Fast forward four years. You're finishing up your sixth term at Dartmouth. You no longer have a sweet muscle car. In fact, you don't even have a car. Occasionally, you get a blitz inviting you to come out and watch the Dartmouth-Penn game. It's one of those 30 blitzes that get sent out on the hour, every hour. Would you pick going to the game over chilling with your brothers on a Saturday afternoon? Probably not.
Dartmouth has a new lighting system for its football stadium we can host night games now. But as remarkable as that may be, your high school in San Antonio had an even bigger stadium. And it always had night games. We had to wait for more than a century for our first. One hundred years of solitude. Doesn't that seem just a little pathetic?
Upon examining the records in Rauner Special Collections, it appears that poor attendance at Dartmouth sports games is a relatively recent phenomenon. As recently as 1996, there was an average of 7,195 fans at each home football game. Given the size of our student body, it is readily apparent that not all of these people were Dartmouth folk. Coincidentally, that was also the last time we went undefeated.
Two seasons ago, we barely managed to eke out a seventh place finish among the Ivies, ahead of Columbia University. At that time, the Big Green was averaging 4,103 fans per home game. We have the most Ivy League football championships 17. We have a longstanding rivalry with Princeton University. Most of our weekend plans revolve around the night at Dartmouth, so the timings don't render the two mutually exclusive.
So why do we avoid football games? Are pong dates more lucrative? Are we so capricious that we cannot profess our loyalty to a team without a longstanding winning record? I'm not really sure. Maybe we're more assiduous now. Maybe we're more intense.
Or perhaps we need not shoulder all the blame and simply give the past its due credit. School spirit was just a bigger deal in the early days of the Ivy League. For a 1952 game, Harvard University sent out a promotional poster that screamed, "VOTE THE WINNING TEAM IN NOVEMBER," with a victorious photo of Presidents Nixon and Eisenhower beaming, hands interlocked above their heads. Beneath, a caption detailed the imminent face-off between Dartmouth and Harvard.
Harvard wasn't alone in its politicized enthusiasm. In 1908, Dartmouth issued an "alumni cheering" application for the Nov. 7 game at Princeton. The cost was $2 per person. That's right: Alumni were willing to pay just to get to cheer at Dartmouth football games. Rest assured, alumni super fans maintained their robust presence well into the following decades. Lest the old traditions fail.
As a Wisconsin boy, I want to clear up a misconception. Although Dartmouth has traditionally always filled a large part of its student body with East Coasters, even in 1956, a correspondence indicated that "there are a good many students from the Midwest attending Dartmouth." It then goes on to affirm that "we have a very high regard for the fine brand of football played in" Iowa. This is the mangled cornerstone that underlies all of the more intricate issues. Bring back rural, heartland America, bring back football.
The announcer kicks off the game with a sonorous, booming voice. A frenzied attack here, a mad dash across the 40-yard line. The lights play dark circles across your retinas, the sound like music, a deafening amalgam of indistinct choruses.
Your date shyly leans onto your shoulder, and you settle into a state of blissful complacency. It doesn't matter if we win or lose, for all is well with the world.
