An open letter to the Bulldogs

Dear Yale Football:

For sixteen years now I have enjoyed the annual ritual of checking in with you guys the weekend before Thanksgiving.* Since my maiden The Game in 1994, the first time I ever traveled anywhere without my parents planning or signing off on the details of the trip, I have found it an exciting way to start the holiday season. In the early years the biggest thrill was being part of the "Football Concert" between the Glee Clubs the night before, sharing the stage for both serious music and the football song antics. After graduation, living in Boston, The Game became an opportunity to reunite with old friends in my new city--or to make a pilgrimage back to New Haven, which still felt like home. Those were the years when I missed college most intensely, and The Game was the chance to return, knowing one was welcome into the crowd once more. Then it was important to sit in the student section, or as near possible, and to see everyone one possibly could at the tailgates.

Subsequently the sense of urgency faded, as The Game took on the quality of a pleasant annual gathering with a particular group of people--now people I actually knew best from the post-college years in Boston. Next came the opportunity to introduce my kids to the fun. Indeed, I realized this year that I have quietly slipped across a divide. Not only do I no longer care about sitting near the students, I realize that I don't look like the students anymore--fashions have changed, they all carry hand-held devices we didn't have back then--and that I am one of those old alumni trying to find space apart from the crazed drunken revelers to make this a family event with my young offspring. I dress my children in blue and white and buy them flags when they ask and smile when they cheer "YAY, YALE!!" at the top of their lungs, taking more pleasure in their fun than in my own experience of The Game. (For accuracy's sake: Only one of my children is as yet old enough for the flag and the cheering. The other, not yet an ambulatory English speaker, was attending her inaugural The Game this year--an important milestone, even if it's hard to know her feelings about the matter.)

Yes, sometimes it's bitter cold at The Game (more often in Boston it seems, whether because of the latitude or the design of that U-shaped stadium I don't know). Sometimes it's muddy at the tailgates. Sometimes the band's uber-prop is fantastic, and sometimes it falls a little flat. Sometimes you have to abandon your car several miles from the stadium and hike in. All of those unknowns are part of the ritual--what makes each The Game that year's The Game.

But here's the thing: One of the unknowns ought to be whether you guys are going to win or lose. Because for all the fun of The Game, frankly, it's also hard going with little people. It's great when they tell you they love football and that they had a fantastic day. But even so, the six hours in the car is tough on them. So is the absence of bathrooms, healthy food, places to squirm around, or opportunities to warm their toes. It throws them off their game for at least 24 hours afterwards--and it completely wears Mama out.

You may feel secure by now in the belief that I'm forever faithful. But kids can change a relationship. At this point I need you to step up and give a bit more on your side. You may think that offering a variety of types of losses, from the pathetic blowout (2007) to the final 1:30-minute heartbreaker (2009), is sufficient to maintaining my interest. But as a friend said in the stands yesterday, that last 1:30 would have been heartbreaking were it not by now seemingly inevitable.

So what do you say? I'll think about continuing to haul my kids up and down the crowded Northeast Corridor once a year to sit outdoors at the start of winter and get hungry and tired, if you can see your way clear to manage a win now and then. Otherwise, we may have to go our separate ways, at least for the time being. There are warmer, quieter ways for me to visit with old friends. And if we stick to those I'll be spared the unanswerable question:

"But Mama, at the end of the song it says 'Harvard's team may fight 'til the end, but Yale will win,' but at the end Yale didn't win. Why?"

Why, indeed.

All best wishes,

A '98er seeking greater commitment



*Minus the year I was expecting a baby (2008) and the year I was giving a professional paper (2006), and in the latter case I trekked up to see you play Princeton at home as the next best option, creating a mini-The Game-substitute with some friends.