone for a gain of 14 yards. Firstdown. With 14 seconds left on the clock, Yalesacks Champi, and Harvard has only three secondsto salvage victory from defeat.

Champi lines up. He takes the snap andscrambles. The gun sounding the end of regulationfires. The number one receiver on the play isCrim, but the fullback has three Elis ready tobatter him if the ball comes his way. Champireadies a toss to Crim, but pulls his hand back atthe last second. Instead, he scrambles a littlemore before firing a pass to the Crimson'scaptain. Gatto hauls in the football in the cornerof the endzone to cut Yale's lead to two points.Just two points.

"When I look back on that game," Tom Wynne `69says, "there are so many moments that flash backbefore my eyes. It felt like there were over100,000 people there."

Wynne owns a record of a broadcast of thatgame. He says he listens to it with fondnessperiodically. For Wynne, now a prosecutingattorney in Fordyce, Arkansas, the game reflectedthe social and political emotion of 1968 and 1969.

"The game was right during the war in Vietnam,and we had lived through the assassinations ofRobert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. thesame Year," Wynne says. "It seemed to be a moreemotional time."

Crim also looks back on the year in whichHarvard and Yale played that Game and considers itunique, but he says the contest itself may haveslipped past the time period.

"For a lot of us it was an unusual situation,"Crim says. "We were in school and we had to staythere or else we were dead.

"But above all it was a great football gamebetween two great teams. The game transcended whatwas going on at the time."

Time. No time left, but the Crimson stillhave to try a two-point conversion. The crowdstorms the field, surrounding a small area aroundthe endzone.

Champi snaps the ball and starts scrambling.He backs up to Yale's 15-yard line before tossingthe pigskin to monstrous tight end Peter Varney.Varney towers over Yale defensive end Ed Frankilnand snags the pass out of the air for Harvard'sversion of The Catch. The Stadium erupts; theCrimson has made the Elis' lead disappear. Harvardbeats Yale, 29-29.

"From the moment we recovered the onside kick,I had no doubt we'd score eight," Crim says."Everything was preordained. It was just one ofthose times when everything comes together."

Champi was the one player who broughteverything together. He was able to inject instantlife into a team that had not explicitly given upby the third period, but that had conceded thatYale would probably win on that day.

Crim says, however, that starting quarterbackGeorge Lalich was the inspirational force on theteam. Lalich may not have been able to move theHarvard offense effectively in The Game, but Crimsays that everybody forgets the situation withwhich Lalich had to deal.

"People don't remember that [Lalich] hadsuffered a concussion a week before and had doublevision," Crim says. "Champi came into a situationthat was tailor-made for him."

Since he faced a lead that the 40,000-plus inThe Stadium did not believe he or anyone couldovercome, Champi had no pressure with which todeal."

"Of course he had great athletic ability," Crimsays. "One thing that always impressed me was whenI would see him throw a fifty yard pass on a linewith his right arm, and then turn around andthrown the same pass with his left arm. He wascompletely ambidextrous."

Champi used every bit of his athletic abilityto secure the "win" for the Crimson, and afterVarney caught the pass for the final two points ofthe game, the scene on the field can only bedescribed as a carnival.

"I had 80-year-olds jumping all over me andkids grabbing on to me," Crim says.

"I can only remember the fantastic cheering andthe riotous emotion of the crowd," says TheReverend Canon Harold Bane Sedgewick `30, a loyalCrimson fan who will attend his 57th Game thisweekend in New Haven. "It was just extraordinary.I have a tape and when I get lonely I play it.There will never be another game like it."

"My parents had made the trip from Arkansas,"Wynne remembers, "And I remember seeing them afterthe game. They were stunned. They were crying."

For Cozza and the Elis, the tears were notjoyful, of course. The tie felt more like a loss,and Cozza says it was unbelievable how many thingswent wrong for Yale that day. Despite practicallyscoring at will for the entire game, Yale alsolost six fumbles that day and committedsignificant penalties at the worst possiblemoments.

"It's sad that year's [Yale] team had such agreat season and will be remembered for that onegame," Cozza says. "Everything went wrong for us.It was like the worst loss of your life."

The legend's thread has not run out. It willnever run out. The contest has generated its owntime capsule. The players have become mythicalheroes, the plays themselves have becomesupernatural actions, never to be repeated ormatched.

This Game has become more about superlativesthan anything else, and ironically, Harvard's mostmemorable win, Harvard's greatest victory overYale, was actually a 29-29 tie.Crimson PhotographerPETER VARNEY makes the game-tying catch onHarvard's two-point conversion with no timeremaining.