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Big
Three was the name given Harvard, Yale, and
Princeton in the days when they settled ``between them,'' as the
New York Times once put it, ``the question of primacy in
football,'' and overwhelmed their other opponents in the process. At a
time when games were ninety minutes long, as against today's sixty
minutes, and schedules were also somewhat longer, Princeton rolled up
a season's score of 637 to 25 in 1885; Harvard dominated by a record
margin of 765 to 41 in 1886; and Yale shut out everybody, 698 to 0, in
1888. Huge totals like these reflected single-game landslides over
smaller colleges (e.g., Yale 142, Wesleyan 0; Princeton 140, Lafayette
0; Harvard 102, Amherst 0), but they included substantial victories
over colleges of approximately equal size (e.g., Princeton 82, Rutgers
53 0; Harvard 77, Cornell 0; Yale 64 Michigan 0).
These scores were made before football had spread to the West and the
South, with the help of Big Three football stars who went out in the
1890s and early 1900s to coach at such colleges as Chicago, Wisconsin,
Iowa, Minnesota, Purdue, California, Stanford, North Carolina,
Virginia, and Vanderbilt. There were many from Princeton and even more
from Yale -- eight members of Yale's famous 1888 team became coaches.
The Big Three dominated football for
half a century, until 1919. Princeton football historian Donald Grant
Herring '07 said that November 1 of that year marked ``the beginning
of the end'' of their reign. That was the Saturday that previously
unheralded West Virginia beat a very good Princeton team 25 to 0. The
decline was further evidenced in 1921 when Centre College of Kentucky,
whose student body numbered 264, upset Harvard 6 to 0, and again in
1922 when the University of Iowa, playing its first intersectional
game, defeated Yale 6 to 0.
Although originally drawn together by their mutual interests, the Big
Three have had their differences among themselves. The only unbroken
football relationship among them is the one between Princeton and
Yale, which dates from 1873. Harvard and Yale, who first played each
other in 1875, sustained a two-year break in the 1890s when Harvard
dropped Yale from its schedule. The Harvard-Princeton series, which
began in 1877, was interrupted on Harvard's initiative for almost all
of the two decades from 1890 through 1910, and on Princeton's from
1926 through 1933; both interruptions began during periods of
especially intense rivalry when feelings ran high, and there were
charges and countercharges of excessive zeal on and off the field. But
these football breaks did not preclude friendly gestures in other
areas.
Soon after the 1926 break, Arthur Sachs
(Harvard 1901) made a handsome gift to Princeton and Harvard to
support the publication of Art Studies (which was jointly edited by
their art departments), wishing thus, he said, to stress Harvard and
Princeton's friendly relations in terms of cooperative scholarship at
a time when their ``desirable'' relations in athletics had become
``overemphasized.''
As early as 1916, the Big Three had attempted to counteract this
``overemphasis.'' That year, in an effort to keep ``the spirit and the
associations of professionalism out of college sports,'' the
presidents of the three universities adopted a statement of principles
setting common standards for athletic eligibility both as to
scholastic standing and financial aid. A supplementary agreement,
adopted in 1922, reduced the length of football schedules and outlawed
spring practice and postseason games. Except for the years of the last
Harvard-Princeton break, when there were dual agreements between Yale
and Harvard and Yale and Princeton, the Harvard-Yale-Princeton
agreement continued in effect until 1945, when the three universities
entered into a similar arrangement with the other members of what
became the Ivy League.
Over the years the Big Three concept spread to other sports, from
baseball to wrestling, and even after the organization of the Ivy
League, retained some of its original influence. In 150-pound rowing,
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton crews have since 1922 annually competed
for the Goldthwait Cup, and there have been special Big Three meets in
cross-country. With coeducation, the Big Three idea has taken hold in
a number of women's sports, including field hockey, whose Princeton
adherents proudly celebrated their third successive Big Three
championship in 1975.
From
Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, Princeton University Press
(1978).
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