It’s a football rivalry so old that it’s merely referred to as “The Game.”
It’s been going on for 150 years, which is longer than football powerhouses such as Alabama, Georgia and Notre Dame have even been playing the sport.
And yet, the last (and only) time either of these rivals appeared in a postseason football game was during Woodrow Wilson’s administration.
All that will come to an end this year: The winner of Saturday’s Harvard-Yale game will be going to the playoffs.
Turns out that arguably the eight most powerful schools in the country that make up the Ivy League – including Harvard and Yale – had been banning themselves from postseason play since World War II.
One big reason is that these schools didn’t want to take part in the increasing commercialization of the college football game – which is now in overdrive.
The self-imposed ban came to an end this past offseason. The culprit? The students. Students from these schools pushed for, and convinced, the league to allow them to take part in playoffs.
To be clear, we’re not talking about the same playoffs that involve the aforementioned Alabamas, Georgias, Ohio States and Notre Dames of the world, though that would certainly be interesting to see.
The Harvard-Yale winner will join the playoffs for the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), which is a notch below the Football Bowl Subdivision containing college football’s most recognizable powerhouses.
That might make it easy to dismiss this matchup, but the history and strength of these teams suggests otherwise.
To be clear, I say this as a Dartmouth man who roots for Columbia football.
Harvard-Yale is the second oldest college football rivalry, only beaten by Princeton and Yale. When they first met in 1875, it was one of the first times football was played under any real semblance of modern day rules.
The football that we know today is popular because of teams like these. Yale still has won more college football titles than any other team, leading Alabama by two. Harvard is still eighth on the all-time list! Harvard, Yale and the rest of the Ivy League were forced out of college football’s top division at the beginning of the 1980s.
The great history of these programs shouldn’t detract from modern day interest. It remains high. The average attendance of Harvard-Yale games at the Yale Bowl is about 50,000. That’s more than any Major League Baseball team’s average attendance.
The game also has a cultural cachet that few other games have: It helps kick start one of the greatest Simpsons’ episodes of all time, “Burns, Baby Burns,” where Mr. Burns finds out he has a son named Larry – voiced by legendary comedian Rodney Dangerfield.
But in all seriousness, the game will likely be a good one.
Harvard ranks 10th in the FCS out of 129 teams. They haven’t lost a game. They are seventh in scoring offense and third in scoring defense. They have won their games on average by more than 25 points.
Yale comes into the game ranked 25th in the FCS. They’ve lost just one game thanks to a defense that ranks sixth in points allowed. They’ve won their average game by double-digits.
History dictates too that the game should be good: The last five meetings between the two squads have been determined by a touchdown or less.
This game, however, has more on the line than any of those.
The victor will win the Ivy League and automatically be going to the playoffs. The loser will have to hope for an at-large bid.
