Yale-Harvard: the Ivy League's most storied rivalry

In a battle epitomizing the football rivalry, Johnson grappled with gravity, pulling the ball away from the eager clutches of green grass blades. Huge, exhausted bodies coated with mud blocked the view of Coach Siedlecki and the 52,484 spectators who had been on their feet since the opening kickoff. Now they strained their necks to see whether Johnson could snag the ball.

Johnson's fingertips extended and reached for the pigskin at the exact moment when the tips of the grass did the same. The crowd gasped, and the players stared helplessly at the referee who had to determine whether the receiver's fingers had cradled the ball before it brushed against the ground.

In an instant, the official raised his hands upwards and parallel to each other, signaling what Yale fans had dreamed of for 10 years and what Harvard faithful had only pictured in nightmares analogous to seeing their man Al Gore lose to George W. Bush, DC '68, in November. The students in the audience, having held their breath with their sweaty bodies pressed together like sardines for three hours, now erupted in a fit of ecstasy that tumbled over rows and spilled into the aisles. The players leaped in the air and mobbed each other. Twenty-nine seconds remained in the Ivy League Championship game. Yale 24, Harvard 21.

Half a minute later, Harvard's last- gasp Hail Mary fell to the ground, and the Yale fans rushed the field with more passion and urgency than the soldiers of Pickett's army at Gettysburg 136 years earlier.

In the 20th Century's final Game, the Bulldogs edged out the Crimson for their first Ivy-League title since 1989. The Game had been punctuated by The Catch—Johnson's spectacular grab that gave him an incredible 21 receptions and 244 yards for the contest, both school records. The Harvard Crimson and most Harvard fans believed that the 21st catch should have been credited to the ground, not to Johnson's hands. But like the Rams stopping Kevin Dyson at the one-yard line at Super Bowl XXXV, a few inches had decided a pivotal game. The validity of The Catch will now forever be a fixture of Harvard-Yale debate. "It's got to be right up there," Yale head coach Jack Siedlecki said to the Yale Daily News (YDN). "I can't imagine many better [Games]. These kids are part of the lore of Yale."

Etched into the lore of this rivalry was Walland's heroic performance. The undersized quarterback personified the vehemence and passion that all alums of Cambridge and New Haven have felt toward each other for centuries. With a dangerously high fever and a badly-jammed thumb, Walland played as if the fate of the third-oldest school in the nation rested squarely on his broad shoulders. He completed 42 (Harvard fans will always say 41) of 67 passes for 437 yards—all Eli records—and three touchdowns. Did Walland ever consider missing the century's last installment of The Game? "There wasn't going to be an option," he said. "I was going to play."

These two storied rivals saved one of their most intense and exciting battles for the last of the century. But no onlooker should think that the passion of this rivalry is as ephemeral as Johnson's steal from the grass. Yale athletes assure us the 21st Century will not mark the end of the Yale-Harvard war as a step toward world peace.

In the first basketball game of the season between the two schools, the Elis and Cantabs played to a near draw until the six-minute mark of the second half. At that moment, Yale forward Jason Williams, PC '00, seized the game and his opponents by their Crimson throats with a Vince Carter-esque slam-dunk that momentarily turned the modest Bulldogs' hoops crowd into a pandemonium that would shame the Cameron Crazies at Duke. Yale went on to win 69-61, and that play reminded skeptics that The Rivalry transcended The Game. "I've been dreaming about that [dunk] my entire career here," a jubilant Williams told the YDN after the game. "[To have it] during the Yale-Harvard game in a packed John J. Lee Amphitheater, then to pull off the victory, is wonderful."

Perhaps the most symbolic display of the hatred and power in this rivalry comes on June 10, when Yale and Harvard heavyweight crew face off in the Ivy League Championship. For two weeks, the Elis train vigorously in New London, Conn. for a singular goal: beating Harvard. The winners of the meet have the opportunity to act out the fantasies of the tens of thousands of alumni of these two great schools: they are allowed to rip the shirts off the losers' backs, as if to say that the victors have stripped the defeated of their most important possesions—pride and tradition. On that day, the Elis hope to tear the dignity off of Harvard's backs, like Johnson did when he fought like a Roman gladiator to wrest the championship from the Crimson's reluctant grasp.

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