This year’s edition carries additional importance: for the first time in a recent string of Crimson dominance (Harvard has won 12 of the last 13 Games and seven straight since 2006), the Bulldogs look ready to challenge. The winner takes the Ivy League title.
Inspired by the unusual amount of hype surrounding this year’s game, here’s a look back at one of the most hyped games in the history of college football’s second-longest running rivalry: the Game that made the front page of the Post sports section 46 years ago this weekend with the headline “Last Minute Rally Gives Harvard Tie, ” one the Harvard Crimson newspaper headlined “Harvard beats Yale, 29-29.”
History remembers that headline as a witty reference to the boost of morale the Harvard side got from its late rally, one mimicking a victory. Speculation in New Haven over the years posits it was just a well-received typo, absent any Cantab wit. Regardless, that headline summed the game and its story, one that those who follow The Game will never forget.
In 1968– the year O.J. Simpson won the Heisman, for reference — Ivy League football had already retreated to a slightly less prominent place in college football’s upper echelon: 30 years before, Yale was home to back-to-back Heisman winners.
Still, that year’s Yale team gained headlines as one of its most talented yet, led and headed into The Game with an 8-0 record led by eventual NFL quarterback Brian Dowling. Dowling finished 9th in the Heisman voting that season.
Harvard also entered the Game 8-0, though was less heralded in the doing. The Crimson had a first team all-Ivy guard that year named Tommy Lee Jones. Yes, that Tommy Lee Jones.
As expected in that game, the Bulldogs carried a comfortable points cushion (29-13) into the game’s final minute, that after opening the game with 22 unanswered points. But Harvard rallied. Second-string quarterback Frank Champi engineered an 86 yard drive. Then the Crimson recovered an on-side kick. Time wound down and gave Champi and Harvard one last play– one the Crimson turned into a touchdown, then followed with a game-tying two-point conversion, much to the joy of the Cambridge crowd.
