 This is Jimmy Powers, and happy to be coming your way with another Grantland Rice story. Hi there, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed with another chapter from Grantland Rice's memorable life story, The Tumult and the Shouting, and so with a warm salute to the every young spirit of Granny Rice, I take up the narrative in first person. Gentlemen, Tad Jones said in the Cathedral Hush before the big game, you are about to play football for Yale against Harvard. Never again will you do anything so important. Corny as it may sound, there are many old blues who feel the old Yale coach was right. The Yale-Harvard game is the big game, all right, a pairing colored with tradition and legend and drama that stirs the blood. D-Day each year is generally the last week in November. For a lot of incorrigible fans, the season opens and closes with the traditional big game. East, west, all around the country you have big games. Stanford, California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio State, Michigan, Tulane, Louisiana State, Oregon, Oregon State, Lafayette, Lehigh, Wabash, DePaul, Cornell, Penn, Syracuse, Colgate, Texas, Texas Aggies, and of course, Army Navy. Whether there's a national championship, a bowl bid, or just plain honor at stake, big games invariably are classics. While wilting before other teams, a squad can suddenly become absolutely fearless to rise up and slap down an intrinsically superior enemy. They were comparing all-conquering Boston College with the Chicago Bears in 1942, when lightly regarded Holy Cross poured it on against the Eagles 55-12, one radio announcer in another eastern city couldn't believe it. He refused to put the score on the air. Anything goes. One year, a New Orleans newspaper headline, Tackle Cato Thielman of LSU vigorously denies biting ear of Tulane's chambers. One of the most dramatic big games was the 1926 Garrison finish between Ohio State and Michigan. The Buckeyes jumped off to a 10-point advantage, but the young men from Ann Arbor met the challenge magnificently. Benny Friedman's defeat-cheating heaves to Benny Oosterbaum popped the Wolverines down in front 17-16. The Yale-Harvard series is the new world's counterpart of England's Oxford-Cambridge rivalry. It brings together America's two greatest universities, measured by cultural tradition, academic background, and worldwide prestige. You know what happens when a neighbor horns in on a domestic squabble between man and wife? Well, Harvard and Yale are like that. This is a private battle. No combatant can be more adroit in picking the day to sparkle than when these two teams meet in the big game. In 1951, to cite a classic example, Ed Malloy was an obscure nobody picking up splinters on the Yale bench. Finally, flushed up from the junior varsity, his big moment came. Harvard was leading Yale 21-14 with time speeding away. Malloy barked Herman Hickman, beckoning the recruit quarterback to his side, Get in there, son. Yes, sir, said the young man, and he galloped down to the field. With the poise of a professional and the coolness of a surgeon, Malloy said about blowing the enemy's brains out with a dazzling display of sharp shooting. He completed seven passes in a row, the last one for the touchdown that gave the bulldog a breathtaking 21-21 tie. Barbershop strategists have poked a lot of fun at Harvard. Back at the turn of the century, wise guys used to say that you had to be born on Beacon Hill or belong to the Porcelain to make Harvard varsity, except that a few South Boston Irishmen were recruited to do the tackling. In one of the canvas-jacketed big games, Captain Coolidge of the Crimson called his men together when Yale had penetrated to the one-yard line. Gentlemen of Harvard, he said, in this frightful expediency, I really think that you men should be introduced. Mr. Salton Stahl, shake hands with Murphy here, and Mr. Bacon, say hello to O'Brien from South Boston. Reminds you of the platoon football era, doesn't it? One of the early stars of the Yale Harvard series was Ted Coy. The marvelous Eli Fullback was a hulking figure with a pug nose and a shock of yellow hair. He ran like Kyle Rote, his modern counterpart, fast and powerful and unstoppable. Coy spoke in a high-pitched treble that seemed incongruous coming from so big a man. Coy captained the Ales his senior year and beat Harvard with two field goals in the 1909 match. Ted was a great kidder, and no sooner had the ball left his foot on those kicks than he turned to Bill Langford the referee and kept up a constant chatter while the ball was in the air. Mr. Langford, he asked, did you ever see a prettier kick than that one? Don't tell me you aren't going to give me a goal. Coy had a habit of kicking the ball so high that you couldn't be sure whether or not it crossed the bar inside the uprights. He took four shots at the goal post that afternoon, and referee Langford gave him credit for two goals, but Coy wasn't happy. He protested to Langford. What's biting you, Coy, snapped Langford? Here I give you 50% of your field goal tries, and I'm not sure even now whether any of them went across. Boy, you're lucky, and you don't know it. That's silence, Mr. Coy. Coy punted on first down consistently that day because an injury prevented him from running with the ball. John Kilpatrick, now president of Madison Square Garden, played left-end and soon became exhausted covering those 60-yard kicks. Finally, he turned to Ham Andrus, who was playing guard, and asked him to take a turn going down under Coy's punts. Andrus was a stolid chap who seldom spoke and then only to grunt Begosh. He looked at Kilpatrick perturbed and blurted, Begosh, whoever heard of a guard going down under a kick? Kilpatrick had a persuasive Irish way with him, however, and Andrus reluctantly agreed to chase the next punt. Ham was fast despite his heft, and he got down in time to spill O'Flaherty, the Harvard safety man. Great stuff, Ham cried Kilpatrick. We found a new end by accident. Andrus gave Kilpatrick a withering look. Begosh, I'm through, Ham grunted, and he was, too. The 1908 game at New Haven stands out grandly in Harvard memories because Vic Canard ended a long sequence of Harvard defeats with a horrendous drop kick. Vic had spent the entire previous summer practicing drop kicks across an improvised goal rigged up on a farm in Maine. Bob Norse, the varsity center, worked out with him. Together they hatched a plot. If I'm sent in to try a field goal in the Yale game, Canard said, snap the ball to me the instant I raise my right toe from the ground. Don't wait for a signal from the quarterback. We'll fool everyone. Percy Houghton, the fabled Harvard coach, had a profound contempt for field goal kicking. That's a sissy way to score, he'd snort. But Canard kept hammering away at his special project and when Harvard bogged down on the Yale 15-yard line, he caught Houghton's eye. Let me try it now, Vic begged. Reluctantly, Percy grunted, go ahead. I can still see Canard standing like a statue behind the huge Harvard line. The ruse worked exactly as planned. Even the lordly Houghton was taken by surprise and dropped kick that goal while both lines were still standing erect, waiting for the signal that never came. Several years later, Canard said, Ted Coy told me, we never knew you'd kick the ball till we saw it sailing above our heads. Naturally, Norse and I felt darn good. Not the least of our boyish elation, sprang from having slipped a fast one over on old Eagle Eye himself, Percy Houghton. It was Houghton who started Harvard's long line of sleight-of-hand quarterbacks. He stumbled on this baffling, now you see it, now you don't attack, quite by accident. The summer before the 1908 Yale game, Houghton was fooling around with his Newfoundland dog on the beach at Nantasket. He noticed that when he faked to throw the ball in one direction, then suddenly tossed it to the opposite side, he tricked his pet into falling for the bluff. Hmm, grunted Percy, if I can fool this blankety-blank, maybe I can fool those Yale bums. This grew Houghton's hidden ball offense, actually the forerunner of the spinner cycle series, later developed by Hugo Besdek, Dick Harlow and others. Charlie Bewell, Harvard's bland little quarterback in 1921, was perhaps the best goat-getter in the Crimson Eli series. He kept up a running patter of jibes in his suave, broad-a accents. His patronizing tone and supercilious bearing irritated the Ailes, and Charlie knew it. He would stand back there with his hands on his hips, smile provocatively at the Eli's, and facing around, inquire politely, Mr. Owen, will you be good enough to escort the ball through left tackle? The 1921 big game at Cambridge was rich in humor. Early in the game, referee Tiny Maxwell, billed on the ample lines of a coalscow, acted as unwitting interference for Aldrich. The Yale captain used Maxwell as a hitching post on an end run, hiding behind Tiny's massive bulk, and dodging this way and that, as Harvard tacklers vainly tried to nab him. Finally, Aldrich broke clear for a 20-yard gain. Maxwell, a born wit whose humor was enriched by the fact that he stuttered, covered his embarrassment by blowing his whistle. To time out, he sputtered, well, while I get my blue jersey. Well, that's it for today. Now this is Jimmy Powers transcribe saying, so long until next time.