Road to Saturday: Yale tries to salvage its season with a win at Harvard
Yale football is having a rough time lately.
Going back to last year, when a coach and a player were involved in strange incidents involving Rhodes Scholarships, not much has gone right.
The school had to hire a new coach after Tom Williams resigned during an investigation about whether he lied about being a Rhodes Scholarship finalist on his resume. Yale has gone 2-7 this season while dealing with a crazy rash of injuries. If that wasn't enough, Hurricane Sandy affected many alums still on the East Coast.
But, there's always one last chance to turn everything around: The Game.
Harvard and Yale have played 128 times in one of the most heated rivalries in college football. It doesn't take a national stage like Ohio State-Michigan, but Yale and Harvard defines the season for fans of those Ivy League teams.
Harvard is on the upswing. The Crimson is 7-2. Probably more importantly, they have won five in a row against Yale, and 10 of 11.
Mother Nature is piling on Yale too. According to a Bloomberg report, Yale couldn't even sell out its allotment of tickets for the game, and Hurricane Sandy was a big reason why.
"An enormous concentration of former football lettermen are located in the areas hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy," Yale athletic department spokesman Steve Conn said in an email to Bloomberg. "We don't expect anyone impacted by a catastrophic storm like Sandy to place a sporting event on their priority list."
Yale has to overcome a lot to break Harvard's dominance against it. The Boston Globe said Yale is down to its fifth-string quarterback. One quit before the season and three got hurt against Penn. The Bulldogs have scored just seven points in their last two games.
But if they can just get it together for one afternoon against Harvard ...
"It would be a phenomenal way to go out, to get a win against Harvard," linebacker Will McHale said, according to the Boston Globe.
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