Dec. 5, 2008

The Game, The Rivalry

By Bob Socci

What was clearly spelled out by the writing on the wall became all the more obvious as soon as the doors to the car opened and the bulldog in the blue turtle-neck sweater stepped out onto the platform.

This was definitely the right stop. For the next step, one simply needed to follow the crowd trailing the bulldog, who determinedly led us through the station exit and into Harvard Square.

There was on this Saturday, like any other day, little to no flow to the traffic. Bumper to bumper, cars tried to inch forward, flanked on one side of the street by the distinctive brick buildings of the nation's oldest university and on the other by retail chains typical of any mall in America.

The procession of people, on the other hand, was unabated. All, it seemed, headed away from the Square and toward a place that stands defiantly in the face of modern-day commercialism.

Mostly, the feet on the move belonged to the college set, many of them kept warm by those exorbitant Australian sheepskin boots known as UGGs - an appropriate name, given their appearance. While representing this country's most intelligent late teens and early twenty-somethings, they looked like a crowd on any other campus.

Not to disappoint, there was the occasional lad in a corduroy blazer, affixed with suede elbow patches. That's the look - aside from tailgaters sipping Bloody Mary's in their full-length furs - I'd expected to see in abundance upon arrival.

I was here, with so many others, trying to cut through the bone-chilling crosswinds off The Charles River, en route to the annual Ivy League finale for Harvard and Yale. Better known in these parts - and to anyone, anywhere, who appreciates college football history - as The Game, this year's happened to be their 125th meeting.

In two weeks, I'd be experiencing the Army-Navy Classic for the 12th time. As a tune-up - yet, by no means, a warm-up, not on this November afternoon - I'd come to Cambridge, Mass. to witness another of the sport's greatest gifts.

So what if, at the end of the day, the outcome of the Crimson and Elis would be denoted only in the fine print of scores scrolling across TV screens in places like Auburn and Ann Arbor, Tuscaloosa and Tallahassee. For my money - in this case, a $2 token for a ride to the game on the "T" - our best, if not purest, rivalries don't require the on-campus presence of large throngs cheering or jeering on cue during the two-hour national pre-game show.

That's not to say I don't appreciate the impact of The Civil War on Oregonians or the Iron Bowl on Alabamans. But, like Army-Navy - or, if you prefer, Lehigh-Lafayette, Williams-Amherst - Harvard-Yale is different. For all the right reasons.

None more important than the trust you can take to the stadium, knowing you'll be watching real-live scholar-athletes. After all, it's COLLEGE football. But for the rarest, there is no football future once The Game is over.

In the next life, all we need to know about one's career is, `Did you beat Yale?' or `How'd you do against Harvard?' It truly is a game for a lifetime, played by young men incredibly passionate about their sport, but not defined by it.

As with Midshipmen and Cadets, they won't be taking a semester off to prep for their workouts at the NFL scouting combine. Any cramming they do is more likely to be for an engineering exam than the Wonderlic test.

Before my first Army-Navy game, I read John Feinstein's "A Civil War" - still available in paperback, as my broadcast partner would want me to remind you. Prior to my first taste of The Game, in my effort to establish the right frame of mind to fully appreciate it, I went to the movies.

Tucked away, in a tiny Cambridge alley, attached to the Casablanca Restaurant, is the Brattle Theatre. Opened in 1890, it's a genuine Cinema Paradiso, despite the flakes of grey paint chipped away by time inside its doors. Where else might one see a matinee double-feature tribute to the late Paul Newman, including "The Hustler" and "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid", and hear a reading by Roy Blount Jr., all in the same month?

During the week of The Game, the Brattle was fittingly premiering the documentary "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29". The title of the film is derived from a timeless headline that appeared in The Harvard Crimson newspaper 40 years ago. Given a simple, retro look and feel by director Kevin Rafferty, it truly takes one back to 1968.

That's when Harvard fell behind then unbeaten Yale by 22 points, before seldom-used backup quarterback Frank Champi led the Crimson on the most famous and furious rally in the history of The Game. And, quite possibly, the history of the game.

With the score, 29-13, Harvard scored with less than a minute to go and converted a two-point try. Then, after the Bulldogs fumbled away an on-sides kick, the Crimson struck again. Down eight and down to their last play, a mad scramble by Champi freed him to find captain Vic Gatto in the end zone. His touchdown pass pared the deficit to two.

Though time had run out, Harvard could still run one more play. Another two-point attempt, in this case, for the tie. Champi hit his tight end Pete Varney with another throw and - regardless of a scoreboard revealing no winner in the pre-overtime age - ignited a victory celebration.

Rafferty's film frames the context of that game beautifully. Late sixties; a do-as-you-please social spirit for many; Harvard fullback Pat Conway, back from Vietnam as a Marine Corps veteran, united with anti-war teammates for a common purpose in competition.

In one of his many standard refrains, former Navy coach Charlie Weatherbie used to remind us, "Sixty minutes of football, a lifetime to remember." In 1968, for Harvard and Yale, it was 42 seconds of football. For many, a lifetime to remember. For the rest, a lifetime trying to forget.

Sitting their, surrounded by mostly elderly gentlemen - some wearing oversized eyeglasses, one in his stylish beret - I listened to the men who played The Game in '68. Among them was actor Tommy Lee Jones, an ex-Harvard lineman. Another was the Elis' former star quarterback Brian Dowling, the inspiration for Yalie Gary Trudeau's "B.D." character in the comic strip "Doonesbury."

They might as well have been Mids or Cadets. Successful long after the glory years had come and gone, they talked as if The Game for them were four hours ago, rather than 40 years.

I also thought about what I had watched unfold the previous two weeks in Maryland. And imagined what the central figures in those stories would say four decades from now.

Instead of Champi and Gatto, Ricky Dobbs and Clint Sovie would relive their roles in Navy's miraculous win over Temple. And had the Mids completed what would have been a comeback more extraordinary than Harvard's in '68, rather than Jones, Corey Johnson would recreate his on-sides kick recoveries inside the final minute against Notre Dame.

In fact, for much of the next day, I found myself comparing and contrasting. The Game vs. Army-Navy, the rivalry like no other.

There are huge differences. Starting with the venue, at least since the Mids and Black Knights moved out of Municipal/JFK Stadium for another block in South Philly, and especially since they moved into The Linc.

Lincoln Financial Field, hosting its fifth Army-Navy game this weekend, is state of the art. Harvard Stadium, opened in 1903, is anything but. While the former features a posh club level, the latter offers a breathtaking view of The Hub, from the North End to South Boston.

The Stadium amounts to an enormous horseshoe, where all but a few fans trudge up small steps to sit on larger steps. No bleachers, just cold, hard slabs of concrete.

Even the unheated press box is anything but a lap of luxury. On this particular New England Saturday, the temperature late in the second quarter was 27 degrees, with the wind chill at 11.

Granted, sitting inside with a stocking cap, there was protection from the 35-mph gusts. I heard a colleague muttering through chattering teeth something about Harvard's endowment. I couldn't help but wonder, `If not here, then maybe someone down the street from MIT can figure out a cheap way to pump in some warm air.'

Still, I was in no position to complain. Not with what people were enduring in the stands and on the field, where players moved as much on the sidelines, if not more than between the lines. Particularly across the way, where the Bulldogs didn't appear to have so much as a heater or two.

Thinking of the heated benches that include holes to warm their feet utilized by Army and Navy players at NFL stadiums, I was struck by Yale's Spartan-like approach. And impressed; even if the Elis never got their footing afield on a day when they played as hard as expected.

Another enormous change from the rivalry I know best, is the pre-game pomp and circumstance, as well as the halftime shows. While Army-Navy is set to a solemn tone, Harvard-Yale can at times, at least when the bands take center stage, be somewhat flippant.

For the Cadets and Mids, the opening kickoff is preceded by a pre-game march-on in full military uniforms and formations, patriotic music, parachute landings, flyovers by jets and helicopters, etc. The reverence continues when Midshipmen re-join the Brigade and Cadets return to the Corps during the annual `exchange of prisoners'.

At Harvard-Yale, the bands take no prisoners with their esoteric digs at one another. This year, the self-proclaimed Yale Precision Marching Band devised a halftime routine intended to stamp out what it dubbed "the Crimson Communist Hordes" led by, if my hearing served, "President Harvardovich."

The rebuttal from their Harvard counterparts included a time machine designed to "erase Yale from existence." When that deed was apparently done, the Crimson band played in a formation that spelled the word "SWEET" at midfield.

Something tells me if anyone were to attempt academy spirit spots in the same vein, neither Superintendent would even think of allowing them as close as New Jersey, let alone on The Linc's video boards.

But the peripheral aside, what's most important is what defines the game itself. That's what matters to the players. And it's where one finds that Army-Navy and Harvard-Yale are a lot more alike than not.

The latter rivalry was born in 1875. The other, about to unfold for the 109th time, began in 1890.

Each, in this day and age, features young men who wear their football uniforms one last time. And, even in apparent defeat, give everything they can muster to the last bitter second.

I saw as much from the Yale players a couple of Saturdays ago. Trailing, 10-0, and destined for a seventh loss in eight years against their arch rival, in elements unfit for anything other than Polar bears to be playing outdoors, they continued their quest to turn the table on 1968.

Until hope - and the outcome - was lost on a blind-side sack that caused quarterback Brook Hart to fumble deep in Crimson territory, inside the final two minutes.

Save for Hart's counterpart, Harvard's Chris Pizzotti, the seniors who helped write the 125th chapter of The Game are likely headed somewhere other than the NFL. Like in Annapolis and West Point, football may be a vital component of the educational experience, but it's far from the most important.

At an academy, it helps create, as many have said, "a leadership laboratory." In Cambridge and New Haven, it may very well do the same. One need only see all the president men included among their most distinguished alumni. Each school, in fact, has helped two generations of the same family reach the White House.

Consider the captains who led their respective teammates into The Game.

Harvard's Matt Curtis spent part of his youth living in public housing, sustained by Salvation Army handouts, in Lynn, Mass. According to a profile by John Powers in The Boston Globe, his father, an alcoholic, died of kidney cancer when Curtis was in high school. His mother, whom he sees once a year, battles a drug addiction. For much of his career, Curtis kept his past hidden from teammates.

Yale's Bobby Abare is known for a near-reckless abandon befitting a middle linebacker. And like another linebacker who wears No. 44 in these parts, has a penchant for big plays. Last season, he returned a fumble 27 yards to set up the game-winning score in an upset of Princeton. This year, he returned an interception for a touchdown in a double-overtime victory over Holy Cross.

"(Abare) plays with such a passion," Yale coach Jack Siedlecki, who announced his retirement shortly after The Game, told the Globe. "He just loves the game. He'll never let anybody quit. It doesn't matter how down anything could be."

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Siedlecki could have been talking about Sovie or Army's Frank Scappaticci. Their Game kicks off just past noon tomorrow. And I can hardly wait.

I'm headed there, as I type, riding the rails once again on a train bound for Philadelphia, where it's expected to be cold, if not windy.

Hopefully, they'll remember to turn the heat on in the radio booth. Otherwise, I may have to splurge on a pair of those UGGs.