22 Nov 2014
The Game
Aristophanes, Harvard Game, Long Cheer, Yale

Yale plays Harvard today. In connection with which, a bit of history. In the old days, Yalies encouraged their team’s efforts with a Long Cheer, featuring a quotation from a play by Aristophanes. Frank Gibson, a cheerleader from the Class of ’48 instructs Peter Salovey, then Dean, in the Long Cheer.
I’m afraid it was already extinct by 1966 when I arrived as a freshman.
“I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes.”
–the Modern Major General in The Pirates of Penzance.