The Poetry of The Game

Object: Two teams with 11 players on the field attempt to score points by putting the ball behind their opponents' goal line in various approved ways. The game is won by the team scoring more points in the allotted time.

Football is science. It is rules and regulations, charts and calculations, weights and measures, X's and O's. Football is physics, math, and above all chemistry.

The Game, however, is not just football. It cannot be reduced to science. The Game is more like art.

So take the statistics and graphs and paint them over with streaks of crimson and blue. Drown them out with victory marches and fight songs. Douse them with a cold beer and get your artistic juices flowing.

This is The Game.

For the uninitiated, the first clue to the importance of The Game is the capital letters. Subtle yet unmistakable. Upper-case letters at the beginning of both words. (Incidentally, T and G are key letters when reversed this weekend.)

Not every letter in The Game is capitalized, however. That would sink The Game to the level of some cheap carnival sideshow (Come see THE GAME! Don't miss THE AMAZING CRIMSON!!!).

No, the tasteful capital letters elevate this football match into something vaguely historic, like The Hundred Years War. The Game is capitalized, as if it were a philosophy like Taoism or a nation like America.

The Game is capitalized as a proper noun because it is very, very proper. It is like The Country Club: everybody who matters knows that it is in Brookline. Most of these same people know that The Game is The Game.

The Game does not need redundant modifiers. When Stanford plays California, promoters dub the match-up "The Big Game" because everybody knows it isn't.

In 102 games, Yale has averaged 12.15 points, Harvard 9.83. The Crimson is 1-9 in years ending in 6.

Every conceivable useless statistic in The Game has been hunted down, skinned, cooked, swallowed and digested.

All of them don't amount to crap.

Strange things happen in The Game, things that defy mathematical analysis.

A current NFL tight end, John Spagnola--who weighs more than most linemen--holds The Game record for throwing Yale's longest scoring pass.

Eleven years ago, a now-chubby Boston sport-scaster, Mike Lynch, booted a late field goal to give Harvard a 10-7 win and its only outright Ivy crown.

Some MIT pranksters punctuated a 45-7 Harvard victory in The 1982 Game by expanding a huge balloon at midfield of the Stadium.

Last year, Yale burst the Harvard balloon by taking a 17-6 victory and knocking Harvard out of the Ivy League championship.

And, of course, there was The 1968 Game. No comment needed.

The football field is 360 feet long and 160 feet wide, bounded by the inside edge of end lines and sidelines, and surrounded by a six-foot wide white border. Goal lines, eight inches wide, are marked in white 10 yards inside and parallel to the end lines.

The Game is played on a field much larger than this.

The field extends beyond the Stadium, past the hordes of tailgaters, and toward the oceans on either side.

The Game is a truly national collegiate rivalry. Alumni in every state stake a claim to the outcome of The Game.

Loyalties are not decided on the basis of geography. Cantabrigians and Somervillians do not, as a rule, care who wins.

But there are pockets of Wisconsonians and Marylanders who are part of The Game. Some are Eli and some are Crimson. All, in a sense, are players.

The football is a spheroid, measuring 11 to 11-1/4 inches long, with a short circumference of 21 to 21-1/4 inches and a long circumference of 28 to 26-1/2 inches. It is constructed of a rubber bladder inflated 12-1/2 to 13-1/2 pounds per square inch, and it weights 14 to 15 ounces.

The shape of a football is unique. Have you ever seen anything except a football that is shaped exactly like a football?

The rationale behind the shape is simple. The bounce of the ball is absolutely unpredictable.

So goes the 1986 Crimson football season. The ball, so to speak, has bounced every which way away from Harvard. Or, more accurately, the ball has consistently bounced through Harvard's slippery hands.

Those kinds of bounces can change directions in unfathomable ways. Physics controls the bounce of the ball.

But Harvard's job today is to grab the ball. It cannot rely on science, cannot wait for a favorable Harvard bounce.

Harvard seniors know it is their turn to grasp the pigskin and run with it. They have never beaten Yale. This is their last chance.

This is The Season.