Harvard Football Fans agree...

[billhoward]

Whenever you think you've come up with something clever - a cheer, a flip-card hoax - somebody else may have been there first. Cal Tech definitely did it first with the flip cards.

Regardless of possible Photoshop enhancements to the version passed around online that makes We Suck seem more legible, it's often hard at the field to tell just what many flip cards say, just as it's hard to tell what the marching band is spelling out on the field or, for that matter, what the announcer is saying about what the band is playing. OK, there are exceptions. When the Harvard band (is this real or urban legend?) saluted famous Harvard graduate graduates and got to Ted Kennedy, when the band struck up the BeeGee's How Deep Is Your Love, that was crystal clear.

[Dart~Ben]

[Q]A-19 Wrote:

 why dartmouth went (unsuccessfully) for the 2pt conversion instead of the game-tying PAT playing at home with momentum is beyond me[/q]

Because our kickers have missed more PAT's than field goals in their combined careers, including the one earlier in the game. The starting kicker actually has a better pecentage kicking 50-yard FG's than he does PAT's. He's basically football's answer to Chuck Knoblauch or a golfer with the yips.

I actually thought going for 2 was the correct call, but the play call itself stunk. The quarterback didn't have the skill to throw a fade to a corner. I would've done the play that worked all game, spread the field and then throw a little 3 yard pass to the running back in the flat.

[Beeeej]

It's beyond me why people seem to think that just because another school has already pulled a particular prank means no other school is allowed ever to pull it again, even forty years later.  Unless of course all you're trying to do is put down Yalies, which seems pretty obvious.

I personally admire the enormous amount of thought and work that must have gone into it.  Cornellians, if you think originality is so damn important, come up with an original prank to pull on Hahvahd.

(Just don't pull it at the Lynah East game this January, I can't be there for the first time in a decade.)

Beeeej

[puff]

Exactly my thoughts Beeeej.
Makes me think of South Park and "Simpson's did it". Enough pranks have been pulled over the years the ability to find a real original prank never attempted is pretty rare. Even ones that people think are new probably have been attempted somewhere.

I personally thought it was a pretty impressive feat.

[marty]

[Q]A-19 Wrote:

 i just watched the video. i am still not entirely convinced[/q]


I therefore must ask, is A-19:

a) your seat number
b) your interpretation of a famous Steely Dan song
c) the number of Advil you need to quash the headache that the Yale prank caused you
d) what you saw at the optometrist's office when he/she asked you to read the top line
e)all of the above?!?

[marty]

Here's more:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=27506

[A-19]

i used to sit in section a, seat 19.
the yale prank didn't cause me any headache. all i said was that i was there in person and it didn't look exactly that way to me. and for the record, all of those around me couldn't read it either. we were sitting across the stadium in the endzone.

[billhoward]

The photo in the Yale Daily News shows characters that could be WE SUCK or OE SOCH or who knows what. It's a little raggedy around the edges. Would have benefitted from anti-aliasing or something.

The story suggests the suspicions were not that Yale students were pulling a prank, but that it was MIT students all over again. MIT circa 1980 (?) planted a device on the sidelines that popped up during the game and spewed steam or smoke during a regional TV broadcast and the announcers -- this was pre-terrorism, remember -- went ballistic, saying if this was a prank, it wasn't a very good one because somebody could have been killed, or caused a panic, or something.

The story also says the students created fake IDs because they were questioned by Harvard security and that questions were asked as to whether Harvard really had the pep squad the Yale students concocted.

[French Rage]

Mike, was your viewpoint straight ahead or to a side?  Either way, I dont see any use of Photoshop.

[A-19]

todd,
i was in section 16, looks like the signs were up around 33. bad view, but it was still unclear

[Pete Godenschwager]

Here's the story of the original flipcard prank by Caltech, it's a good read:

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/pranks/rosebowl.html

[Shorts]

Here are two pictures, one from harvardsucks.org, and the other from the Yale Daily News:
http://www.harvardsucks.org/images/harvard_poster.jpg
http://www.yaledailynews.com/photodisp.asp?PhotoID=7562

Judging from the positions of people on the field, they're not taken from exactly the same time/angle, but it's pretty close.  It seems to me that the harvardsucks.org one is much more legible than the YDN one.  Also, it seems that the last frames of the video look remarkably like the YDN photo.

My conclusion: either the person taking the video decided to stop rolling just before the picture got good, and the YDN photographer missed that moment as well, or the hardvardsucks.org still image is a little doctored.

Incidentally, this picture: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~pmf8/harvardsucks.html is a little bit different yet (look at the very left edge or the bottom edge of the 'S'), but closely resembles the harvardsucks.org photo.

Just my 2¢.
-Shorts

[jeh25]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

The story suggests the suspicions were not that Yale students were pulling a prank, but that it was MIT students all over again. MIT circa 1980 (?) planted a device on the sidelines that popped up during the game and spewed steam or smoke during a regional TV broadcast and the announcers -- this was pre-terrorism, remember -- went ballistic, saying if this was a prank, it wasn't a very good one because somebody could have been killed, or caused a panic, or something.

 [/q]

http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_topic/harvard.html

[JasonN95]

The harvardsucks.org and pantheon.yale.edu versions are indeed doctored to improve legibility. Look at the bottom edge of the U and C --those are *identical* rows of white cards. Another example: look at the left edge of the S, in the harvardsucks version there is an identical cluster of three white cards (one above two forming a small, slightly scewed to the right, triangle) that appears twice. The pantheon version appears to be further reworked; it has that cluster three times.

[billhoward]

[Q]JasonN95 Wrote:  The harvardsucks.org and pantheon.yale.edu versions are indeed doctored to improve legibility. Look at the bottom edge of the U and C --those are *identical* rows of white cards. Another example: look at the left edge of the S, in the harvardsucks version there is an identical cluster of three white cards (one above two forming a small, slightly scewed to the right, triangle) that appears twice. The pantheon version appears to be further reworked; it has that cluster three times.[/q]

Where Harvard men once made history, they're now reduced to doctoring it. Perhaps Professor Henry Kissisnger lent a hand, or at least provided inspiration. Next time, if the Cantabs want the job done right: Farm out the work to MIT or Caltech.