Harvard 37, Yale 6

If you look in a future dictionary and find the word, "hubris," you might find a photograph taken from the November 17, 2007 Yale-Harvard Game (affectionately known as "The Game") where Yale was expected to win handily and easily over Harvard after a 9 and 0 season. Both teams were undefeated in the Ivy League, and Harvard lost only two games outside the League. Well, everyone expected Yale to win and win well, including - I think - the Yale team. Sadly, it turned out otherwise.

Harvard won and won well...Yale could not move the ball, could not cover the receivers, could not sack the quarterback and could not, or would not, throw the ball. Harvard did all that and did it well, and once Yale fell behind, first by a touchdown in the first minute and a half of the 1st Quarter, then by a second and finally by 27 by the half, it was just hard to catch up. I read that Yale had never been behind in the whole season, so the team had no experience in playing catch-up, no method or strategy for making a come-back.

It was a devastating loss and for the team and a blemish on a brilliant season. People will not remember the winning season, with 9 wins and 1 loss. They will remember the one loss, to Harvard, on a cool November day.

Now, I don't mean to beat up on the Yale football team...I've been a victim of my own hubris: the loss of an election that I wrongly thought I could win; the end of a marriage I thought could withstand anything; the rise and fall of a relationship where I had thought I had done everything right and turned out I was wrong all along...so I am sympathetic to Yale. But perhaps in my sympathy...or empathy...I was quite sanguine about the loss. They expected to win, they got killed...been there done that. I was not as traumatized as fans or alumni, nor was I angry at the team...I was almost intrigued - sadistically perhaps - to watch an otherwise good team go down in flames at the point that should have been their moment of glory.