Murphy, Harvard Football Pardoned from Harsh Boston Sports Standards

Harvard football had won nine straight games against Yale, but it was the Bulldogs who went streaking on Saturday.

Near the end of the third quarter, with the score even at 14, a group of Yale students stood up on the wall separating the field from the stands. Not very noteworthy, except for the fact that the students were completely naked. The tradition, known as the Saybrook Strip, can be traced all the way back to the 1970s.

The game-delaying strip was not the most surprising sight at Harvard Stadium on Saturday, however. Seeing a wave of blue stream onto the field as the clock expired and seeing Harvard players jog back to the locker room was totally unexpected. Cliché time: it kind of felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

After Joe Viviano was chased out of the pocket on the game’s final play, it was hard to imagine he would be able to complete a game-saving Hail Mary. The senior quarterback threw up a jump ball between Adam Scott, Anthony Firkser, and Yale’s Jason Alessi. Firkser made a bid for it, but Alessi swooped in to break up the play.

As soon as the ball hit the turf, Yale fans and players alike went berzerk. I can still hear a faint ringing in my ears from the crazed reaction of the Yale radio crew, which was unfortunately seated directly behind me. I guess that’s what happens when nearly a decade of futility comes to a merciful end.

The Bulldogs win was made official after quarterback Kurt Rawlings took a knee on the next play. A quick look at the scoreboard cemented the reality in Harvard fans’ minds. Final score: Yale 21, Harvard 14. Game clock: 00:00.

Harvard students are, on average, infinitely more concerned with finding campus events with free food than whether their team wins a game against its biggest rival. A game with title implications, no less.

However, even the most apathetic Harvardian knew that the Crimson was the heavy favorite on Saturday. To say that Harvard football has been good in the past few decades is possibly the biggest understatement in recorded history.

The Crimson is 163-66 under head coach Tim Murphy. Murphy has won nine Ivy League titles, including three in a row before this year. Against the Bulldogs, Murphy’s teams have gone 17-6.

In conversations throughout Cambridge over the weekend, and in Allston just minutes before kickoff, it was a foregone conclusion that Harvard would triumph over Yale. The only question was by how much.

In a way, this expectation mirrors that of Boston sports fans in general. The only difference is that after a Celtics, Red Sox, or Bruins loss, there are calls for the immediate firing of the manager or coach while laments about the patheticness of these teams pervade social media.

You probably noticed I left the Patriots out of that group. The Patriots have dominated the NFL during my lifetime, but if Bill Belichick and crew ever have an off season, I would not bet against seeing pitchforks and torches outside Gillette Stadium.

For example, the Red Sox improved from 78-84 in 2015 to 93-69 in 2016, but people from Narragansett, Rhode Island to Presque Isle, Maine still declared the Sox’s season an utter, abject failure.

There have even been rumblings around the Celtics’ fan base that head coach and basketball genius Brad Stevens has to be sent packing after a 7-6 start to the 2016-2017 campaign. Come on, really?

Fans of Boston-based sports teams are spoiled. The Celtics have the most championships in NBA history, the Red Sox have won three very recent titles, the Bruins are a historic Original Six team with six Stanley Cup victories, and the Patriots have completely reversed their losing ways of the 20th century. Still, in the eyes of your average Bostonian, it’s just not good enough.

Despite the widely-held opinion that the Bay State is the hub of professional sports, Boston aficionados still cannot help being as insufferable as possible. Sure, all four of the major teams have toiled in mediocrity at various points in their respective histories. But that was then, and this is now.

This “championship or bust” attitude certainly doesn’t help Boston’s image, and it probably explains why so many people would rather see the Patriots lose than see their own team win.

As you can see, the sports scene in Boston is unrecognizable from its counterpart in Harvard Square. Harvard fans were likely disappointed after Yale’s upset win, but for them, life goes on. On the other hand, after the Red Sox bowed out of the American League Division Series to the Cleveland Indians this past season, people were ready to riot in the streets.

Yes, there is a difference between professional and collegiate athletics, but many people follow college football and basketball much more passionately than NFL or NBA fans. Look no further than Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium, with a seating capacity of over 100,000, or the annual hype over March Madness.

In summary: treating a game as a life-or-death situation is probably not going to do wonders for your blood pressure, but it might be better to care about the result a bit more than we unbiased journalists do. Regardless of all my complaining, let’s just be grateful for one thing—at least we don’t go to school in New Haven.

—Staff writer Jack Stockless can be reached at jack.stockless@thecrimson.com