Review: THE GAME: Harvard, Yale, and America in 1968

This book relates the experience of Harvard and Yale football players of privileged campus life, Ivy football and the campus and national turmoil triggered by THE WAR.

As a forever thankful, albeit passive, participant in the Yale 1968 football miracle, I must admit being more than slightly off-put by the near-exclusive focus on Harvard for the first two chapters.  However, Chapter III (“God Plays Quarterback for Yale”) brought back vivid memories of the magical Fall of 1968 that more than offset the author’s inevitable Cantabrigian tilt.

Chapter V (“Opening Up the Club”) also knowingly treats fundamental changes then taking place at Yale, particularly as instituted/managed by Kingman Brewster, William Sloan Coffin and Inky Clark in response to the rising tide of coeducation, fierce competition for the best students, and THE WAR.

Of course, our hearts inevitably must be broken as The Game is related in graphic blow-by-blow detail, both from the perspective of the players and spectators.

The book fittingly ends with compelling insights regarding the post-game paths of the players, including an understanding of, and even reconciliation with, the transfiguring events surrounding that golden moment in time known, simply, as THE GAME.