THE GAME '06: Norton’s Anthology

On Saturday, a white-haired man will enter Harvard Stadium and take his usual seat among the Crimson faithful in Section 37.

Unlike those around him, John Norton will be watching The Game from the stands for the 62nd consecutive year.

This year will mark the 123rd football game between Harvard and Yale, and Norton has been on hand for slightly more than half of them.

It’s all part of a tremendous streak of 370 consecutive home games that Norton has attended at the Stadium, starting in 1943.

Literally nothing can keep him away.

“I went through two total knee [replacements] this year,” he says. “I planned it so that I could get them done and get back in time for football in the fall.”

Norton credits former neighbor Norman Frad, the one-time head of intramurals at Harvard, with beginning his streak.

“He used to take me to into baseball games, baketball games—and then it got into football,” Norton says.

His first two years­—1943 and 1944­—The Game was not played due to World War II.

Talking to him is like a trip through Harvard football history. The shift from playing games in even years in New Haven to their current location in Cambridge, the greatest players he’s seen, minutiae about Crimson football long forgotten by even the most devoted historians, and opinions about the quality of the league’s various stadiums are all fair game.

His knowledge of Harvard football history, while comprehensive, is well complimented by his own meticulous record-keeping.

He keeps bound volumes full of the Harvard-Yale programs, which date as far back as 1915. The collection expanded significantly when, as a high school student working for a contractor, he discovered a trunk full of old programs while gutting the house of a passed-on alum. Their colorful covers, often fancifully painted, were replaced for the 1960 game with a picture of the two captains. He can tell you the story behind that, too.

And then there are the statistics.

“Always, around the time of the Harvard-Yale game, he gives me a sheet on some facts about Harvard-Yale that even the statisticians and SID people at Harvard and Yale don’t know,” coach Tim Murphy says. “He knows every fact about everything.”

A neatly stapled packet, seven pages long, details all of the statistics between Harvard and Yale for literally the entire history of the rivalry. The pages tell you that the Crimson is 3-9 against the Bulldogs in years ending in the number six, that former Chicago Bears coach and Yale star Dick Jauron owns the highest single-game rushing total in The Game, and that an 85-yard touchdown pass from Chet Boulris ’60 to Hank Keohane ’60 is the longest pass play in the rivalry.

Norton has prepared these packets for every Ivy opponent Harvard faces. But none is more important than the Bulldogs.

“Basically, the Harvard-Yale series is fun,” he says. “There have been years when you wouldn’t have bet a nickel that we could beat them and they could beat us, and that’s what’s happened.”

Last year’s 30-24 triple-overtime win, he feels, is the greatest he’s personally witnessed. Even better than the Crimson’s famous 29-29 “win” in 1968?

“I don’t rate that as the greatest game I ever saw,” he says. “We were doggone lucky to even be able to come back and tie that game. I think last year would rate ahead of it. That’s one for the books.”

He’s in good position to judge, as Norton’s Harvard roots run deep. Although not an alum himself, Norton’s father was Class of 1925 and went on to Harvard Medical School, while Norton’s brother and five uncles all attended Harvard.

“It was just the idea I sort of attached myself with,” he says. “It was the closest school.”

He has a clear objective in mind as he continues his streak at the Stadium.

“I have to go six years at five games a season in order to hit 400,” he said. “That’s my target.”

And what does this sage of Crimson football history have in mind for his 62nd Game?

“I think we can beat them, but we can’t make any mistakes,” he says. “I would say maybe 28-21, maybe 28-24, [because] they’ve got a pretty good field goal kicker.”

—Staff writer Brad Hinshelwood can be reached at bhinshel@fas.harvard.edu.