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At left, a poster for the documentary film about the legendary Harvard-Yale game. At right, Stan Isaacs' book, which includes an account of the game's place in sports history. |
Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29;
An Ivy Classic Revisited
of TheColumnists.com
When I was hustling my book “Ten Events [I Covered] That Shook the Sports World”, doing radio interviews around the country last year, some interviewers questioned one of the events I chose to include in the book.
They were puzzled that I included a Harvard-Yale football game. People in the big time precincts accustomed to such college behemoths as Alabama, Florida and Nebraska couldn’t understand the presence of Ivy League football teams--minor league stuff--in a collection of epic sports events.
How limited they are. First, Harvard-Yale is a rivalry that goes back to the early days of college football. This was the first time since 1909 that both teams came into the game undefeated, and it was played against a backdrop of protests against the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.
The 1968 game ranks with the all-time thrillers because Harvard came back from these deficits: 22-0 in the first quarter; 29-13 with only three-and-a-half minutes remaining in the game; 29-21 with only 42 seconds left after Harvard recovered an onside kick; and only three seconds remaining when it ran its last play from the Yale eight-yard line. It scored a touchdown when quarterback Frank Ciampi played ring-around-the-rosy escaping tacklers before throwing a pass caught for a touchdown by captain Vic Gatto hobbling on a bad knee.
The two touchdowns in the closing moments wouldn’t have been enough if Harvard hadn’t added two two-point conversions. The game ended in a 29-29 tie that inspired the immortal Harvard Crimson headline, “Harvard beats Yale, 29-29.” Yale coach Carmen Cozza said many times, “It was a tie, but I still regard it as the worst loss of my career.”
The headline was part of the reason I chose the game, And it has cropped up anew with a delicious movie now making the rounds entitled: “Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29.” I hope it plays in movie theaters in Alabama and Nebraska.
The movie is a labor of love by Kevin Rafferty, who has made serious movies: “Atomic Café” about nuclear war and “The Last Cigarette” about the dangers of tobacco. Rafferty, the product of a father who played for Yale and a grandfather who played and coached at Yale, was a Harvard student at the game.
Rafferty drove some 15,000 miles to interview more than 50 players. He shrewdly intersperses the interviews with game clips. Don Gillis provides a measured commentary in the face of heroics on the field and wild celebrations by Harvard rooters mobbing their heroes at the end.
The players, many from working class backgrounds, are now in their 60s. I was struck that many of these Ivy Leaguers are not particularly handsome; some are quite overweight. Particularly ordinary-looking is Brian Dowling, the star Yale quarterback who was such a tremendous force at the time, some people actually referred to him, however jocularly, as God.
The clips show some terrific scrambles by Dowling escaping tackles. He obviously was a cut above most Ivy League players, but was overmatched in a spotty career as a pro. Dowling, of course, is the inspiration for B.D. in the comic strip “Doonesbury” by Yalie Gary Trudeau.
I did considerable research in compiling information for the chapter in my book (entitled “Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29”) so I was interested to learn some new things from the movie. There is a still photo of Yale fullback Bob Levin with his girl friend at the time, Meryl Streep. They put up anti-Vietnam War posters together. A Yale guy says, “Women were in the background in those days; I don’t recall her saying much.” (Shortly after that Yale opened its doors to women.)
An impressive figure for his subdued manner and sonorous voice that plays so well on screen is actor Tommy Lee Jones, an All-Ivy Harvard guard. He was a roommate of future politico Al Gore. When Rafferty asks him what was Gore like as a roommate, Jones pauses a few beats and says, “He was funny.
He explains that touch-tone replaced rotary phones at that time. And Gore figured out a way to punch in the touch-tones to play “Dixie.” The end-of-the-film credits roll to a touch-tone rendition of “Dixie.”
The Yale people who have suffered the torment of memories of that game have something to chew on because the film provides some pretty good evidence of an egregious official’s call against Yale. On Harvard’s first attempt at a two-point conversion, the officials call pass interference on Yale’s John Waldman. The replays seem to indicate that Waldman didn’t interfere with big Harvard end Pete Volney. Harvard would have trailed 29-20 and not 29-21 if not for that call.
I was struck by the comments of Yale defender Mike Bouscaren. Now, 20 years later, he dispassionately says he intentionally put Harvard's Ray Hornblower out of the game by spearing Hornblower’s ankle with his helmet. Hornblower went on to become a civil rights lawyer and then an opera singer. Bouscaren also was called for a crucial face mask penalty in Harvard’s last drive about which he admitted he tried to put Harvard quarterback Frank Ciampi out of the game.
Two other sidelights: a year earlier Yale
student George Bush (Rafferty’s first cousin) was arrested
for trying to tear down a goal post at a game. And Yale lineman
Ron Kell said he was startled to hear Yale president Kingman
Brewster at a rally yell, “Fuck Princeton.”
I had my own little scoop that escaped the movie guy. In the
midst of all the celebrating by the Harvards, a referee stuck
his head into the post-game press conference and announced, “Gentlemen
you may have noticed a [penalty] flag on the last play.”
As the air was sucked out of the room and everybody wondered about the cataclysmic possibility of trying to restart the game, the referee smiled and said, “You can ignore the flag. The penalty was against Yale and I assumed Harvard would decline.”
©2009 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted March 2, 2009.
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