Hilarious - Yale Pranks Harvard

This is not the kind of post I usually do and I hope it's not offensive to anyone.  But, being a sports fan in general and a football fan in particular, I get a kick out of all the trash talking and stuff like that which goes on before a game.  I know that we preacher's aren't supposed to like trash talk, but it's usually all in good fun.

So, this week's Sports Illustrated just came out and it has a sidebar that talks about some of the greatest student body pranks of all time.  You know, the one's where one team goes and steals the other team's mascot, or paints the their tiger or lion statue pink. 

SI listed a few of the better ones they know of, but the best one happened at the 2004 Harvard-Yale game on November 20, 2004.   At the game 20 Yale students donned custom made "Harvard Pep Squad" t-shirts and went into the Harvard stands and passed out 1800 sheets of red and white construction paper.  They told the Harvard fans that, on a predetermined signal, they were to raise their piece of paper over their heads and it would spell out "Go Harvard."  However, when they did it, here's what the Harvard fans actually spelled out.

Not exactly what the Harvard folks were expecting.

If it's any consolation to the Harvard folks, at least one Yale fan had about two minutes of remorse over this:

It was almost sad," said [prankster Dylan] Davey. "There were all these grandfather and grandmother types -- and they all had big smiles, saying, 'Oh you're so cute, I'm so glad you're doing this.' I felt bad for about two minutes. Then I got over it.

Gotta hand it to those smart people - that's one of the best pranks I have ever heard of. 

Comments

[Jacob Allee]

HA! That's pretty darn funny I must say!

[Michael]

No doubt about it. It is a classic!

[SomeGuyNamedScott]

Actually, this has been done, in more spectacular fashion, by my Alma Mater over 40 years ago.

[Ken]

Actually, it's a knockoff of what Caltech did to Washington State in the 1962(?) Rose Bowl.

Except Caltech's prank was much more elaborate (3-4 flash-card stunts instead of one) and the prep-work for it (including fake press-passes and midnight "switcharoo" burglaries) reads like a Mission: Impossible script.

[David Wayne]

OK Ken and SomeGuyNamedScott - you gotta give us some links!!

[SomeGuyNamedScott]

I did. Click on "done."

or, more obvious

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/pranks/rosebowl.html

[dml]

Watch a video of the set-up for the prank!

http://harvardsucks.org/

[Kenny Pearce]

The Rose Bowl incident is now immortalized in The Jargon File, but an even better prank that MIT pulled at a Harvard-Yale game involving a weather balloon and a vacuum cleaner. Curious? http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

[Kilby]

Brilliant.

[gid]

Nice.