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Hot tickets
November/December 2006
Photographs by Mark Morosse
Among the memorabilia in the athletics department
archives is a collection of Yale Bowl football tickets. Like the more than 550
games played at the Bowl, the tickets have had varying degrees of artistic
merit. Ticket design became standardized and bland in the late 1990s, but
before then the designs changed as often as every few years. Sometimes
important Elis were featured: patriot Nathan Hale, football great Walter Camp,
Elihu Yale (top). Today, the tickets convey history lessons. The
press-box tickets for the 1932 Chicago game and the 1933 Army game state, "No Ladies Admitted," a prohibition that would persist until the
mid-1950s.
"Saving your tickets is an easy way to preserve
memories," says sports archives assistant (and collector) Geoff Zonder. Of
course, some contests are best forgotten. The fourth and fifth tickets are from
the first game ever played at the Bowl. It drew a capacity crowd of 70,000, and
to keep order at the event, Yale brought in "detectives," who patrolled the
stands and the sidelines. Alas, Harvard won, 36-0. The Yale Alumni
Weekly, predecessor to this
magazine, commented: "Yale furnished the Bowl and Harvard provided the punch." |
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