Forever The Game

The sun has long set, the temperature has dropped 15 degrees in two hours, and it's finally 6:15 p.m.

The players' breaths appear and disappear in the night air. The ground is hard, the grass is stiff, and it crunches when you step up and step down. It kind of reminds you of Lambeau Field on its most frigid game day. A whistle blows, and the coach, who, despite the stinging chill, is dressed in just shorts and a jacket, calls the team to midfield where they crowd around him. The five-minute address is passionate and resonates through the night's thick, cold air. "You will remember this game for the rest of your lives," Jack Siedlecki, the first-year coach, says. "Put that something extra into it. Believe in the player next to you. Believe that you can make the play. Believe that you'll win The Game."

Now it's the captain's turn. Todd Scott, CC '98, moves to the center, and his players bunch in closer. His teammates are silent. Some of them close their eyes and tilt their head to the sky. He tells them that it will be special. He tells them that now, records don't matter. He tells them that he believes in them, and that they should believe in themselves.

This weekend, they will play a game that has been played 113 times before. It will be part of a series where the underdog is the favorite, where the team that scores first loses, where the opposing coach, despite having an 8-1 record facing a team with a 1-8 mark, will say that he's "scared to death" of the other team.

There's a reason why it's still the only game they call The Game.

Another year of frustration

"At the beginning of each season, there are two goals," Siedlecki said at his weekly press luncheon earlier this week. "First, win the league title. Second, beat Harvard. I don't think you're happy if you don't get them both." This is the largest press gathering with whom Siedlecki has lunched all year at the Yale Golf Course. It has been a long season, but Siedlecki, dressed in a dark blazer and a blue tie with bulldogs racing up and down its surface, didn't look at all tired. He had spent all of Monday, from before 8 a.m. to after midnight, in the office reviewing tape and dissecting the Harvard squad. And with his team meeting later in the afternoon for the first time since their weekend loss to Princeton, he wasn't expecting much more sleep in the night ahead.

FABIAN E. ROSADO/YH Yale students celebrate their team during the 113th edition of The Game in Cambridge. Win or lose, The Game is one of Yale's most revered traditions.

There have been many sleepless nights for the 46-year-old coach. "It's been a tough year," Siedlecki acknowledged, with a deep breath. "We're all frustrated." His team, 1-8 going into The Game, has dropped six straight and is one loss away from finishing the season winless in the Ivy League.

The Yale football program is struggling, and The Game is feeling its effects. In the '90s, the Bowl has not seen a Game's attendance surpass 50,000. In the three previous decades, only one clash, The Game of 1971 had a crowd of less than 50,000; the average attendance per game in those three decades was 60,500.

"We're always very concerned about student interest," Tom Beckett, Yale's athletic director, said. "People want to be associated with a winner...there's no doubt in my mind that winning would dramatically add to overall interest."

The last time Yale had a winning season was 1991. In the '60s and '70s, the Bulldogs totalled eight Ivy League titles. In the next two decades, they would only take two. "We're doing everything we can to get this program back on track," Beckett said. "The campus deserves it."

Carm Cozza, who was succeeded by Siedlecki in January and who coached the Bulldogs to 177 victories in three decades, saw the interest in the rivalry dwindle during his tenure. "It used to seem like the tailgating began on Thursdays," he said. "These days, 10,000 will tailgate on the day of The Game and not even step into the Bowl." Cozza talks of a day when the gap between Ivy League football and Division I football was not so apparent.

Those werethe glory days of Brian Dowling, BK '69, Calvin Hill, PC '69, Dick Jauron, PC '73, John Pagliaro, TD '78, John Spagnola, TD '79, and Richard Diana, TD '82--players that not only dominated the Ivy League, but were also among the premier talents in the nation. Those were the days when the national spotlight on The Game was just as intense as the on-campus fervor. Those were the days when it was not so difficult to be excited and inspired by the team that played each Saturday at the Bowl. Those were the days of The Game of the Century and Downtown Left.

Glory days

Two years before The Game of the Century, Brian Dowling remembers sitting on the bench as a freshman and watching his first Game. "It was the most boring thing I have ever witnessed," he said, of the 13-0 1965 Harvard win. "I thought the object of the game was to score points. After the first two [Yale-Harvard games], I was beginning to wonder." The second game, which Dowling missed because of an injury, ended with Harvard on top again, 17-0.

Dowling would go on to have an illustrious career as a Bulldog; in his 15 games as a starter, he never lost. But once, he didn't come out the winner. The 85th Game was a classic battle of two unbeatens. The Game, which ended in a 29-29 tie, was listed in a recent Sports Illustrated as one of the top five most memorable college football games of all-time. The Blue, like Harvard, ended up finishing 8-0-1--undefeated, but not perfect. The Game itself was perhaps the most bizarre in the 114-game series.

"Everything bad that could've happened...well, it happened," Cozza said, with a sigh, even decades later. He calls it the noisiest game he's ever witnessed. Harvard tallied the last 16 points of the game to erase a 22-0 deficit. After the game, in the locker room, a writer asked Dowling how it felt to come away a loser for the first time in his career. "Gee," the quarterback replied, "I thought it ended a tie." The next week's Harvard Crimson's front headline read, "Harvard wins, 29-29." There's a lingering joke among the players that the team's star running-back, Hill, didn't find out until only recently that they had tied Harvard. He had just assumed that they had lost.

While The Game has been a showcase for some of college football's classics, it has also featured some of the sport's most memorable plays. There was always something that you kept for the big game against your rival. Nebraska had the fumble-rooski for Oklahoma. Florida State saved their flea-flickers for Miami. "You had to put in a special play for The Game," Cozza insisted. "If anything, to make the alumni happy." In 1978, the alumni must have been dancing in the bleachers after watching a trick play that the usually conservative Cozza called with the game tied at 14 in the second quarter.

"I heard `Downtown Left on two' muttered in the huddle and couldn't believe it," John Spagnola, the tight end on that year's squad, remembered."I felt a huge lump in my throat while lining up for the play. I looked down at the ground and said, `Oh shit.'" Downtown Left was a play that the squad had fooled around with in their sandlot football games during the week. Spagnola never imagined that Cozza would make the call. The play had Spagnola taking a lateral from quarterback Pat O'Brien, BR '79, and heaving the ball some 50 yards to Bob Krystyniak, CC '79, to complete a stunning 77-yard touchdown play. As Krystyniak celebrated in the endzone, Spagnola raced to the sideline and hugged Cozza. After the game, a 35-28 victory for the Blue, a young, recently-elected New Jersey senator named Bill Bradley, for whom Spagnola had worked during a summer, called Spagnola. Bradley, who had been in the stands, told the tight end that it was the most exciting game he had ever seen.

History lesson

Cozza has coached 31 Games and knows that this year's can be just as memorable, just as special, as The Game between two league powerhouses and The Game featuring a spectacular play. "You never know with The Game," he said. "There's something about it that can make each one special...just when you don't expect it."

Consider this: the last time Yale had a chance at an undisputed Ivy League title in 1989, the Crimson upset the Bulldogs 37-20 in the Bowl. The last time Harvard came into The Game unbeaten, they left with a loss. The last time the Crimson came into The Game winless, they won.

Diana was part of a Yale team that entered the 1979 Game unbeaten in the Ivy League. In a hard-fought battle, the Bulldogs walked away 16-7 losers to a Harvard team that finished the season at 3-6. "It goes to show that with this game, you never know," Diana said. "Wins and losses...well, all of that doesn't matter anymore. It's not about records--it's about pride."

If anyone knows what to expect from a heated rivalry, it's Siedlecki. Though this week's contest will mark his first Game, he has been a part of fierce clashes since his playing days in high school. "Every year, my high school football team ended the year against our big rival," he said. "It was the biggest high school rivalry in the state of New York. Then, as an assistant coach, I was involved in Lafayette-Lehigh, and then coached in Amherst-Williams. So I know what they're about."

Harvard coach Tim Murphy is worried that his Crimson players, despite a season of great success, don't understand the magnitude of The Game."Some kids realize it, some don't," he said, over the speaker phone at the press luncheon."It worries me. I'm scared to death." Murphy added, "I know that this game will go down to the wire."

On paper, The Game has all the right ingredients to be a blowout by halftime. With a victory, Harvard can finish 7-0 in the Ivy League for the first time in school history. Yale, currently 0-6 in the league, may end up winless in the conference for the first time in 39 years. "Rivalries aren't overrated," Siedlecki said."If anything, they're underrated. There is so much emotion put into The Game, anything can happen."

Strangely, in this Game, the Bulldogs are hoping that they can trust history.

Forever The Game

In the end, The Game's most important meanings are often the most personal.

It's about having bragging rights for the Thanksgiving holiday. "My brother and I always have a wager," Spagnola said. He had an older brother who played center for the Crimson, and the two appeared in the same Game in 1976. "It's always paid off at Thanksgiving."

It's about having a bridge to the past. "You move on with your life," Diana said. "You have children, you get married, your life moves on. But as you get older, The Game becomes more meaningful, because it's your link to your past, a remembrance of how excited you were."

It's about spending an unforgettable moment with family. One of Tom Beckett's most prized possessions, which sits alone on a desk in his office, is the game ball from the first Game that he attended in 1994, his first year as the school's athletic director. "The particular Game is something that'll always be with me," he said, holding the ball in both hands. "Sitting on the roof with my wife and young infant son, looking down after The Game at the celebration on the field. Quite a sight."

It's about beating an old friend. Siedlecki and Murphy shared a tiny third floor apartment room in 1981 when both of them were assistant coaches at Lafayette University. The day Siedlecki got the Yale coaching job, Murphy was one of the first to call to congratulate him. "Who would have thought that we would be the coaches at Harvard and Yale?" Siedlecki said. "We've both come a long way. When Murph called, he said to me, `There are a lot of people in Eastern Pennsylvania shaking their head right now.'" On Saturday, they will coach on opposite sidelines.

Maybe...

It's almost 6:30 p.m. now, and the captain has just finished his speech. The team disperses and begins its slow procession back to Smilow Field House. Suddenly, the bright lights that illuminated the fields go off. It is now completely dark, and the only sounds that fill the air are those of the players' cleats as they lightly click on the sidewalk pavement. In the dark quiet, the players and coaches are left alone with their thoughts. Who knows what they are thinking? But still ringing in the night are the words of a coach and a captain. Perhaps they meant something. Maybe the players and coaches really do believe that in this game, wins and losses really do mean nothing, and emotion is everything. Maybe they really do believe in themselves and in the person next to them. Maybe they really do believe that they will beat Harvard.

At moments like this, you are convinced that regardless of extended losing streaks, low attendance figures, and games full of botched plays, as long as Yale and Harvard continue to take the field each November as they have 113 times before, this game will forever be The Game.

Cover photo of Craig Freccero, TD '99, by Julia Tiernan. Vintage photos and 1929 ticket stub courtesy Yale University Archives.

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