COLLEGE FOOTBALL : THE SCENE AT ANOTHER RIVALRY : Harvard, Yale Offer Genteel ‘The Game’

Chauffeured Rolls-Royces sit majestically in the late-autumn New England sun. Catered tailgate parties complete with caviar and candelabras dot the Yale Bowl parking lot. Tweed abounds, enough to warm what a smuggled swig of Chivas Regal can’t reach.

After 106 years of practice, these Harvard and Yale men know how to throw a football game. Modesty not being their strong point, they call it The Game .

President George Bush, Yale Class of ‘48, was sent a written invitation by the team’s seniors to attend Saturday’s game. Bush declined--busy with world stuff--but no doubt he requested the final score before night’s end.

He would be disappointed.

Members of the MIT student body were not invited, however. The Cambridge, Mass.,-based scholars, well known for their high-tech game-day pranks, were shooed away from the Yale Bowl early Wednesday morning by campus security police. Security chief Harold McGrath later announced that he personally had checked “every single strand of wire” in the stadium and that the Bowl was absolutely, positively safe from intruders.

Linebacker Jon Reese, Yale’s 113th football captain, continued his remarkable comeback, though no one is quite sure how.

On Halloween evening, a drunk driver rammed his car into Reese’s small Pontiac. The collision shattered Reese’s jaw bone, split his lip from top to bottom, tore the gums away from his teeth--four of which were missing after impact--and tore a ligament in his left arm. Surgeons spent two hours reconstructing his face that night at The Hospital of Saint Raphael. When Jon Reese awoke, his father gently kissed him on the forehead.

“It’s amazing you’re alive,” his father said softly.

Reese’s father had gone to see the wreckage. There was only the suggestion of a car left.

Saturday, wearing a specially designed face mask and mouthpiece, Reese played his final game for Yale. The bitter wind aggravated the nerve endings in his mouth, so much so, he said, that it felt like “someone was pressing needles in there.”

But he played and cherished every moment of it, despite Harvard’s 37-20 upset of Yale before 59,263. The Game touches people that way.

For one wonderful weekend each season, time slows to a pace that Harvard and Yale, college football’s most celebrated and lasting rivalry, can better relate to. It is a pace that allows for favored recollections, for handshakes between old friends, for moments, it seems, found only in the relative innocence of the Ivy League, where athletic scholarships, football dormitories, spring practice, redshirts, freshman eligibility and scandals don’t exist.

“The players work a job,” Harvard Coach Joe Restic said. “They take out a loan. They get a grant from the school. That’s the way it still should be done. He doesn’t get anything for nothing. He paid a price for it. One thing that happens to you in these situations is that the institution and the program teach players to survive.”

There is a charm to The Game, beginning with the Harvard jerseys, which feature numerals and Latin. Above each shoulder pad is the motto, Veritas --truth.

And when’s the last time you heard fight songs . . . in public? Here, you do. For instance, Cole Porter wrote “Bulldog, Bulldog” for Yale. And what lyrics. A sampling:

“Bulldog, Bulldog, bow, wow, wow . . . “

How often does a sports information office, as did Yale’s this week, get phone calls from alums located across the world, all of them asking for coordinates so they could aim their satellite dishes for a closed-circuit television broadcast?

And how many times do you see a freshmen football game pack the stands the way the Yale Bullpups and Harvard Yardlings did Friday afternoon at Yale’s Clinton E. Frank Field, a cozy facility located next to the aging baseball stadium made famous by first baseman Bush?

Try every November.

Among those watching the mini-version of The Game was former Yale quarterback Brian Dowling, Class of ’69. Dowling is the fifth-leading passer in Yale history and led the Bulldogs to Ivy League championships in 1967 and 1968. He inspired Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, another Yale graduate, to create a football character named B.D., in honor of the Yale quarterback.

“In fact,” Dowling said, reaching into his wallet, “I think I have a couple left.” With that, he pulled out a business card. On it was his name, his company’s name in New York City and a small replica of Doonsebury’s B.D.

“I wrote Trudeau asking him if I could do this,” Dowling said. “He said, ‘Sure, I didn’t ask your permission when I used you in the strip.’ ”

Dowling watched the Harvard freshmen take a 14-10 halftime lead. Yale eventually overtook Harvard in the third quarter and won, 31-27, to cap an undefeated season. Meanwhile, the Yale jayvees defeated Harvard on an adjacent field.

Bow, wow, wow.

Afterward, Dowling joined other Yale alums in a touch football game against their Harvard counterparts. He even completed a touchdown pass to former Chicago Bear safety Gary Fencik, Yale ’76.

This is a weekend of shared experiences. The glee clubs joined voices. The debate clubs met to determine if Harvard still stood for excellence. The debate was a draw. There were croquet matches played on the campus golf courses. Intramural games were played between the two schools. There was drinking, sing-a-longs, speeches galore.

And, of course, there was The Game.

Yale began Saturday guaranteed at least a share of the Ivy League title. But this being Coach Carm Cozza’s 25th season, the Bulldogs were in a selfish mood. They wanted the championship for themselves, but they mostly wanted it for Cozza.

Next to the Yale practice fields is a cemetery. Cozza often tells friends he would like to be buried there, the better to watch his beloved teams.

“They really try here,” he said. “Players come out for football because they really want to play.”

Cozza is a romantic. He recently walked into the Yale locker room and was blasted by the sound of heavy metal rock music. What happened to the good old days, asked Cozza, when players listened to Yale fight songs to get ready for a game?

So shortly before the Bulldogs left their locker room Saturday, Cozza instructed someone to flip on a cassette player. Soon, rousing renditions of school tunes, courtesy of a Yale band recording, blared from the speakers.

Across the way was Harvard. Restic’s team had struggled early in the season, but it entered The Game healthy and hopeful. Once a preseason pick for first place, Harvard was reduced to playing for a .500 season and the satisfaction of denying Yale an outright Ivy League title.

“Every game is so different,” Restic said earlier in the week. “Things will happen in this ballgame that have never happened before. Someone will rise to the surface, do something you didn’t know they could. You’ll be shocked. You never know.”

Restic and Cozza take The Game seriously, as they should. A victory can save a season, to say nothing of a job. Last year, Yale struggled but upset Harvard in the final game. “And it made for a warm winter,” Cozza said.

This time Restic and Harvard (5-5) will warm themselves by the memories of Saturday’s victory. It was the fifth time in the last 16 years that Harvard has forced Yale (8-2) to share the Ivy League championship, this time with Princeton.

“I was looking out the visiting locker room window today and I see a big American flag,” Restic said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I see the Yale flag, the Harvard flag. I see people coming in, some barely able to walk for this game. That tells you something.

“Amateur athletics at its best.” he said.

The Yale Bowl is 75 years old. It aged considerably as Harvard stunned the Bulldogs with two second-period touchdowns and a 14-0 lead. Halfback Silas Myers did most of the work with a two-yard scoring run and an 18-yard pass reception from quarterback Tim Perry for the other touchdown.

And imagine McGrath’s surprise when, with 7:27 remaining in the second quarter, the cap of a goalpost upright magically popped off, revealing . . . a red and white MIT banner.

It seemed Yale couldn’t shut anyone out Saturday.

Halftime was interesting. The Harvard Band made fun of Bush. The Yale Precision Marching Band made fun of itself. No two Yale members dressed alike. Instead, they wore Goofy hats, pith helmets, baseball caps or whatever else fell from their closet shelves that morning. The precision marching was just an unsubstantiated rumor.

But the Yale Band can play. It coaxed about 60 Yale students to strip to their skivvies (bras and panties for the females) in the 30-degree temperature with a sexy little number made famous, no doubt, by Gypsy Rose Lee. And it played away as Yale, down, 21-0, in the third quarter, closed the gap to 21-20 by the end of the period.

That would do it for Yale highlights. Harvard scored three times in the fourth quarter, adding 16 more points to its total. Restic had his treasured win and Cozza had his bittersweet Ivy League co-championship.

At game’s end, the public address announcer invited the remaining fans onto the field to meet the players, coaches and, in a fitting twist, each other. At The Game, it seemed the right thing to do.