Out Of Place At The Game

The Game is an institution, so much a part of the New England landscape that it actually gets front page coverage on the Boston Globe's sports section. I've crossed into Allston twice to watch it. I've made the trip to New Haven twice. And I can safely say that my senior year Game experience was the worst of all four.

It wasn't the loss. The last two Games taught me to expect fourth-quarter heartbreak (ah, the glorious 1997 Ivy-winning season). It wasn't the cold: The Yale Bowl, stuck seemingly in a wind-swept spot in the midst of nowhere, has wreaked more havoc on my tropical blood. It was the ticketing. My friends and I entered the stadium and took up our assigned seats in Section 11. Whereupon we realized that, even though our tickets clearly said we were Harvard students, Section 11 was on the side of the stadium flying the blue "Y" flag and had a crowd comprised mainly of Yale alumni. Dubious. Who wants bipartisan seating? You might as well seat Rep. Barney Frank '61 (D-Mass.) next to Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). So we did what many other misassigned people (and there seemed a fair number of us, judging from the numerous overheard complaints) did--we went over to the Harvard side of the stadium and tried to sit with our peers.

It proved futile. Not only had the ticketing people not assigned supporters to the appropriate sides, they had apparently forgotten to set aside sections of the stadium for current students--something that happened at every other Game I've attended. On the Harvard side, it seemed alumni were everywhere, interspersed with College students (as a friendly Yalie from the Class of '69 said, "You're seniors? I'm a senior too!"). And because alums appreciate The Game in a completely different way, putting us together merely spoilt the experience for both sides. The students were standing up and cheering, all excited, and grumpy old men (I use the gender construction specifically) kept telling them to sit down because they "couldn't see the game." Shouldn't someone in ticketing have realized that a large part of the fun of The Game for us students is standing with our friends and contemporaries, chanting all the usual cheers--"safety school," "we still go to Harvard," etc.--together? What student sits during The Game?

Since so many of us migrants were crowding into the Harvard side, the police had to force us to move back to our assigned seats. In the ensuing unwilling return back to the dreaded Section 11, we missed the record-setting touchdown return by Okechukwu "Chuck" U. Nwokocha '01. Ninety-four apparently amazing yards, and I saw none of it. Sure, we enjoyed ourselves in the end, shouting out counter-abuse at the people around us. But I doubt we were as spirited as we could have been. It wasn't just that it was less fun. There were safety considerations too. You know the winners are going to storm the field, and a rush of people headed downwards while others slink out of the stadium seems a recipe for collision.

I'll grant that we weren't the earliest of ticket buyers. But I can't imagine the demand for tickets changes so dramatically that the ticketing office can't estimate what side people should be on. And how was it that even last week many of my fellow seniors had no clue whether tickets were on sale? The entire ticketing fiasco spoilt my memories of my last Game as a student, an occasion I should have treasured. Ah well. At least this newspaper got an Ibis out of the whole thing.

--Daryl Sng