Students just want to see someone lose

As a result of Princeton football's 27-6 loss to Yale last Saturday, this weekend's game between Yale and Harvard is the closest thing Ivy League football has to a conference championship game: two teams with 6-0 records going into their final game of the season.

Since both teams are undefeated, the winner will win the Ivy League title and become the first Ivy League team to go 7-0 since Harvard in 2004. For Princeton students, however, this matchup is nothing less than a guaranteed disaster. After being beaten by both Harvard and Yale, we now have to face the reality that one of them will be rubbing an undefeated season in our faces.

With that in mind, asking Princeton students who they hope will win is the sports equivalent of choosing "the lesser of two evils." The bottom line is that either Harvard or Yale will claim bragging rights for the next 12 months.

In a poll of nearly 300 undergrads, 52 percent are cheering against Harvard, 40 percent hope Yale will lose and 8 percent are either apathetic or despise both teams equally. I'm sure statistics students will insist that these percentages are not a fair representation, but it's not surprising that the results are not overwhelming in one direction or the other. Additionally, when asked whether they would rather see a lopsided game or a nail-biter, two-thirds of students hope to witness a demoralizing blowout, while one-third wish for a gut wrenching, oh-so-close defeat for one of the two schools.

Many students hate the thought of either Harvard or Yale winning the Ivy League title. Sophomore Chris Courtin summed up the feelings of this group when he declared that "I want them both to lose. Maybe the stadium could explode or something."

Other students asserted that they didn't care about the outcome of the game, as long as one team suffered an emotional defeat. Junior Ryan Pritchard, a member of the Princeton football team, summed up this perspective when he said he just wanted "something heartbreaking."

Nonetheless, 92 percent have strong feelings about the potential outcome of this game, and many were not shy about voicing the logic behind their choices. Logic, however, must not be a universally applicable concept; Sophomore Christina Powell, who has a brother at Yale, hopes Yale will win by a lot, while freshman Sarah Twardock, who also has a brother at Yale, wants to see Yale get destroyed so that she won't have to hear about Yale's undefeated season.

Almost all of the students involved in this survey – even those who had no difficulty choosing which team they hope will lose – lamented the fact that either Harvard or Yale will inevitably win this Saturday's football game.

Freshman Adam Thayer, however, offered a third option: "Maybe they'll tie, and then neither team will be happy." While this prospect may seem impossible, consider the last time Harvard and Yale met with a combined record of 14-0 against Ivy League teams.

In that final game of the 1968 season, the outcome was an astounding 29-29 tie, and the Ivy League was forced to declare Harvard and Yale co-champions.

I'm not saying a similar result is likely in this year's game, but as a Princeton student, it's the only hope I have left. Sam Dorison is a freshman in Whitman College from Longmeadow, Mass. He can be reached at sdorison@princeton.edu.