Not "The Game"

Anyway, I attended the concluding act of the Greek tragedy that is the Harvard football season two years ago. I'd actually been to several games earlier in the campaign to see how the Crimson stacked up to every expectation I had about Ivy League football – and as a college football fan first and a Harvard supporter seventh or eighth, I never harbored any delusions of the Crimson's grandeur.

 

Nor was I given any. To say that Ivy League football looks like Miami's second-stringers against Nebraska's probably insults those team's second-stringers. Nebraska's junior varsity could very possibly thrash Kinney, Kezirian and company and look effortless in doing so, too.

 

Of course, in a sense, none of this matters. Not every school tries to play the big-money game, and not every school should - thankfully, institutions like Harvard and Yale can serve as role models for the Florida States of the country, wiser fathers to our prodigal sons.

 

And believe it or not, our existence does matter. If there were no other purpose for the existence of intercollegiate athletics departments than to collect and display national titles, the member schools of the NCAA would look far, far worse than they already often do. The goals that the Ivy League schools set for themselves keep the Big Eight and the SEC from looking something like the Middle East: a balance-of-power construction gone awry where proliferation leads to escalation and the rulebook can't keep ahead of the next impending violation.

 

Still, Harvard's ongoing commitments to integrity and diversity doesn't mean it had to force Joe Restic's Multi-flex offense down my throat for three painful hours on a bleak (as I remember it) November afternoon. All my freshman friends were there sitting next to me, my cinnamon-sprinkled fried dough was wonderfully tasty, and the good guys played relatively well and won by two touchdowns - somehow all that didn't keep me from hightailing it out of Soldiers Field pretty quickly, desperately seeking an antidote along the lines of Auburn-Alabama or maybe Michigan-Ohio State.

 

Thankfully, the Multi-flex has gone the way of the five-point field goal and the USFL. But although I respect Tim Murphy tremendously, and although I earnestly believe he will bring Harvard to the top of the Ivy League before he's through here, I'm told the Crimson could run the ball 60 or 70 times tomorrow for lack of a better offensive game plan.

 

Thank you, I'll pass.

 

I've given up on Harvard versus Yale. Even after giving it only one chance. For even if the NCAA stands for something scary, to me "The Game" has come to stand for something much worse: self-delusion.

 

And yes, it all starts with that label. "The Game." I suppose in a city with the self-appellation "The Hub of the Universe" I shouldn't be surprised. (Heck, I should know - we of the Harvard golf team practice and play at "The Country Club".)

 

But come, now. "The Game" as maybe an abridgement of "The Game To End All Games" I might somehow understand - name another conference on any level where at the beginning of the season a team knows for certain when its last game shall be played. (What, with bowl games and the Division I-AA, II and III playoff ladders, isn't it odd to realize that the only two groups of schools that can't get to any kind of postseason competition given the requisite talent are those in the Ancient Eight and those on NCAA double-secret probation?)

 

Otherwise, what better way to promote a perpetual image of effete snobbery than by labeling what will be at best a football contest played at a mediocre level as something far too Holy for "Thou", the rest of the knowledgeable national football-watching community, to understand? Heck, we at "The Crimson" (hmmm...) are as guilty as anyone of continuing such a tradition - will any publication besides the official program devote 24 pages to the Rose Bowl?

 

How to remedy this situation? Assuming that the Crimson chooses not to compete on the national stage (which given the success of, say, the men's hockey team on a national level in a big-time sport may not be an assumption you automatically make), perhaps Harvard should accept a lower notch on the athletic hierarchy. Unselfishly conceding the primordial field of mud, guts and gore to the state schools, Harvard and Yale could shine as shrines of enlightenment around the athleto-centric heathens.

 

Yeah, so maybe you wanted to go to Duke, right? Wanted to be a Cameron Crazy. Wanted to blend academics and sports in a happy mixture of studiousness and insanity. But you didn't, and why not? Ultimately, the Harvard icon meant more to you than the Blue Devils did, and even if you couch its terms under the caption "earnings potential", the chief reason had something to do with the classes you'd attend.

 

Why can't we just accept this fact and go on with our meaningful, richly endowed lives? No - for one Saturday every November, Harvard tries to eat the beautiful cake it has, and by attempting to simulate the big-time college football tradition, it fails miserably on all counts.

 

What other game has thousands of people fill its stadium who either A) are drunk and will leave after the first quarter to get more drunk, B) don't know what "football" is or how it's played, C) are too old to remember what or when the last non-Harvard-Yale football game they attended was, or D) all of the above?

 

I'd like to think the quality of play does have something to do with this. Apologies to all involved, but I'd like to think "The Game" might have one or two of "The Players", if you follow me. 'Cause there ain't no Steve McNairs to throw the ball, no Napoleon Kaufmans to hand it to - and Eion Hu, with all due respect to his all-Ivy caliber talent, would have much less fun running into the Arizona defense than he did into Pennsylvania's last week.

 

(ust how desperate is ESPN2, I ask? The "deuce" is broadcasting the game this year, and for the life of me I can't figure out why it paid $10,000 to do so. I can't imagine what Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson have to say about being assigned by the mother station to call a game in which only alumni from the two schools and neurotic channel-surfers could possibly have any interest. Being transplanted from the national scene to this, what, will they be sniggering during the commercial breaks?)

 

But I'm afraid none of this matters. "Sport" as such is not a concern at Harvard-Yale, and it never will be central to the occasion, no matter how hard we try to make it so. Harvard will never understand that when Georgia and Florida meet for what they call "The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party", concerns like Zeier vs. Terry Dean are actually more important than Red Flats vs. White Heels and Budweiser vs. Miller Lite.

 

And real sports fans are left to make comparisons with the Nebraska junior varsity to attempt to integrate the world of the Bowl Coalition and the ever-full 100,000-seat stadium to the insular community which thinks that 35,000 people, the Harvard band, a few local press types and Ivy League football are all anyone could ever ask for in a collegiate sports environment.

 

Sorry - I cannot and never will accept this. I'll make a prediction (Yale 27, Harvard 16, although the Bulldogs won't pull away until late) because I always make one, but not for any other reason. And if you want to find me at an athletic competition this weekend, try Bright Hockey Center tomorrow or Ohiri Field Sunday afternoon.

 

Because devoid of pretension and filled with interested school spirit, those will be Games worth going to.