Harvard beat Yale 29-29. 1968. --great documentary.

[underpants]

I watched this documentary last night. Very interesting the way it is done, the interviews of the players now are cut with play-by-play of the game. Not every play but most of them I would guess.

Both teams came into the game undefeated which hadn’t happened since 1909 or thereabouts.


Yale is poetry and fluid. Brian Dowling is their QB of the century and Calvin Hill is the tailback. Hill’s shoulders are taller than any other player on the field. He later of course would be drafted by the Dallas Cowboys. One of the players is dating Meryl Streep who at the time is at Vassar. Also on campus are George W. Bush whose roommate Bob Livingston in his only comment in the film says, “George was at the game probably inebriated” Livingston adds a bit of the story of how W got arrested at the Princeton game for taking down the goalposts --- and Gary Trudeau who at this point is doing Doonesbury in the Yale newspaper – “B.D.” the guy who always has the football helmet on is based on the QB Brian Dowling everyone agrees on that. “Mike” (Mike Doonesbury) several people comment is probably based on Mike Bouscaren the middle linebacker. Bouscaren comes off as a complete ass in this movie. He openly claims to have put the Harvard captain Gatto out of the game but a replay shows that Bouscaren bit on an end-around and was nowhere near the play when Gatto gets hurt. One of their cornerbacks is Rick Frisbie – nice name. It is all good at Yale. No turmoil, tons of fun, good times.


Harvard is a mess. Somehow they won all their games buy no one is sure how. They have incredible team turmoil over the war and their coach is like a literature professor whose halftime speeches are mostly, “Okay offense we need to score more points than they do and defense we need to stop them from scoring points. Special teams needs to play well”. As one Harvard player comments, “We, duh”. Harvard loses their starting QB in the game and in steps Frank Champi, a rocket for an arm but he has never played. All of the Harvard players look like they are wearing diapers – the old pad girdle I suspect.

Tommy Lee Jones. To give you an idea of the size of the players Tommy Lee was an offensive tackle. He comes off as elusive to the interviewer, confronting him once and generally generalizes everything away. He does mention his roommate Al Gore. One Thanksgiving they “contrive a way to cook a turkey in the fireplace” and relates a story about Gore with the new fangled touchtone phones (not rotary phones) figures out how to play “Dixie” on it. It apparently empresses the chicks.


This is 1968 so the Vietnam War is front and center. Harvard has on the team ROTC guys, SDS (Students for Democratic Society), and a Vietnam vet named Pat Conway. The tension was thick as Harvard was one of the centers of anti-war protests given the influence of Harvard. Yale has no real anti-war activity it is all good times for them.

The Game

Yale cuts through Harvard like nothing. As mentioned about the size of the players there are some really good form tackles not the throw-your-body-at-the defensive-end-playing-running-back that we see today. Harvard has a good defense but Yale’s offense is the stuff of legends. Calvin Hill really didn’t have a very good game.

At the half Yale 22 – Harvard 0. Champi has settled down. Harvard gets back into the game because Yale ends up fumbling the ball 5 times –I think all in the second half. Harvard finally scores but misses the extra point. Tommy Lee Jones comments, “I wonder how many lives would be different if he had made that”. He was clearly pissed off about it still but it could have been him just being sarcastic.

Yale scores again and then Harvard answers. Yale 29 – Harvard 13. It stays that way until there are 3 minutes left in the game. Yale has the ball but tries to throw it for some reason. No one in the film can understand why.

1 minute left in the game. Yale 29 – Harvard 13. It needs to be noted that this was in the days of a running clock. There was time stoppage for first downs but generally a minute left was just that.

Harvard scores and kicks the extra point.

Yale takes the kickoff and then fumbles on the first play from scrimmage.

Harvard is at the Yale 3 with 3 seconds left. Somewhere in here there is an interference call in the endzone. The player, forgot his name, was in for that one play and goes down in Harvard-Yale lore for that. The replay showed that it was a bad call but here we are.


Last play. Champi guns it into his end’s hands. Touchdown. No time left and Harvard has to go for two because of the missed PAT. They make it. Everyone storms the field. End of movie.

During the credits they have someone playing “Dixie” on a touchtone phone.

Bouscaren goes on to be an ultramarathoner and writes the apparently influencial book “Ultramarathoning”

Gatto looks like he could still put the pads on.

Calvin Hill does not appear in the movie.

John Kerry at the time is in Vietnam…...... or Cambodia.

[CTyankee]

1. Mike Doonesbury is actually Charles Pillsbury.

Charlie Pillsbury just retired as the head of a nonprofit organization in New Haven that offers arbitration services. He was Trudeau's roommate at Yale. Charlie, of THE Pillsbury family, ran for the House of Representatives a few years back on the Green ticket, against Rosa DeLauro. Altho I like Charlie, I voted for Rosa because I think she is great.

[underpants]

2. I didn't get the Mike Bouscaren element - he was way too uptight

to be the Mike Doonesbury character but that was what was said in the documentary.

[CTyankee]

3. Egads, this is SO well known in New Haven. I'm astonished that it is

what you said in the film (haven't seen it). I seriously doubt that Charlie is promoting this fraudulently, or promoting it at all. He doesn't have to, he's a rich heir of a fortune. Garry, who has a house on one of the Thimble Islands right off of Branford (a close suburb of New Haven on the shoreline), doesn't seem to say much about it.

I remember that game. My first husband was a Harvard grad and I was taking a train into NYC from Westchester County that day to meet him at the Harvard Club and have dinner. Because there were no cell phones then, I couldn't know what was happening while I was on the train. When I got there, it was pandemonium. The "Cantabs" (short for Cantabridgeans or residents of Cambridge) were standing on chairs screaming and clapping. Quite a scene.

The title of the film was from the headline in the Harvard Crimson published after the game.

Harvard-Yale is called The Game. I now live in New Haven and every other year Yale hosts The Game at the Yale Bowl. I root for Yale now. We've not been very successful lately, tho. Harvard has a great coach. We can't seem to get a newer version of the Yale coach Carm Cozza (who, BTW, is still alive).

Some Yalies and Cantabs take this game far too seriously IMHO...

[SpiralHawk]

4. I remember that game...

My sweetie at the time - later the scintillating, radiating, voluptuous, luminous Ms. SpiralHawk for 25 amazing, wonderful, memorable years until her death -- was a Cliffie (majoring in Greek and Latin, go figure). We hooted and hollered. Totally amazing.

[caraher]

5. It's on Hulu

Full documentary on Hulu