The similarities of two football losing streaks, Yale-Harvard and Army-Navy
By Joel Alderman
While Yale and its fans have been suffering through nine straight losses to arch rival Harvard, they continue to receive some small consolation knowing that they are not the only ones in such a position in a traditional football rivalry.
The record Army against Navy, including the most recent game on Dec. 12th, shows Army being defeated by Navy in 14 consecutive years.
People from the U. S. Military Academy and Yale University are desperately pining away for a change in fortune.
If you can’t beat them, hire their former assistants
Army and Yale have two very unusual things in common. In addition to being on the wrong side of the ledger against their big rival for so long, each now has a head coach who previously worked on the other side. Army’s current mentor, Jeff Monken, had been an assistant coach from 2001 to 2007 at Navy, while Yale’s Tony Reno spent the three previous seasons in the same capacity at Harvard, where he coached the special teams and the secondary.
In Reno’s first year with the Bulldogs they finished last in the Ivy League and had an overall 2-8 record. That was in 2012. They reached .500 the next season, then had an outstanding record in 2014, at 8-2. Despite a great game by Tyler Varga, now in the National Football League but out most the year after sustaining a concussion, the result of “The Game” was the same. One of those two losses in 2014 was to the Crimson.
This year, when Yale went 6-4, the most notable thing about that contest was that it finished under the lights, the first time ever the Yale Bowl had ever been illuminated for football. However, the outcome was no different than the previous eight, which ended in daylight. Yale still lost. Harvard still won.
Army has had five and Yale three coaches during the streaks
Monken is the fifth head coach at the banks of the Hudson during the dry spell against Navy, which began after the last Army win (26-17), in 2001. The following season the embarrassment began with a 58-12 blowout inflicted by the Middies. From 2002 through the game this year, it’s been all Navy. Most of those affairs weren’t even close and in ten of them Navy dominated by double digit margins. In the closest games the difference was four points, in 2012 and this year.
“Beat Navy!” has been the rallying cry for Monken’s teams in his two years at West Point. Army made a very good effort last week, but still lost.
Yale coach Tony Reno, on taking the job, emphasized the goal of beating Harvard. Neither has yet happened.
Yale, in a span of nine years without a win over Harvard , has had three head coaches, including Jack Siedlecki, who was the last to have a Bulldog team beat Harvard, 34-13, in 2006. He continued as coach for two more years, and then Tom Williams had the position for three seasons, before Tony Reno took over in 2012. In the nine straight losses to Harvard, Yale was coached by Siedlecki (2 years), Williams (3) and Reno (4).
Upon taking the position, Williams and Reno stated their major goals were to beat Harvard. So far, it has yet to happen.
Six of the nine losses to Harvard were by double digits. The worst was 38 points, 45-7 in 2011. The closest Yale came was four points in 2009.
That was the day of the controversial call by Williams, when a fake punt on fourth-and-22 on its own 25-yard line was short by just a few yards. Yale was leading at the time, but Harvard, after taking the ball on downs, scored the winning touchdown in the final minute.
Here are the two streaks, still going on., in what are arguably the greatest of the most traditional rivalries in college football:
Army—Navy
2001 Army, 26-17
2002 Navy, 58-12
2003 Navy, 34-6
2004 Navy, 42-13
2005 Navy, 42-23
2006 Navy, 26-14
2007 Navy, 38-3
2008 Navy, 34-0
2009 Navy, 17-3
2010 Navy, 31-17
2011 Navy, 27-21
2012 Navy, 17-13
2013 Navy, 34-7
2014 Navy, 17-10
2015 Navy, 21-17
Yale—Harvard
2006 Yale, 34-13
2007 Harvard, 37-6
2008 Harvard, 10-0
2009 Harvard, 14-10
2010 Harvard, 28-21
2011 Harvard, 45-7
2012 Harvard, 34-24
2013 Harvard, 34-7
2014 Harvard, 31-24
2015 Harvard, 38-19
Army-Navy and Yale-Harvard go back to the 1800s
The Army-Navy series started in1890. Navy leads in games won, 60-49, and there have been seven ties.
Yale-Harvard goes back even further, to 1875. Yale has come out on top 65 times and Harvard 59. There have also been eight ties, including one which Harvard considers to have been a victory and Yale feels as if it was a defeat. That’s an entire story in itself.
Each losing streak is the longest in history
Yale is in the midst of its longest losing streak in the history of the Y—H series, or Harvard has the longest winning streak (9), whichever way one wants to look at it.
By the same token, 14 games represent the greatest losing (or winning steak) in the Army—Navy rivalry. Those records present another similarity of which two of those programs (Harvard and Navy) can take pride, and two (Yale and Army) would rather not talk about.
Why so uneven?
What makes the Army—Navy and Yale—Harvard series now so one-sided when there is such a similarity in the backgrounds among the Cadets and Midshipmen at West Point and Annapolis, as well as in the students in New Haven and Cambridge? The institutions compete for players within the same small pool of eligible prospective student-athletes.
Neither Army nor Yale looks for those whose goals are to compete in the National Football League. The service academies naturally recruit among prospects who are willing to commit to several years serving their country. Similarly, the typical Yale and Harvard types are headed, not to the NFL, but to careers in law, medicine, business, politics, the arts, etc.
The law of averages, if it exists, is not working
Since Army and Navy have student bodies with very common interests and goals, just as Yale and Harvard do, it would seem that “the law of averages” should go against one team being so dominant over the other for, in one case, fourteen, and the other. nine years.
Eventually it will happen that the streaks will end. But what does “eventually” mean? Is the end in sight for either of the streaks, and which will be broken first? Nothing like this can go on forever. Army and Yale want their consecutive losses to Navy and Harvard to come to an end in 2016. They’ll even take some long-overdue help from the law of averages.
At this stage, it’s hard to believe that the law of averages is working at West Point or New Haven. The inequities of Army—Navy and Yale—Harvard will not be settled in classrooms, but on football fields.
Whenever!
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