Harvard vs. Yale

This Saturday, Harvard’s 105 athletes will make their way to New Haven to face off against Yale at the Yale Bowl. But its significance is much larger than who storms the field when the clock ticks down.

While The Game marks the end of this year’s regular season in the Ivy League and could determine whether Harvard competes in the postseason, both teams are playing for much more: the honor of being named the 141st victor in the nation’s second-oldest college football rivalry.

The numbers tell one story. But each iteration of The Game has a history of its own. Here are a few games over the years that stand out in records of the matchup.

The Game was first held at Yale in 1875 after Harvard challenged Yale to a rugby-like game. Both teams took the football that Saturday, making the rivalry the first in American college athletics and the third-most-played in college football history. Harvard won the game by scoring four goals and four touchdowns for a final score of 4-0, though scores in football were calculated differently at the time.

Not long after the first iteration of The Game, the matchup got aggressive. In the 1894 game known as the “Hampden Park Bloodbath” or “Springfield Massacre,” nine players were removed from the field due to injury or ejection. In the era before effective helmets and padding, the game was marred by bloodshed with at least five players hospitalized and one who ended up in a coma for a few hours. The schools called off the game for two years, each blaming the other for the violence, before resuming play in 1897.

In 1957, Harvard faced a catastrophic 54-point loss to the Bulldogs — the largest in the history of the matchup. The Crimson was in a rut from beginning in 1949, and the devastating loss at Yale was only part of the forgotten era of Harvard football history. Harvard fans were desperate. With Yale up 0-34 at halftime, a messenger reportedly handed a note to the Bulldogs’ head coach from a Harvard alum that read one simple word: “Please.”

Harvard’s largest margin of victory over Yale of 38 points was achieved in 1982 and 2011, both times ending in a 45-7 score. Both games were blowout wins — though the 1982 game is infamous for an MIT prank that involved a large weather balloon bearing the letters “MIT” suddenly inflating on the field during the second quarter.

42 seconds before the end of the 1968 Harvard-Yale matchup, with a commanding 29-13 lead of Yale over Harvard, a Bulldogs win was all but certain. But two touchdowns and two two-point conversions later, Harvard had tied the game — prompting thousands of Crimson fans to flood the field. The emotion of the game led to an iconic headline in The Crimson the next day: “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.”

The last game played outside of the two teams’ stadiums — and the first in 124 years — featured a faceoff between the Crimson and the Bulldogs at Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. The baseball diamond was converted into a football field for the throngs of fans in attendance to watch what became the highest-scoring game in the matchup’s history, with Harvard coming out on top 45-27.

Next year, the two teams will make their way back to Fenway Park to play 2026’s iteration there again.