November 23, 1968: The most famous game in Ivy League history is played. The winners were... everybody who was involved, because it gets talked about more than most games that were glorious wins for one team or the other.
Harvard University was America's 1st college, founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the Charles River from Boston. Yale University was the 3rd, founded in 1701 and re-established a few years later in New Haven, Connecticut. (The 2nd was The College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia.)
They first played each other in football on November 13, 1875, with the sport still in its infancy, on the Yale campus. Harvard won, 4-0 under the scoring rules of the time. But Yale took over the rivalry, going 9-0-2 through 1889. Eventually, their contest became each school's season finale, known as simply "The Game."
In 1968, both teams looked like they were among the best teams in the country, a rarity for Ivy League teams after World War I. Each went into their finale 8-0, the 1st time since 1909 that both of them were undefeated going into The Game.
Yale had Brian Dowling, an All-American quarterback from Cleveland. He had led them to 16 straight wins, and hadn't lost a game since the 6th grade. Yale student Garry Trudeau would start a comic strip titled Bull Tales, which in 1970 would become the nationally-syndicated Doonesbury. Dowling would be parodied as "B.D.," although the character and the real Dowling would turn out to be very different people. Yale also had running back Calvin Hill, who would star in the NFL, and whose son, Grant Hill, would become a Basketball Hall-of-Famer.
Harvard had a strong defense, nicknamed the Boston Stranglers after a recent serial killer. Their captain and top offensive player was running back Vic Gatto. One of their guards, good enough to make the All-Ivy League Team, was then listed as "Tom Jones." He became an actor under the name Tommy Lee Jones. His roommate was a prelaw student named Al Gore. (Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham were still 3 years away from starting Yale Law School, and George W. Bush had just graduated from Yale.)
The game was played at Harvard Stadium, but that didn't matter to the oddsmakers, who made Yale, then ranked in the national Top 20, heavy favorites. The stadium's seating capacity was then listed as 57,750, and there wasn't a seat to be had, despite the weather being cold, with the wind blasting off the Charles. Scalpers were demanding $100 for tickets -- about $831 in today's money. God only knows what would have been charged if Internet ticket brokers were possible at the time.
At first, Yale justified their classification as favorites: Dowling ran for a touchdown, then passed to Hill for another, then threw another. In the 2nd quarter, the Bulldogs led 22-0. No team had scored that many off the Crimson in an entire game since Yale themselves did it in a 24-20 win in New Haven the year before.
Harvard managed a touchdown before the half, but missed the extra point. It was 22-6. Early in the 2nd half, Yale fumbled a punt, and Harvard recovered in the end zone. This time, the extra point was converted, and Harvard was within 22-13. But early in the 4th quarter, Dowling took over again, drove the Elis down the Allston pitch, and scored himself to put his team up 29-13.
With 2 minutes left, Yale still led 29-13. And, due to injuries, Harvard was left with their backup quarterback, Frank Champi. But he was undeterred, and got the Crimson over the goal line with 42 seconds left on the clock. A 2-point conversion failed, but Yale was called for pass interference. Gus Crim took the ball in on their 2nd chance, so it was Yale 29, Harvard 21.
The most obvious onside kick in the history of football was coming. But Harvard managed to recover it. Time was running out. Champi got the Crimson to the Bulldogs' 8-yard line with 3 seconds left. On the last play of regulation, he was flushed out of the pocket, but still managed to get a pass off. Gatto caught it, and took it in. Yale 29, Harvard 27.
Fans poured onto the field. But there was still a 2-point conversion to be attempted. The fans were cleared off. Champi found Pete Varney. He would appear in 69 games as a catcher for the Chicago White Sox and the Atlanta Braves from 1973 to 1976, serve as head baseball coach at Brandeis University in nearby Waltham, Massachusetts, and coach for years in the Cape Cod Baseball League. Nothing he did matched the pass he caught from Frank Champi with no time on the clock.
It was a tie. Along with Notre Dame's games with Army in 1946 and Michigan State in 1966 -- both known as "The Game of the Century" -- this is the most famous tie in football history. Why not? It remains the game of the century as far as the Ivy League is concerned.
The next day, the Harvard Crimson newspaper printed a headline: "HARVARD BEATS YALE, 29-29." In 2008, on the game's 40th Anniversary, a documentary film would use that headline as its title.
Did Harvard "win"? Yale coach Carm Cozza later admitted, "That tie was the worst loss of my career."
I mentioned Army in 1946. After their tie against Notre Dame, they had a similar season-closing rivalry game, with Navy in Philadelphia. They led 21-0. Navy came back, and was down 21-18, and was on Army's 3-yard line with time for one more play. Navy coach Tom Hamilton tried to run it in, and failed. When asked why he didn't go for the tying field goal, he spoke words that have entered the American lexicon: "A tie is like kissing your sister."
For Harvard, this tie was more like kissing your sister's really hot best friend. For Yale, this tie was like kissing your sister's other best friend. You know: The only with the "great personality."
Look at it this way: Since the league's official establishment for the 1956 season, Yale have won its title outright in 1956, 1960, 1967, 1977, 1979, 1980 and 2017; and won at least a share of it in 1968, 1969, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1989, 1999, 2006 and 2019. But do any of those teams get talked about, even as a "great team," other than among Yalies? No.
The 1968 Yale Bulldogs, and the 1968 Harvard Crimson, both get talked about, as great teams that played a great game.
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November 23, 1968 was a Saturday. There were other big college football rivalry games played that day:
* Number 1 USC beat UCLA, 28-16 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. But the next week, a tie with Notre Dame cost them the Number 1 ranking. They ended up losing the Rose Bowl, and thus the National Championship, to Ohio State.
* Number 2 Ohio State beat Number 4 Michigan, 50-14 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus. It was said that Buckeye coach Woody Hayes purposely ran up the score. The Wolverines did not forget, and the next year's game between the rivals was an epic win for Michigan.
* Number 3 Penn State beat the University of Pittsburgh, 65-9 at Pitt Stadium.
* Number 5 Georgia were idle, between wins over rivals Auburn and Georgia Tech.
* Number 6 Arkansas beat Texas Tech, 42-7 at Jones Stadium in Lubbock, Texas. Okay, that's not a rivalry game.
* Number 7 Kansas beat Number 13 Missouri, 21-19 at Memorial Stadium (now Faurot Field) in Columbia, Missouri, to clinch the Big Eight Conference title.
* Number 8 Tennessee beat Kentucky, 24-7 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee.
* Number 9 Louisiana State beat Tulane, 34-10 at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.
* Number 10 Texas were idle, between wins over Texas Christian and Texas A&M.
* Number 11 Notre Dame were idle, between a win over Georgia Tech and a tie against USC.
* Number 12 Purdue beat Indiana, 38-35 at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana.
* Number 14 Oklahoma beat Nebraska, 47-0 at Owen Field in Norman, Oklahoma.
* Number 15 Alabama were idle, between wins over Miami and arch-rival Auburn.
* Number 16 Oregon State beat Oregon, 41-19 at Parker Stadium (now Reser Stadium) in Corvallis, Oregon.
* Number 17 Auburn were idle, between losses to rivals Georgia and Alabama.
* Number 18 California was upset by Stanford, 20-0 at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, California.
* Virginia beat Maryland, 28-23 at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Virginia.
* North Carolina beat Duke, 23-14 at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. If Yale felt bad, think of how Duke felt: That was the only Atlantic Coast Conference game Carolina won all season, and it was against their greatest rival.
* South Carolina beat Clemson, 7-3 at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, South Carolina.
* Minnesota beat Wisconsin, 23-15 at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin.
* Washington State beat Washington, 24-0 at Joe Albi Stadium in Spokane, Washington. "Wazzu" used Albi Stadium for games too big for their 23,500-seat Rogers Stadium, before building Martin Stadium in 1972.
* Army were idle, between wins over Pittsburgh and Navy.
* Navy were idle, between losses to Syracuse and Army.
* In New York City, Columbia beat Brown, 46-20 at Baker Field.
* In New Jersey, Princeton beat Cornell, 41-13 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.
* And Rutgers beat Colgate, 55-34 at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway.
In high school football, my alma mater, East Brunswick, beat Sayreville, 41-0 at War Memorial Stadium in Sayreville, clinching a Conference Championship.
There were 6 games played in the NBA that day:
* The New York Knicks beat the Boston Celtics, 111-100 at the new Madison Square Garden.
* The Baltimore Bullets beat the Detroit Pistons, 128-127 at the Baltimore Civic Center (now the CFG Bank Arena). Dave Bing scored 39 in a losing effort for the Pistons.
* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Cincinnati Royals, 120-105 at the Cincinnati Gardens.
* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Chicago Bulls, 114-96 at the Chicago Stadium.
* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Phoenix Suns, 115-112 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.
* And the San Francisco Warriors beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 132-119 at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco in Daly City, California.
There were 2 games played in the American Basketball Association:
* The New York Nets beat the Minnesota Muskies, 110-105 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
* And the Miami Floridians beat the Indiana Pacers, 126-107 at the Miami Beach Convention Center.
And the entire NHL was in action that day:
* The New York Rangers lost to the team that would then have been considered their arch-rivals, the Boston Bruins, 5-1 at the Boston Garden.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Minnesota North Stars, 4-3 at the Montreal Forum.
* The Oakland Seals beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 2-1 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.
* The Pittsburgh Penguins and the Los Angeles Kings played to a tie, 2-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.
* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 5-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
* The St. Louis Blues beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Black Hawks, 1-0 at the St. Louis Arena.
Also, Arsenal lost to Chelsea, 1-0 at Highbury in North London.
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