Yale Dude Would Like To Replace The Harvard Yale Game With A Regatta

YaleDailyNews – Since the late 19th century, American universities have known that when their football teams win, their alumni donations increase. Universities need those donations to support their financial goals of long-term sustainability and their ethical goals of supporting basic research and expanding access to low-income applicants. The problem is, football games are zero-sum, and that means that American universities are in a situation that is familiar to every student of game theory, evolutionary biology or IR: an arms race. It makes sense for Yale to improve its football team by 10 percent, to increase its chances of beating Harvard and cashing in on alumni donations — and it makes sense for Harvard to do the same. But when both universities do it, both are worse off because one university’s win is another’s loss.

Even worse, we’ve all converged on a particularly problematic sport. Every week we read new research about the elevated risks of dementia, depression, suicide and attention deficits among football players who have suffered repeated concussions or even sub-concussive hits. It’s perverse for institutions of higher learning to send unpaid student athletes onto the field to get concussed for their own fundraising purposes. Here’s what we should do: Yale and Harvard administrators should meet this year and agree to cancel The Game for 2014. Instead, we’ll have a Yale-Harvard regatta, with men’s and women’s races on the Charles River the weekend before Thanksgiving. In 2015, The Regatta will come back to the Quinnipiac River.

Games are just man-made platforms for fair competition — so why not make a platform that doesn’t harm players? It’s the 21st century; maybe we could put sensors on gloves and jerseys that would register downs without tackles. With a few jiggles, the oldest football rivalry in history could start up again with Football 2.0. Someday, we could let our kids play the game without the fear that we’re dooming them to dementia or depression.

Does this proposal sound strange? I think a system of higher education that sacrifices students’ health to a fundraising tournament is even stranger.

Wait a minute. What did I just read? A dude wants to replace the Harvard Yale game with a regatta on the Qunnipiac River? THAT SOUNDS AWESOME! Serously this is so Yale it hurts. Hey I got an idea. How about somebody just sticks you in a locker, steals your lunchbox and leaves you there. How about that?

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But you know what I thought the craziest part of this article was? No not cancelling the game for a regatta or flag football with sensors, but this assumption that donations for Harvard and Yale depend on the outcome of this game. That can’t be true. I think this squid has watched School Ties one too many times. This isn’t the 1900’s. Nobody gives a fuck who wins the Harvard Yale game anymore. Donations certainly don’t depend on the outcome. I swear Ive League kids never cease to amaze me how dumb they are once they close their dork book.