Game of '68 Also Found America In Flux

The Game. Two capitalized words and one period concisely represent what is arguably college football’s greatest rivalry, because The Game, at its foundations, really is that simple.

Twenty-two men, one stitched leather ball, and a big patch of grass are all that’s needed for The Game, and have been since it was first played over 100 years ago.

After eight mostly gut-wrenching victories, the 2001 Harvard squad is now one victory away from the its first undefeated season since 1913—one win from writing itself into the record books.

“It’s great to be part of a game like [Harvard-Yale],” says senior defensive end Marc Laborsky, who remembers following the series as a high school student. “It’s one of the best rivalries in the country.”

At the End of an Era

Though The Game has been played 117 times, one particular four quarters of football is recalled most often by alumni.

The year was 1968, and The Game was bigger than ever.

Harvard and Yale both entered The Game undefeated and untied at a time when America was taut with tension.

While this year’s Game comes in a time when America is pulling together, 1968 was a year in which America was coming apart at the seams.

In January the North Vietnamese launched the Tet offensive, taking the war from the country to the cities. Tet changed American attitudes towards the war that would continue to deteriorate.

On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed at a Memphis Hotel. Bobby Kennedy, who gave an impomptu eulogy for King on hearing of his death before an speech in Indianapolis, was shot to death at the beginning of June.

In August, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia with 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops, ending the Prague Spring.

Later in the month, police in Chicago took action against protestors at the Democratic National Convention, sending some 100 people to the emergency room.

On October 11, Apollo 7 was launched and circles the Earth 163 times over 11 days. A week later at the Mexico City Olympics, U.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos rasied their fists on the medal stand in a black power salute.

America was in the middle of a painful transition, and in the middle of this The Game was going to serve as a comforting diversion, if only for an afternoon.

Ivy League games ganernered national attention back then, and this one was as big as it could get.

Yale entered The Game with a string of 16 consecutive victories and possessed one of the nation’s most dominant offensive attacks.

Led by future NFL Rookie of the Year tailback Calvin Hill and their living legend of a quarterback Brian Dowling, the Bulldogs were averaging 456 yards per game. Hill was averaging over five yards a carry on the ground, and the senior Dowling hadn’t lost a a single game since his sophomore season—in high school.

So, despite possessing the nation’s No. 1 defense (nicknamed the “Boston Stranglers”), Harvard was the underdog.

Eli Coach Carmen Cozza was so confident that the week before The Game he told The Crimson, “I don’t think Harvard can beat us.”

The demand for tickets was unparalleled.

Harvard’s athletic department instated a system that, after filling requests from fellows, trustees, professors and students, gave priority to alumni by graduation year, with the oldest alumni having the first chance to purchase tickets.

Members of the class of 1949 bought the final tickets of the 40,000 sold. Nearly 50,000 ticket orders could not be filled.

“We could have sold 100,000 tickets, including those sold at Yale,” Gordon M. Page, Harvard’s ticket manager said the week before The Game.

Everyone, it seems, knew that something special would take place on that Saturday afternoon in the nation’s oldest football venue.

“Harvard beats Yale, 29-29”

The Ivy League title and the respect of a nation were on the line, and Yale spent the first half of the game proving why it was everyone’s favorite. The No. 18 Elis—ranked behind the likes of Alabama and USC because there was no Division I-AA back then—plowed its way to a 22-0 lead as Dowling tossed two touchdowns and ran for one more.

But The Game was far from over.

Harvard’s starting quarterback George Lalick was benched in favor of little-used reserve Frank Champi by Harvard Coach John Yovicsin. Champi, a star javelin thrower on the Harvard track team, had only completed five passes all season.

Harvard pulled to within 29-13 late in the fourth quarter, but Yale still stood firmly in control and seemed destined to complete the first back-to-back perfect league seasons in Ivy history.

With 3:31 remaining in The Game, Harvard recovered the Bulldogs’ sixth fumble of the afternoon to take control on its own 14-yard line. At that point, Champi engineered the most famous comeback in Harvard history.

Harvard drove the length of the field in dramatic fashion. The Crimson converted on a third-and-18 when Champi bobbled the ball, eluded two Eli defenders in the backfield and lateraled to lineman Fritz Reed who rumbled for 23 yards and the game-saving first down.

With 42 seconds remaining, tight end Bruce Freeman and Champi hooked up for the score, and Gus Crim ran in the two-point conversion to bring the score to 29-21.

On the ensuing play, Harvard recovered its onside kick and took control at the Yale 49. Champi scrambled to the 35, and a 15-yard face mask penalty gave the Crimson first and ten on the 20-yard line. After two incomplete passes, Crim picked up 14 yards on a draw.

The Elis sacked Champi on the next play, but with three seconds remaining and eight yards between Harvard and history, Champi floated the ball to tailback Vic Gatto in the left corner of the endzone for the score.

The yellow bulbs of the clock clock at the top of the giant old-fashioned scoreboard read 0:00.

Champi connected with wide receiver Pete Varney on a slant pattern to pick up the final two points, and the game ended 29-29, prompting the now infamous Crimson headline, “Harvard beats Yale, 29-29.”

Harvard students who just one year later would storm University Hall, rushed the field on this day.

On a cloudy day in that turbulent autumn, the Harvard student body was allowed a little piece of innocence that was long ago ripped away.

Making History

The Game of 1968 is the gold standard, and there won’t be another like it. However, The Game is about more than just that one fall afternoon three and a half decades ago.

The athletes that play in The Game today come from Hawaii and New York. They speak with southern drawls and Boston twangs. They are all colors and follow all creeds.

But The Game, for them, is the same—exhilarating.

“I’d always gone to the game when I was young and seen the rivalry,” says freshman tight end Adam Jenkins, a native of Burlington, Mass. “I saw how much the student bodies of both schools got into it. To get to play in the game now is almost surreal. It’s really special.”

It’s special for Jenkins, who has been there as a fan and will be on the field Saturday as the team’s second tight end. But It’s special to all of the players because even if they didn’t know all of the history, now they have the opportunity to write it.

In the Yale Bowl this Saturday amid the ghosts of Dowling, Yovicsin and the thousands of others who have taken the field for both squads in the past 12 decades, the game played will be the same: 22 men trying to get a piece of leather across a line.

What’s remarkable is that this 2001 team has the opportunity to put its name alongside the likes of this 1968 squad.