Around The Ivies: When You Give A Small Child A Wiffle Bat...

Suppose you are a piñata.

One year you show up at a birthday party. Let’s say it’s a group of eight-year-old kids, all hyped on sugar. They grab a yellow Wiffle ball bat and beat the Skittles out of you. Your paper tears off, your cardboard splits open, and you fall to the mud. Excruciating pain.

Suppose you show up the next year. And the year after that. And the year after. In fact, let’s suppose that you show up for nine straight birthday parties, all the way up to age 16.

By this point you’re disheartened and physically deformed. Almond Joys stick out of your rib cage. Even so, you sit down and convince yourself that tradition is tradition. So you show up for a 10th time.

Who’s to blame for the ensuing violence, the birthday boy—now age 17—or the delusional piñata? Who’s the victim, and who’s the perpetrator? How much longer can these piñata parties go on?

On Saturday Harvard football plays Yale for the 133rd time in the history of The Game. The last time the Bulldogs won, Netflix didn’t exist as a streaming service. Which meant that there truly was no escape from New Haven.

Yet this weekend brings more than The Game. Let’s get serious for a moment: The Ivy League title is on the line. Penn, Princeton and Harvard all have a single loss, which means that a win ensures each of them a share of the title.

Conceivably, if scoring lines hold, three teams could share the crown for the second straight league. That’s 37.5 percent of the league. Ludicrous. Roughly the same as the amount of the nation that thought the Electoral College was the thing that made lights come on.

Speaking of elections, yikes. Some said that the Cubs could only win the World Series after the apocalypse. It turns out those people were wrong—they had the order reversed.

It is within the realm of possibility that Dartmouth will beat the Tigers or Yale will beat the Crimson? Possible, but Rakesh-does-a-keg-stand unlikely.

Meanwhile it’s not possible that Cornell beats the Quakers because, first, wide receiver Justin Watson is a character from Terminator and, two, Ithaca. More on that later.

COLUMBIA AT BROWN

Some professors specialize in astrophysics, others in pre-modern linguistics. Professor Michael Stein specializes in the effects of weed usage. And you wonder how you get tenure at Brown.

Recently Stein researched the effects of marijuana use on sleep and found a serious depreciation in rest quality. He surveyed 98 participants with a mean age of 22, including a cohort of daily smokers, occasional smokers, and non-smokers (also known as visiting students). The results seem robust, but university officials have questioned a $2,000 tab for Domino’s pizza.

Note to libel-checking editors: That number is a joke.

Why do I digress about the course of scientific progress? First, because this column exists to provide an education for our readers. Second, because Stein’s research encapsulates two key facts about this week’s Brown-Columbia matchup: The game will be a snorer, and you’d be better off rolling some J’s.

The Columbia defense is fearsome, and coach Al Bagnoli coaches with the fury of a man who has been forced to coach the Lions.

And Brown? If Stein’s conclusions prove correct, then the Bears will be sleep-deprived.

Score: Columbia 26, Brown 13.

DARTMOUTH AT PRINCETON

The matchup between the Big Green and the Tigers gives me another occasion to name-drop Domino’s. The pizza chain recently arrived in the wilderness of Hanover. Well, not actually Hanover but the nearby locales of West Lebanon and Claremont.

Not everyone is thrilled, though. The hometown chain Everything but Anchovies has argued that the cheap speed of Domino’s can’t compete with the slow quality of hand-crafted meals.

What Domino’s is to Everything but Anchovies, the Tigers are to the Big Green. One is an efficient machine, well oiled and flush with cash (hello online ordering and Princeton endowment). The other is a quaint vestige from the 1950s, enigmatic and possibly imaginary. Kind of like Robert Ruffins.

Ever since losing to the Crimson, the Tigers have devoured opponents whole. Princeton shut out Penn, 28-0, and downed Yale, 31-3.

A similar outcome will befall the Big Green this weekend. Mom-and-pop shops just can’t thrive in modern capitalism. Sorry.

Score: Princeton 38, Dartmouth 7.

PENN AT CORNELL

O Ithaca—muse of all columns, source of all jokes. Friend to anyone with writer’s block, foe to anyone who likes happiness. You have been a gift to The Crimson Sports Board.

In honor of this illustrious city, we should take a tour through history. Early modern Ithaca was a hub for salt trading. By the late 19th century, the town housed several national business, including the Ithaca Gun Company and the factory responsible for the Ithaca Kitty, a stuffed animal that allegedly enjoyed mass popularity before World War II.

Then the 20th century began. In 1902 a typhoid epidemic rocked the city. Years later, officials discovered that the Ithaca Gun Company had been testing shotguns in a tributary of the Cayuga Lake, contaminating a great deal of water. Clouds gathered above Ithaca, and they never receded.

Penn visits Cornell on Saturday, which would be a depressing trip except for the fact that the Quakers can claim a league championship with a win. It’s a classic moral dilemma—to earn that trophy that you’ve been working for all year or to forfeit and avoid a many-hour bus ride into the middle of nowhere.

As long as Penn coach Ray Priore can get his squad on the road, the Quakers will clean up Ithaca like the Ten Man after the men’s lacrosse team came through for a party.

Score: Penn 42, Cornell 13.

YALE AT HARVARD

If you’ve spent hundreds of dollars to buy N. Gregory Mankiw’s most recent magnum opus, then you know this basic economic fact: Supply and demand determine market equilibrium. If people value something less, then they will either buy fewer units, pay a lower price, or both.

How does this economic theory square with the behavior of Yale students? On the first day of sales, more than 2,400 kids paid 25 dollars to claim a ticket. Despite the fact that the Bulldogs are 2-7. Despite the fact that Yale has lost nine straight times in The Game.

Ah, but there is an incentive hiding in the background: This year Harvard plays the Bulldogs in Cambridge, Mass. Spend 25 dollars and flee New Haven for a few hours? Suddenly that list price sounds like a bargain.

Indeed, Orkin Pest Control recently named New Haven on a list called “50 Rattiest Cities.” In terms of rodent infestation, the city ranks No. 17 in the nation—which marks the first time that New Haven has been ranked No. 17, ever.

However, we should not underestimate Yale. That sounds insane, I know. But don’t count out a team that possesses great athletic talent, a season’s worth of frustration, and rodent-like hunger.

Piñatas traditionally don’t survive birthday parties. Odds are that the Bulldogs won’t survive Saturday either. However, I suspect that the early score will be closer than Harvard fans want to admit.

That said, all piñatas break at some point in time. That is why piñatas exist, actually. Make sure to bring a plastic bag to collect all those errant Milk Duds.

Score: Harvard 31, Yale 10.

—Staff writer Sam Danello can be reached at sam.danello@thecrimson.com.