Harvard Beats Yale 29–29

Scarcely less astonishing than Richard Nixon’s election 40 years ago was what occurred a few weeks later in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when Harvard’s undefeated football team met undefeated Yale and, trailing by 16 points with 42 seconds left in the game, scored twice to confound its archrival with a tie. Filmmaker Kevin Rafferty, then a Harvard undergrad, was an eyewitness, and his account is steeped in ambience and ambivalence. Brian’s Song, Jerry Maguire and The Longest Yard notwithstanding, Rafferty’s no-frills annotated replay is the best football movie I’ve ever seen; a particular day in history becomes a moment out of time.