December 26, 1960: A Philly Title Among the Ivy

Norm Van Brocklin (11) hands off to Billy Ray Barnes (33)

December 26, 1960: The NFL Championship Game is played at Franklin Field, on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school nestled into the hardscrabble city of Philadelphia. Since this was an odd-numbered year, it was the Eastern Division winner's turn to host the game, and that was the Philadelphia Eagles. They would play the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers, winners of 6 NFL Championships between 1929 and 1944, fell into a down period, going just 1-10-1 in 1958. Vince Lombardi was hired as head coach, and in just 2 seasons, he got them to 8-4 and the Western Division title.

The Eagles were coached by Buck Shaw, and their quarterback was Norm Van Brocklin, who had led the Los Angeles Rams to the 1951 NFL Championship. After losing their season opener at home to the Cleveland Browns, they won 9 straight, before losing away to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and finished 10-2. It was their 1st Eastern Division title since their 1949 NFL Championship. 

Since the Sunday after the last week of the regular season was Christmas Day, the game was moved back to the following day. And, since Franklin Field didn't have lights -- a permanent system wasn't added until 1972, and it still isn't considered NFL-quality -- and the NFL Championship Game had gone to overtime just 2 years earlier, it was decided to move the starting time up to 12:00 Noon.

Temporary seats were added, bring the Ivy League facility to a sellout crowd of 67,325. It had snowed a few days before, and the field was dry in some places, muddy in others, and surrounded by a snowbank. It was 48 degrees at kickoff.

On the 1st play from scrimmage, a lateral from Van Brocklin deflected off the hands of receiver Billy Ray Barnes, and was intercepted by Bill Quinlan. The Packers had possession at the Eagles' 14-yard line, but the Eagle defense held, and forced the Packers to turn it over on downs at the 6. But Barnes shot his team in the foot again with a fumble, and Bill Forester recovered at the 22. Still, the Eagle defense held, and all the Packers could get was a 20-yard field goal from Paul Hornung, and a 3-0 lead.

Early in the 2nd quarter, the Eagles again held the Packers, and Hornung kicked a 23-yard field goal. Later in the quarter, Van Brocklin threw a 35-yard touchdown pass to Tommy McDonald, whose momentum led him to tumble through the end zone and into the snowbank. Bobby Walston kicked the extra point, and the Eagles led, 7-6. The perfectionist Lombardi was surely very displeased. Before the half ended, another Eagle drive led to a 15-yard field goal for Walston.

As time ran out, Hornung tried a field goal from just 13 yards out -- the goalposts were on the goal line until 1974, when they were moved back to the end line -- but it went wide left. The Packers should have been up by no less than 17-10, but were losing, 10-6. The perfectionist Lombardi was surely displeased.

In the 3rd quarter, the Packers got to the Eagles' 34, but turned the ball over on downs. To make matters worse, Hornung, also a great running back, had to leave the game due to a shoulder injury. Van Brocklin led the Eagles downfield, but was intercepted in the end zone by John Symank.

The Packers got the lead back with 13:07 left in regulation, with Bart Starr passing to Max McGee for a 7-yard touchdown. But Ted Dean, a local man from nearby Radnor, Pennsylvania, ran the ensuing kickoff back 58 yards. Van Brocklin got the Eagles close, and handed off to Dean for a 5-yard touchdown run. With 5:21 left, the Eagles led, 17-13.

The Packers got a last chance, starting at their 35 with 1:05 left. Starr got them to the Eagle 22 with 25 seconds to go. He threw a pass to Jim Taylor, who caught it at the 17-yard-line. There, he was faced by Chuck Bednarik, the Eagles' center and linebacker, the last man to play regularly on both offense and defense, and the last link to their 1949 title. Though from the steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and a waist gunner on a B-24 bomber in World War II, Bednarik had played on that field for the University of Pennsylvania, before starting a 14-year Hall of Fame career with the Eagles.

Known as "Concrete Charlie," not for his hitting but for his off-season job as a concrete salesman, Bednarik hit Taylor at the 17, and shoved him down to the grass. He held Taylor down, and watched the clock tick down to zero. Today, he probably would have been penalized for delay of game, but that didn't happen.

Taylor knew there would be time for at least one more play, if Bednarik would just let him up, and yelled, "Get off me, you son of a bitch!" Bednarik stayed on him, and saw the clock reach 0:00. Only then did he jump up, pump his fists, and yell, "You can get up now, you son of a bitch, this fucking game is over!"

When you've just won the NFL Championship,

you can smoke a cigarette and a victory cigar,

and nobody is going to say anything.

The Packers had outgained the Eagles, 401-296; and had gotten more 1st downs, 22-13. But they made a lot of mistakes. Lombardi knew he had made more than anyone, going for it on 4th down 3 times rather than attempt field goals. He told the media, "When you get down there, come out with something. I lost the game, not my players."

It was his 1st Playoff game as a head coach. He would never lose another: He guided the Eagles into the NFL Championship Game again in 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967, winning them all. Winning the last 2 of those got the Packers into the 1st 2 Super Bowls, and they won those, too.

In contrast, the 1960 title would be a watershed moment for the Eagles. Shaw retired as head coach, and Van Brocklin retired as a player, feeling that backup Sonny Jurgensen was ready to lead the team. Van Brocklin hoped that he would be named the new head coach.

Instead, team owner James P. Clark -- the leader of a group known as "The Happy Hundred" -- promoted assistant coach Nick Skorich. He led them to a 10-4 record in 1961. Before the next season, Clark died of a stroke, and the team's ownership situation was a mess, leading to seasons of 3-10-1 and 2-10-2.

Van Brocklin was hired as the head coach of the expansion Minnesota Vikings, and later coached the Atlanta Falcons, but never did well as head coach. Maybe he would have done better with the Eagles, the team he knew. Or maybe he would have been frustrated by the front-office mess.

For a while, the Kennedy family, looking for something for President John F. Kennedy to do once he was no longer President, was considering buying the team. His younger brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, a former football star at Harvard, was set to meet with representatives of the Happy Hundred in October 1962, but had to cancel the meeting, due to the Cuban Missile Crisis. By the time the Kennedys were ready to resume negotiations, the Happy Hundred had started them with trucking magnate Jerry Wolman. He completed his purchase of the team on December 4, 1963. By that point, JFK had been assassinated.

Wolman did the right thing in firing Skorich, but made a mistake in hiring failed Notre Dame coach Joe Kuharich, a moralist who traded the hard-partying Jurgensen for the strait-laced Norm Snead. Kuharich got the Eagles to a 2nd-place finish at 9-5 in 1966, but in just 2 more years, had crashed to 2-12.

Another trucking company boss, Leonard Tose, a former member of the Happy Hundred, bought the Eagles from the bankrupt Wolman in 1969, and rebuilt the team. It took time, but in 1978, they made the Playoffs again. In 1980, they won the NFC Championship, but lost the Super Bowl.

Tose, an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler, also went bankrupt, and had to sell the team to Norman Braman in 1985. Under Braman, the team was good enough to make the Playoffs, but not to reach the Super Bowl. Despised by Eagle fans for his cheapness and his absentee ownership, he sold the team to Jeffrey Lurie in 1995. They made 4 straight NFC Championship Games, but only got to the Super Bowl the last time, the 2004 season, losing.

After a rebuild, they finally won Super Bowl LII in 2018, ending a 57-season title drought. Along with the Cleveland Browns (last title in 1964), the Detroit Lions (1957) and the Arizona Cardinals (1947, then the Chicago Cardinals), the Eagles were 1 of the last 4 teams to have won an NFL Championship, but not a Super Bowl. Some people ascribed the drought to "The Curse of the Dutchman," but Van Brocklin never made a public statement against the Eagles for not hiring him as head coach.

The Eagles left Franklin Field for Veterans Stadium in 1971. The shift from Ivy League stadium built just for football to a concrete oval built for both baseball and football in the middle of a parking lot could not have been more stark. In 2003, they moved a new football-only stadium built in the same sports complex, Lincoln Financial Field. The Vet lasted 33 years before it was demolished. Amazingly, Franklin Field still stands, having opened in 1922, with the University of Pennsylvania having played football on the site since 1895.

UPDATE: Through the 2025 season, the Eagles have elected the following players from the 1960 NFL Champions to their team Hall of Fame: Chuck Bednarik, Norm Van Brocklin, Sonny Jurgensen, Tommy McDonald, Tom Brookshier, Pete Retzlaff, Timmy Brown, Maxie Baughan and Bobby Walston; plus team executive Jim Gallagher. They have not, however, elected head coach Buck Shaw.

Bednarik McDonald, Brooshier, Retzlaff, Brown, Baughan, Walston and broadcaster Bill Campbell have also been elected to the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame -- but not Shaw, or, even more oddly, Van Brocklin.

*

December 26, 1960 was, a Monday. Baseball was out of season. No NHL games were scheduled.  There were 4 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 119-112 at the old Madison Square Garden. Elgin Baylor scored 44 points in defeat.

* The Boston Celtics beat their arch-rivals, the Philadelphia Warriors, 119-115 at the Boston Garden. Wilt Chamberlain scored 30 points and had 36 rebounds, but, as was so often the case against Wilt, the Celtics had the better team.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the Cincinnati Royals, 137-132 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Oscar Robertson scored 43 points for the Royals.

* And the St. Louis Hawks beat the Syracuse Nationals, 133-112 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

And in English soccer, Arsenal and Yorkshire team Sheffield Wednesday play to a 1-1 draw at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.

November 28, 1889: College Football's Game of the Century -- the 19th Century

The 1889 Princeton Tigers

November 28, 1889: Perhaps, for the 1st time, a college football game was hyped up to be considered "The Game of the Century." Except, this was the 19th Century.

The 1889 season was a bit of a step forward for a sport that still resembled the English game of rugby more than the game the world outside the United States calls "American football." A field goal was worth 5 points, making it worth more than a touchdown, which was 4 points, and a kicked point after touchdown (PAT) was 2 points. Scoring a safety, then as now, was 2 points. Not until 1909 would a field goal become the 3 points it has remained ever since, and a PAT 1 point. It would be 1912 before a touchdown became 6 points.

The field itself was different. There was no end zone until 1912, which was also when the field was shortened from 110 to 100 yards. That was also the year a team was given 4 downs to make a 1st down, instead of 3. And 1889 was also the year that a "touchdown" no longer had to be literally true: Until then, a player had to cross the goal line and touch the ball to the ground. From this year onward, just crossing the goal line would be enough.

The game was still mostly played in the Northeast, and was dominated by the schools that would later be collectively called, and would ultimately found, "The Ivy League": Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania (or "Penn"), Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell.

But  there were some schools playing in the Midwest. And the South was beginning to catch on, and the 1st college football game in the State of South Carolina was played on December 14: Wofford defeated Furman, 5-1 on Furman's campus in Greenville. Wofford is in Spartanburg. Both schools now play in the NCAA's Football Championship Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-AA.

On October 26, the University of Delaware played its 1st game, losing 74-0 away to the Delaware Field Club in Wilmington. On November 16, the University of Iowa played its 1st game, losing 24-0 away to Iowa College in Grinnell. On November 23, Syracuse University (which had been founded in 1870, thus making it younger than the sport) played its 1st game, losing 36-0 away to the University of Rochester. And, in the Pacific Northwest, the University of Washington played its 1st game on November 28, Thanksgiving Day. I'll get to that shortly.

One major change for the 1889 season was the legalization of low tackling. This led to a sharp decrease in open-field running, and an increase in heavy, concentrated line formations like the "Princeton V," where teams engaged in brutal momentum plays to drive the ball forward. Also known as the "flying wedge," Princeton (officially, still "The College of New Jersey" until 1896, but everybody called them "Princeton") had used it against Rutgers in the 1st 2 college football games ever played, in 1869, with each team winning a game.

Harvard players demonstrating the flying wedge, 1892

The flying wedge would prove to be dangerous, resulting in several injuries, and even some deaths. It would be eliminated as part of safety measures created by the newly-established National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1906. But, for now, Princeton, already known as the Tigers due to their black and orange striped socks, were able to use it with brutal effectiveness.

How brutal? Their 1st 8 games went as follows: A 16-0 win over Lehigh, at University Field on the Princeton campus in Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey; a 16-4 win in a rematch against Lehigh in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; a 49-0 home win over Stevens Institute of Technology; a 72-4 win over Penn at the University Athletic Grounds in Philadelphia; a 98-0 win over Wesleyan University at the Berkeley Oval in The Bronx; a 71-0 win over Columbia at the Berkeley Oval just 3 days later, meaning they played 2 games in 4 days at the same location, and won by a combined total of 169-0; a 41-15 win over Harvard at Jarvis Field in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and a 54-6 home win over the Orange Athletic Club of Orange, New Jersey, outside Newark. So Princeton played 8 games, won all 8, and outscored its opponents 417-29, or an average of 52-4.

Big deal, you say? Weak schedule, full of "weak sisters," "paper tigers," "cupcakes," "gimmes"? Going into their game with Princeton on November 15, Harvard were 9-0, and had outscored their opponents 404-6, and Princeton beat them, 41-15. After their season-opening "doubleheader" with Princeton, Lehigh played 11 games, and went 8-1-2, so, clearly, they weren't a bad team. And, while the Orange A.C. mainly played other amateur sides that were not affiliated with colleges, they went 6-3 that season.

And then there was Yale University of New Haven, Connecticut. If there was any doubt, going into November 15, that the best team in the country was not either Princeton or Harvard, it was Yale.  Walter Camp's Bulldogs were dogged, indeed: They beat Wesleyan at home, 38-0, then away, 63-5; Williams college at home, 36-0; Cornell at home, 56-6; Amherst College at home, 42-0; Trinity College away in Hartford, 64-0; Columbia away, 62-0; Penn away, 20-10; Stevens at Berkeley Oval, 30-0; the Crescent Athletic Club, one of the Orange A.C.'s other opponents, 18-0 at Washington Park in Brooklyn, then home of the baseball team that would become the Dodgers; Cornell away, 70-0; Amherst on their campus in Amherst, Massachusetts, 32-0; Williams on their campus in Williamstown, Massachusetts, 70-0 the very next day; and Wesleyan at Hampden Park in Springfield, Massachusetts, 52-0.

And then, on November 23, in what was already the biggest rivalry in college football, on Saturday afternoon, November 23, also at Hampden Park, named for the famed "football ground" in Glasgow, Scotland, in front of 15,000 paying customers, an enormous total for the time, Yale beat Harvard, 6-0.

That's 15-0, outscoring their opponents, 699-21, or an average of 47-1. And that's after outscoring their opponents 698-0 in 13 games the year before. I don't care what era you're playing in, or what your schedule is: That is mind-boggling.

So a showdown between Yale and Princeton was set up, at the Berkeley Oval, for November 28, Thanksgiving Day, which, thanks to high school football in the Northeastern U.S., was already a traditional day for big rivalry football games. A crowd of 25,000, probably a record for a college football game anywhere in the country at that point, saw the teams kick off at 2:30 PM.

Yale attempted a field goal, but it hit an upright, and bounced back onto the field. Under the rules of the time, a player from the defending team could retrieve the ball and try to advance it. A Princeton player picked up the loose ball, and punted it back upfield, getting the Tigers out of danger.

Later, Princeton missed a field goal attempt, and the ball skidding past the goal line. Still considered live, a Yale player picked it up, but before he could decide whether to run with it or kick it, he fumbled it, and it rolled into the stands. This allowed a Princeton player to go into the stands and claim a touchdown. Another Yale fumble, deep in their own territory, led to a 2nd Princeton touchdown.

Princeton erased all doubt as to who was the better team, defeating Yale, 10-0. To put that in perspective: The last time Yale was held scoreless was in the 1886 season finale, a 0-0 tie with Princeton. The last time they lost was on November 21, 1885 -- to Princeton. They were undefeated in their last 48 games: 47-0-1. They did not lose again until the next season's Harvard game.

Let me put this another way. Yale began playing football in 1872. Through the 1895 season, their combined record against Princeton and Harvard was 23-7-8. Against all other teams, their record was 163-1-3. That is not a typographical error: One hundred sixty-three wins, one loss, three ties. Yale were not the New York Yankees of college football, or the Boston Celtics, or the Montreal Canadiens: They were all three combined.

Yale were considered National Champions for 1872, 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1897, 1900, 1901, 1902, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1909 and 1927 -- 27 times.

Princeton closed its season on December 7, defeating an all-star team from Washington, D.C., 57-0 at Capitol Park, the District's baseball park. They finished 10-0, outscoring their opponents 482-29, for an average of 48-3. They were the undisputed National Champions.

Princeton were considered National Champions for 1869, 1870, 1873, 1875, 1878, 1885, 1889, 1893, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1911, 1920, 1922, 1933, 1935 and 1950 -- 18 times. Harvard were considered National Champions for 1890, 1910, 1912, 1913 and 1919 -- "only" 5 times.

After the 1889 season, Caspar Whitney, a magazine editor who later served as President of the U.S. Olympic Committee, created one of American sports' earliest all-star teams, naming it the All-America Team. It became a postseason tradition. These were the initial selections:

* Ends: Amos Alonzo Stagg of Yale, Arthur Cumnock of Harvard. Between them, Stagg and Yale mentor Walter Camp did more to shape the sport of football in America than any other people.

* Tackles: Hector Cowan of Princeton, Charles Gill of Yale.

* Guards: Walter "Pudge" Heffelfinger of Yale, John Cranston of Harvard. In 1892, a Pittsburgh athletic club made Heffelfinger the 1st man to be openly paid to play American football.

Pudge Heffelfinger

* Center: William George of Princeton.

* Quarterback: Edgar Allan Poe of Princeton, also their team Captain, making him, effectively, also their head coach. He went on to be elected to the office of Attorney General of the State of Maryland, as had his father, John Prentiss Poe. The writer Edgar Allan Poe had married his first cousin, Virginia Clemm, which made him both the great uncle and the second cousin twice removed of the Princeton Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe. That's a football he's holding,

not a tell-tale heart or a cask of Amontillado.

* Halfbacks: Roscoe Channing of Princeton and James P. Lee of Harvard.

* Fullback: Knowlton Ames of Princeton. It sure sounds like the name of an Ivy League football player, and like the name of a successful financier, and he was both. He also served as head football coach at Purdue University, and as the 1st head coach at Northwestern University.

Knowlton Ames

So the 1st All-American team consisted of 5 players from Princeton, 3 from Yale, and 3 from Harvard.

The Berkeley Oval was at West 179th Street and University Avenue. New York University built it there as part of its University Heights Campus. NYU built Ohio Field in 1901, and the Oval began to decline in use, and apartment buildings went up on the site in 1923.

But NYU would end up scheduling bigger games at the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium. In 1973, having long since scaled back their athletic program (they now play in NCAA Division III), NYU left the campus, and the City University of New York (CUNY) system -- ironically, the successor to NYU's former rivals, City College (CCNY), took over the campus, as Bronx Community College.

Although football is no longer played there, BCC maintains Ohio Field as an athletic facility. But the Berkeley Oval, 2 blocks to the south, was arguably the more important sports site, and yet there's no historical marker, or any other indication of that importance.

*

November 28, 1889 was a Thursday -- being, as I said, Thanksgiving Day. There were 6 other college football games played that day:

* Dartmouth beat the Stevens Institute of Technology, 18-5 at the St. George Cricket Grounds in Hoboken, Hudson County, New Jersey, which is where Stevens was, and still is, now playing as an NCAA Division III school. Stevens was founded by engineer Edwin Augustus Stevens, who owned the land on which the St. George Grounds were built.

Previously, the only St. George Cricket Grounds I knew of was on Staten Island, adjacent to the St. George Ferry Terminal, roughly where the Staten Island University Hospital Community Park is now, home of minor-league baseball's Staten Island FerryHawks, and formerly the Staten Island Yankees.

In 1889, the New York Giants baseball team used that St. George Cricket Grounds as a temporary home, because the City of New York decided to extend 111th Street through the original version of the Polo Grounds, between 5th and 6th Avenues, and so a new ballpark with that name was built at 155th Street and 8th Avenue in Upper Manhattan, but the Giants needed a temporary home. Despite this, they won the National League Pennant. 

* Cornell beat Lafayette, 24-0 at Syracuse, New York, making it more or less a home game for Ithaca-based Cornell.

* Wesleyan University beat the University of Pennsylvania, 10-2 at the Berkeley Oval in The Bronx, roughly halfway between the schools. Wesleyan, now a Division III school, is in Middletown, Connecticut; and Penn is in Philadelphia.

* Franklin & Marshall University beat Dickinson College, 22-0 at McGrann's Park in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Both schools now play in NCAA Division III.

* Lehigh University beat the Naval Academy, 26-6 at the Academy's parade ground in Annapolis, Maryland.

* And, in the very first game in what would become a proud history, the University of Washington got off to a bad start, losing to a team of alumni of Eastern colleges who happened to be living in Seattle, 20-0, at the Jackson Street Baseball Park.

November 23, 1968: "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29"

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.

*

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.

November 8, 1892: Cleveland vs. Harrison II

November 8, 1892: For the 1st time, a former President is returned to the office. Grover Cleveland, the 22nd President of the United States, becomes the 24th President (a ruling by the State Department has decided that he is designated as the 22nd and the 24th), defeating the man who, under dubious circumstances, defeated him 4 years earlier, the 23rd President, Benjamin Harrison.

It was a 3-way race, and, as a result, for the 3rd time, Cleveland finished 1st in the popular vote without getting a majority: He had 46 percent, Harrison 43 percent, and James B. Weaver of the Populist Party 8.5 percent. Cleveland won 277 Electoral Votes, Harrison 145, and Weaver 22. Weaver won 5 States, all in the West: Colorado Idaho, Kansas, Nevada and North Dakota.

In 1884, Cleveland had won with Thomas A. Hendricks as his running mate. He had been Governor of Indiana and a U.S. Senator, and had previously been nominated for Vice President with Samuel Tilden in 1876. In 1884, with Cleveland, he won, but he died before the 1st year of the Administration was out.

So in 1888, Cleveland's running mate was former Senator Allen Thurman of Ohio. In 1892, he turned to a former Congressman from Illinois, Adlai Stevenson. Cleveland, a former Governor of New York, chose well: His State, with its 36 Electoral Votes, and Stevenson's, with 24, were both very close. Had they gone the other way, Cleveland would still have led in Electoral Votes, 217-205, but would have fallen short of the 223 needed to win, and the election would have gone to the House of Representatives to decide.

The McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, both passed in 1890, had hit the economy hard. Both were written by Ohio politicians: The Tariff by Representative William McKinley, and the Silver Purchase Act by Senator John Sherman, brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman hung on to his seat, McKinley didn't -- and neither did Harrison.

But within weeks of Cleveland taking office, the economy was still shaky, and the stock market collapsed in the Panic of 1893. A depression set in, worse than any the nation had yet seen. It wasn't Cleveland's fault, but he didn't do much about it, and the Democrats paid for it: After gaining both houses of Congress in 1892, they lost both in 1894, in the biggest landslide in Congressional election history.

And McKinley was elected Governor of Ohio. In 1896, Cleveland chose not to run again, and McKinley was elected, defeating William Jennings Bryan -- and appointed Sherman as his Secretary of State.

In 1900, McKinley beat Bryan again, despite Bryan now having Stevenson as his running mate. Stevenson's grandson, Adlai Ewing Stevenson II, would be elected Governor of Illinois in 1948, and was nominated for President by the Democrats in 1952 and 1956.

UPDATE: In 2024, Donald Trump became the 2nd former President to receive another term for the office. Despite being fat, he is little like Cleveland. Cleveland valued honesty, while Trump is the biggest liar in American history. Cleveland prided himself on his hard work, while Trump is the laziest President ever. While Cleveland was from New Jersey but embraced New York State, Trump was from New York City and abandoned it for Florida. And while Trump savagely attacked all opponents, Cleveland was generous: When rain fell on Harrison's Inauguration in 1889, Cleveland held an umbrella over his head as he repeated the Oath of Office. Trump won't even hold an umbrella over his own wife's head.

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November 8, 1892 was a Tuesday. Baseball season was over. Hockey was still all-amateur. Basketball had only been invented the preceding December. But there were college football games played, including by 5 of the teams that would one day make up the Ivy League:

* Harvard University played the Boston Athletic Association's football team in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and won, 16-12.

* Yale University went to New York City, and played the New York Athletic Club at Manhattan Field, next-door to the Polo Grounds, and won, 48-0.

* The College of New Jersey, which became Princeton University in 1896, went to the Orange Oval in East Orange, New Jersey, and beat the Orange Athletic Club, 23-0. (Rutgers College did not play that day.)

* The University of Pennsylvania hosted Lehigh University in Philadelphia, and won, 4-0 (under the scoring rules of the time).

* Cornell University hosted the University of Michigan in Ithaca, New York, and won, 44-0. It would take another few years for Michigan to legitimately become what its fight song has always claimed them to be, "the Champions of the West."