The Yale Herald » harvard yale football game 2009

Harvard-Yale Game 2009: Sportsmanship 101

chloe — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:24:28 +0000

I want you guys to brace yourselves, because in spite of expectations, it is theoretically possible that we will lose the game this year. And while we’re forced into “Science,” “Math,” and “Writing” classes, not all of us have taken the most important football prerequisite — Sportsmanship.

Here’s what to say if we lose (within earshot of a Harvarder):

-”Gee, that loss wore me out. I guess I’ll fly home to my family and get ready for Thanksgiving now!”

-”Wow, if Harvard keeps playing that well, maybe their athletic director will get them a real mascot!”

-”Man, tough game. I’m glad that our AWESOME tailgate got me drunk enough to bear it!”

-”Yeah, they’re good. Too bad their cheerleaders are so UGLY! HAH!” [Disclaimer: I have not seen any of Harvard's cheerleaders. I'm sure their looks are entirely comparable with the rest of the Harvard population. This is just universally acknowledged to be a totally sick burn.]

Here’s what not to say:

-”Yeah. They were better than us, anyway.”

-”Harvard SUCKS!!! They… suck! [sob]”

-”I drank too much. I think I’m going to vomit.”

The great thing about Sportsmanship, though, is that if and when we win, it goes out the window. RUB IT IN!!!

For more coverage of the Harvard-Yale Game 2009, check out our Game topic page!

Harvard-Yale Game 2009: How to have fun (by Harvarders!)

miranda — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:59:30 +0000

No, that’s not Harvester, folks. It’s Harvarder! And it means a person who goes to Harvard! Apparently (and this is NEWS to us), Harvard also has many a publication that is writing things about New Haven and what it’s going to be like to attend the game in scarrryyyyy New Haven. We at the Bullblog always seek to have a rounded perspective on things, so we thought we’d share with you a compilation on what our neighbors have to say about bulldogs.

According to the Alumni Affairs organization of H-town, Harvard will also be setting up some tailgates (let’s hope they don’t go too wild with all their newfound tailgating freedom unlike last year’s “nanny state“!) The house tailgates look pretty boring, but I will give a beer (fresh from the SigEp keg) to anyone who can infiltrate this one.

Last year, Harvard had girl talk play at a pep rally. Then the Harvard 5-0 ended it prematurely (like their tailgate) after the event got too rowdy. This year, they’re all in a tizzy that they don’t have anyone to perform. And they have to pay for their tickets and transport! Luckily there will be a “FAN-tastic freshman contest!” as a replacement. According to one Harvarder, “There will be of more hating on Yale this year than a concert—we’re getting back to the basics of destroying Yale. So it will be getting back to the roots of what a pep rally is.”

According to the real Elle Woodses of Harvard, the top 10 things to do at the game include playing “spot the future famous person”, going to the Harvard-Yale glee club concert (“It’s always a blast”), choreographing a victory dance, not exploring New Haven (“New Haven does have a rep for being kind of dangerous.“), and “having fun”! Will do, Elles!

Listen up for a remix of the Harvard fight song “10,000 men of Harvard”. Voting is going on right NOW so Harvard can pick which one will be played at the fore-mentioned pep rally. And look out for some “Yale sux” shirts even though “we don’t need a t-shirt to tell us Yale sucks“. Apparently, they do need a video though!

For more coverage of the Harvard-Yale Game 2009, check out our Game topic page!

Harvard-Yale Game 2009: Football Fundamentals

chloe — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:58:28 +0000

Dear Joe, Gabe, and any similarly ignorant parties,

I know you’re worried. You don’t really watch football. SportsCenter just isn’t your thing. You watched ESPN once, but… actually, no. You lied. You never watched ESPN.

Football can be scary. There’s kicking, and hitting, and running. But it has things you like, too — leather, tight pants, tackling — and I think you can learn to love it. You just gotta know what’s going on. Here’s the basics for Saturday.

When we have the ball, we want to get to our “endzone” (laugh… laugh… okay enough laughing, serious time). We get four chances — they’re called “downs” — to move the ball 10 yards. They don’t have to be all at once — we can move the ball 2 yards on the first down, then 5 yards on the second, yada yada yada. Then we’ve made it 10 yards. We move the ball by running, and passing, and not getting tackled. Once those guys in red, the Harvards, tackle us, that chance is over. Next “down.” Once we move the ball 10 yards, we get to start all over with four new chances! That’s called a “first down.”

Sometimes, though, especially when we’ve got the ball, a team will get to the fourth (and last) down, and not have moved the ball at all, or even have moved it backwards! And if we don’t make it 10 yards in that fourth down, the crimsons get the ball. We don’t want that, that’s bad. So for the fourth down, we have a choice: we can risk it, and try and move the ball those last yards, or we can hedge our bets and give them the ball, but only after kicking it as far as we can toward our own endzone — that’s called a “punt” — so they have a first down, but they’re far away from where they want to be. Get it? Because we don’t want them to get to their endzone?

Among other things we don’t want: if you see the red team move the ball alllll the way to the very end of the field, they’ve scored a touchdown. On rare occasion, you might see the blue team do the same thing on the other end. That’s great! CHEER REAL LOUD! Whichever team gets the ball to their endzone gets 6 points! Then they get to try and kick the ball through those big prongs, and if they make that they get another point.

That’s the gist of it, but there are a lot of rules that I just can’t explain to you all at once. Football is a lot like life: things are going to happen, and the whistle is going to blow, and you won’t know whether it’s good or bad. But this Saturday, do what your friends are doing. If they cheer, it’s good. If they cry, they might have bigger issues. It’s just a game, guys.

Chloe

For more coverage of the Harvard-Yale Game 2009, check out our Game topic page!

Harvard-Yale Game 2009: Hosting Harvarders

gabrielle — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:36:42 +0000

One of the best parts of each year is when you get to reconvene with your old prep school pals in either Cambridge or the Have for the world’s largest pissing contest, otherwise known as the Game. Hosting your Harvard friends might seem easy, but DON’T BE FOOLED. The Real Game is won not at the Yale Bowl, but the night before. It’s like, the opposite of Waterloo and the fields of Eton, except if you look at Old Campus as the field — in which case it’s the exact same thing.

How to host Harvarders is most important if you’re a freshman: you haven’t been home yet since the beginning of school, and so you have yet to fully learn the art of lying about social success. Sure, you call your mom every once in a while to tell her about “all the really close friends that you’ve made,” but you’ve never had to fake that reality in person. Now you have to, which is terrifying, but remember: Cantabs have, for whatever reason, far worse social skills than Yalies. It’s just a proven fact. And now you have to rub that in their faces by partying excessively hard and just generally being more awesome than they.

What to Do:
1. Own them at beer pong, proving how many skillz you’ve picked up since graduation.
2. Go to Pance Party, find the hottest person you can to make out with you all over the place. Avoid if your Harvard friend is better looking than you (but let’s be real, all Harvard kids are busted).
3. Go to DKE and SAE and party with athletes, who really know how to throw down.
4. Drunkenly take them to Ivy Noodle at the end of the night for the best meal of their lives.

What Not to Do:
1. Don’t go to the party hosted by the Phoenix (one of their snooty final clubs) at Alchemy. The party won’t be sweet, but in case it is, you don’t want to have to live up to comparisons.
2. Whatever you do, don’t vomit. Unless you’re planning to immediately rally, in which case, GO FOR IT. Then you’re just hardcore.
3. Don’t drunkenly admit to them that sometimes you feel a little lost, and that you haven’t met anyone you really connect with, and that you miss high school where you were a big fish in a little pond. Fake it ’till you make it, kids.

For more coverage of the Harvard-Yale Game 2009, check out our Game topic page!

Harvard-Yale Game 2009: What to Wear

joe — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:17:37 +0000

The J. Press Yale Scarf: Classic

I just checked the ten-day forecast on weather.com, and it looks like the current prediction is for relatively balmy weather—they’re saying a high of 55, which, compared to last year’s -37, sounds positively tropical. This also gives quite a bit of range for dress. Here’s a starter guide:

OUTERWEAR: a necessity. You’ll be outside for hours and hours, so go with something wool.

SWEATER: this is your one chance to really go all out with the Yale gear and feel no shame. Choose the most vintage, the most blue and white, the one with the biggest Y… whatever you can do to show you care.

FOOTWEAR: since the Bullblog is in favor of walking to the Game (more on that soon), and the tailgate is muddy, go with a hiking boot! Preferably a waterproof one in case an incompetent cantab spills Keystone light on it!

ACCESSORIES: nonpareil here is the blue and white J. Press Yale scarf, but the runner up is a J. Press scarf colored for your college. Anything else is dead in the water, unless it ends up much colder than expected, in which case anything goes.

BONUS EYEWEAR: there is no reason I should like these, but the neon rimmed sunglasses SigEp makes are kind of amazing. Get em before they sell out!

For more coverage of the Harvard-Yale Game 2009, check out our Game topic page!

Harvard-Yale Game 2009: YCC tries it hand at being fun

joe — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:11:16 +0000

This week is the YCC’s Yale-Harvard week, which basically entails them encouraging us to wear Yale gear, with a slightly different theme every day (Wednesday is Residential College Pride day, for example.) They are also promoting a “pep rally” for this Thursday evening. Assumedly, they chose Thursday because they know that by Friday, half of Harvard will be staying on campus and they are worried a low turnout will embarrass them in front of our neighbors to the north. Because everyone knows the only reasons people go on Old Campus en masse are Spring Fling and Obama election night. Then again, if Mathilde Williams’ goal is for Yale to avoid embarrassment, she might have chosen a different venue than Commons for the “FIRST EVER Yale-Harvard Mixer.” Let’s just hope the surroundings are successfully drowned out by “Bay Area remix masters, Pance Party, coming all the way from San Francisco!”

For more coverage of the Harvard-Yale Game 2009, check out our Game topic page!

Harvard-Yale Game 2009: If only I could sell my identity!

joe — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:37:36 +0000

I have never bought tickets to the Game—perhaps my favorite day of the year—knowing that the crazy fervor of the halftime would allow me easy access to the stadium. Plus, I think if you’re a student at Yale you just show your ID (at least when the Game’s here) so half the time, I don’t even need tickets. But apparently, some (assumedly, non-Yale students) are so into the idea of going to the see the Oldest Campus Rivalry in America being performed that they’re willing to shell out some big bucks to participate. 69 bucks! The pricey seats are being sold (assumedly on the BLACK MARKET) on StubHub, and are located in section “28-A” of the Stadium. Sounds close to the field! But I think if I were to shell out cash for entry, I might feel guilty not entering…the last thing I want to feel when I’m on a leather couch in the SigEp tailgate. In fact, knowing that I will probably only go inside the Yale Bowl for 10 minutes—is anyone interested in buying my Yale ID for the day? You won’t have guaranteed seats—I’ve often sat in between bewildered alumni families in past years—and you would assumedly have to look wan, pale and red-headed for the ticketcheckers to believe you were me. So as for the price—I’ll settle for $68. Not a penny more or less.

For more coverage of the Harvard-Yale Game 2009, check out our Game topic page!