Classic Harvard-Yale Tie Gets Documentary Gloss

The 40th anniversary of a classic game in the football rivalry between Harvard and Yale has inspired a documentary, Mark Feeney writes in the Boston Globe. The contest is as notable for “its time-capsule aspect” and rising-star participants (future Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones) as for the underdog Crimson's miraculous comeback, which occasioned the headline, and movie title, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.

Harvard scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds to earn the draw against an undefeated Yale team quarterbacked by Brian Dowling, the inspiration for character BD in Garry Trudeau’s "Doonesbury." “The larger point Harvard Beats Yale makes, perhaps, is about the inevitability of loss,” Feeney concludes ahead of Saturday's 125th edition of the game. “A sense of mortality shadows the documentary. On or off the gridiron, time is the only opponent who always wins. Even at Harvard, even at Yale.”
(More Harvard stories.)