Yale may keep coming up the loser, but at least they know how to throw a pretty good party.
I slept late last Sunday. I just lay in bed even as the scant few hours of November sunlight slowly waned. Life as a new college alumnus never felt so lazy.
I had returned close to midnight Saturday from New Haven, where alongside my collegiate former brethren, some friends and I had taken part in the raucous tailgates outside the Harvard-Yale game. It was my first Game post-graduation, and all in all, not tremendously different from the ones I remember from my undergraduate years. It was like stepping into a time warp for the weekend and being given the permission to act incredibly stupid once again.
Even if Monday morning I had to wake up and go to work.
The day was historic. The first overtime game in 122 meetings of the two schools, the first triple-overtime game in Ivy history, the Crimson's fifth consecutive win over the Eli (every year since I arrived in Boston). And surprisingly enough, despite the debauchery and, let's face it, extravagant bingeing (about 30 people were carted away from the Yale Bowl for evaluation after excessive alcohol consumption), not a single alcohol-related arrest or injury. Even the weather was nice.
''It's always more fun at Yale," my friends and I agreed in the car on the way back. Perhaps it's nothing more than a ''grass is always greener" (and the beer more plentiful) phenomenon, but something tells me larger forces are at work here to make us envious of Connecticut.
Forces such as Boston Police Department Captain William B. Evans, commander of the Allston and Brighton districts, who has made curbing underage and unruly drinking a personal crusade. Last year, when The Game was hosted at fair Harvard, Evans gave students and administrators football-sized headaches. Kegs, banned at the tailgates since 2002, made a slight return only as a controlled substance, IDs were checked at the gates, wristbands were required for revelers 21 or over, students and alums were forced to pick up separate tailgate tickets at the box office. And despite being lauded as a healthy success by most standards -- no near-death ambulance trips, no severe drop in fun levels -- Evans was irate.
''To me, that day was a disgrace," Evans later told The Harvard Crimson. ''Within a week I had three Harvard deans in my office, and I told them that that day will never go on like it did again."
New Haven, on the other hand, at least we'll always have New Haven. This year, tales of strict new policies at Yale were for the most part exaggerated. The New York Times had a report over the weekend on the resistance the college was facing from alums to those rules. But the ban on drinking games and the threat of shutdown by the start of the third quarter didn't cause any measurable disturbances. The tailgates my fellow students and alums have come to know and love were back, as well they should be. For one day out of the year, Harvard and Yale students -- like everyone else -- can afford to kick back and throw a silly indulgent celebration for the sake of celebration.
Alums, too. And those of us who aren't yet ready to extricate ourselves entirely from undergraduate life -- us, too. My friends and I never did stumble upon the alumni tailgates.
''They're kind of dull," my friend Alex, a Harvard senior, told me. He gestured toward their mysterious locale across the street when I asked if he knew where they were. ''But I have to hand it to them. They've got bottle after bottle of Harpoon lined up."
We both looked down into our red plastic cups of watery light keg beer. At least I've got something to look forward to.
Benjamin Toff, a recent grad making (and resisting) the transition from college student to working stiff, lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.Read the reply from Capt. Evans (12/11/05).
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