The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Hill not haunted by famous 1968 game
There was chaos on the field at Harvard Stadium, a celebration erupting just as the home team completed a two-point conversion pass as time expired.
Fans rushed onto the field, Harvard’s quarterback was hoisted in the air by classmates while members of the visiting Yale squad retreated. The team that carried a 16-game winning streak in the 1968 edition of The Game left the turf on that November Saturday feeling dejected and deflated.
And, well, defeated. “I thought we lost,” Calvin Hill said last week. “I didn’t realize until that Monday that we tied the game. I really thought we lost”
Hill would graduate to a distinguished NFL career, emerging as a Pro Bowl running back with the Dallas Cowboys before completing 12 professional seasons. In one of the most famous ties in sports history Hill was the bold face name.
So it’s understandable that he’s been continually asked about Yale’s 29-29 “loss.” The game, of course, was elevated to iconic status by the headline in the Harvard Crimson: Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29.
There was a documentary about the game. There have been continuous reflections and stories and a stream of queries about how he felt and how he feels and how he processed a tie.
Hill, in New Haven when Yale honored the late Carm Cozza last weekend, is more bemused than haunted by the 1968 game. The 50th anniversary is much like the 10th, 25th, 30th or 40th — a reminder of game that didn’t mean a whole lot to Hill.
“I don’t celebrate that game, honestly,” Hill said. “I tell people that a tie is like kissing your sister. The fact that Harvard types celebrate a tie as a victory tells you something.” Hill smiles and chuckles. “It was a tie,” he said. So as Yale and Harvard commemorate The Game by meeting at Fenway Park Saturday, Hill won’t be anywhere near the lyric little bandbox of a ballpark.
Plenty of Yale and Harvard alums will be at the game — Hill’s quarterback Brian Dowling, for one, will be on site — and the 1968 tie will be front and center, but Hill is not interested in relishing his final college game.
“No … I’m not going to celebrate that game,” Hill said.
Dowling, also at the celebration of Cozza’s life, said he too has been continuously asked about the 1968 game. The quarterback was immortalized by cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who based a character on Dowling, and he was something of a cultural phenomenon.
Yet he now says he was lived a relatively anonymous life on campus, his star far eclipsed by future NFL first-round pick Hill. Still, Dowling was known around the country and earned Heisman Trophy
consideration.
So the tie, a game punctuated by a 16-point Harvard comeback in the final 42 seconds, pushed Dowling and Hill into the roles of explainers — What happened and how did you feel?
“It hasn’t changed,” Dowling said. “They asked every anniversary.”
Hill said Yale’s last-minute collapse seemed to unfold in slow motion. As a teammate of Roger Staubach in Dallas, Hill would witness plenty of comebacks and he cites a 1972 victory over the 49ers as a game that rivaled the YaleHarvard game. Staubach orchestrated a 15-point fourth-quarter comeback to lift the Cowboys to a playoff win and Hill couldn’t help but think back to the game at Harvard Stadium
“It taught me to play until the last play,” Hill said. “You never know.”
Hill, father of NBA great Grant Hill, was one of the great players to ever wear a Yale uniform. A scintillating runner, he played other positions and was a member of the school’s track team.
In an era defined by social unrest on college campuses, Hill was a unifying force in New Haven. And that’s the Yale at the front of his mind.
“People rallied around our football team,” Hill said. “It was a turbulent time and there were a lot of big discussions at the dinner tables — co-education, civil rights, the war in Vietnam. But I think the players on our team, we could disagree without being disagreeable. … That’s what I remember about those days.”