“It’s The Game, Rory,” Paris says to Rory in anguish, across a Yale dining hall table.
Rory Gilmore, a Yale student who is unfamiliar with the Harvard-Yale game, attends The Game with the Gilmore family in “Ted Koppel’s Big Night Out”—Season 4, Episode 9 of the series Gilmore Girls.
Richard and Emily Gilmore, Rory’s grandparents, have attended The Game every year for more than thirty years. The Gilmores participate in a handful of pre-game rituals and traditions, including delivering a toast in front of Yale’s mascot, the bulldog Handsome Dan, tailgating with alumni, and singing the Yale Fight Song, “Bulldog.”
While no winner is revealed in the fictional depiction of The Game, the episode aired at roughly the same time as the actual game was played at Yale in 2003. Yale lost the 2003 game 37-19. Perhaps Rory should have taken Yale’s loss as a sign—sometimes, even the most deep-seated traditions can’t outweigh the wrong choice. If Rory had picked Harvard, she’d at least have been cheering for a winner.
While Harvard and Yale students generally tend to duke it out in the academic arena, once a year we take the rivalry to the football field. The Harvard-Yale football rivalry, known as “The Game,” is the second-oldest college football rivalry in the United States. The matchup is considered the most important and anticipated game of the year for both teams.
The Game is played each year on the Saturday before Thanksgiving day, with the host site rotating each year between the Yale Bowl and Harvard Stadium. This year, the 140th playing of The Game will be hosted on Nov. 23 at Harvard Stadium. When Harvard and Yale played in 2023, it marked The Game’s 139th all-time meeting, where Yale defeated Harvard 23-18. As of the current record, Yale leads the series 70–61–8.
This football rivalry is among the most admired rivalries on the American athletic scene: many dream of attending as a spectator, let alone as a student. As a rivalry nearly a century-and-a-half old, it’s no surprise that The Game maintains such a storied legacy.
Notable past attendees of The Game include U.S. Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft (1914), baseball legend and Crimson fan Babe Ruth (1932), U.S. President and assistant coach for Yale Gerald Ford (1935), and U.S. President John F. Kennedy Jr. who watched his brother Ted Kennedy score for the Crimson on the field (1955).
1875: The First Game
The first Harvard-Yale football game was held in New Haven, Connecticut in 1875. In contrast to what American football looks like today, the style of the game then resembled more of a mixture of rugby and soccer, with 15 athletes on each team. Roughly 2,500 fans observed the first match-up, and tickets were roughly 50 cents, starkly contrasting to The Game’s modern ticket price. Harvard won this inaugural meeting 4-0.
After the game, Harvard students were arrested in New Haven under the charges of “hooting and hollering in the streets.” Each student was fined $5.29, equivalent to roughly $114 today.
1894: The Blood Bath
This game was known for the violence that broke out between the two schools with nine Harvard and Yale football players being removed from the game, either due to injury or to fighting with the opposing team. Expectedly, both schools blamed each other for the violence and didn’t play each other again until 1897. In late 1905, representatives from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were summoned to the White House by Theodore Roosevelt to discuss reforms to mitigate unnecessarily violent, unsportsmanlike play and minimize resultant fatalities and injuries in football.
1898: The Dubbing
In 1898, the term “The Game” was coined to describe the annual matchup. The former Harvard football captain A.F Holden wrote in a letter that the match-up makes “the Yale-Harvard game the game of the season.”
1934: Bye, Bye Handsome Dan
On the eve of The Game’s 53rd playing, Handsome Dan II, Yale’s mascot, was dognapped by a group of Harvard students. Morning newspapers captured a photo of Handsome Dan at the feet of John Harvard’s statue. In a 1950 article published by The Harvard Crimson, Handsome Dan is seen licking the statue’s feet after being lured with hamburger grease. The mascot had been the victim of the same crime earlier that year. The New York Times even ran an article on March 16, 1934, detailing the first kidnapping. The Bulldogs that year began a three-year winning streak, after defeating Harvard 14-0.
1968: Harvard’s Remarkable Comeback
The 85th playing of The Game resulted in a 29-29 tie after a Crimson miracle. In 1968, Yale entered The Game leading with a 16-game win streak. After leading for most of the game, the Bulldogs were up 29-13 with two minutes remaining. However, in the final 42 seconds, Harvard scored two touchdowns and made two two-point conversions, leaving the game tied. The following morning, The Harvard Crimson published the now-infamous headline “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.” William M. “Bill” Kutik ‘70, a Crimson editor in 1968, told the newspaper that even if the headline wasn’t necessarily accurate, it “captured the emotional sense of the game.”
2004: “We Suck”
A historic component of the Harvard-Yale rivalry is pranks. In 2004, Yale students Michael Kai and David Aulicino posed with other students as the Harvard Pep Squad, running up and down the stadium to pass out red and white construction paper to Harvard fans who graciously thought they were going to help spell “Go Harvard” when raised in the air. However, Kai and Aulicino’s papers actually spelled out “We Suck” in the Harvard crowd. The prank proceeded to garner national attention from Jimmy Kimmel Live, MSNBC, and more. Nonetheless, Harvard, led by quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, crushed Yale 35-3.
2005: Triple Over-Time
In 2005, The Game saw the first triple-overtime game in Ivy League history for the historic rivalry. While Yale led 21-3 through the third quarter, Harvard rallied, forcing the game into overtime. The teams went scoreless before running back Clifton Dawson ran in for the game-winning touchdown for Harvard. The game lasted almost an astounding four hours.
2018: Fenway Park
For the first time since 1894, The Game was held at a neutral site, Fenway Park in Boston. The Game, at the home of the Boston Red Sox, saw the highest combined scoring output in its history, with Harvard winning 45-27.
2019: “Nobody Wins” Protest
As The Game’s halftime show ended, 150 people flocked onto the field at the Yale Bowl, demanding that Harvard and Yale divest from fossil fuels, private prisons, and Puerto Rican debt. The banners they held read “Nobody Wins: Yale and Harvard are Complicit in Climate Injustice,” “President Bacow and Salovey: Our Future Demands Action Now” and “This is an Emergency.” The Yale and New Haven police departments urged the protesters to leave the field, with most exiting after half an hour. A small number, though, were arrested. The then-Harvard football captain Wesley Ogsbury ’19 supported the protest in a video statement posted afterward. U.S. Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Julian Castro congratulated the protestors via Twitter. The Game went into overtime, culminating in a victory for the Bulldogs.
The Game transcends mere athletic competition. Instead, it’s an all-encompassing tapestry woven with a rich history of tradition and moments that define the essence of our beloved collegiate rivalry. From its modest beginnings in 1875 to its modern-day spectacle, The Game captures the spirit of Harvard and Yale, not just on the football field but in their shared history and rivalry.
Rania Jones ’27 (rjones@college.harvard.edu) would love to steal Handsome Dan for the day.