College Football: 25 most underappreciated team rivalries of all time

1. Harvard Crimson vs. Yale Bulldogs

There are a litany of prestigious football programs listed throughout talking about these great yet underappreciated college football rivalries. Put simply, the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Bulldogs aren’t on the level of many of them.

The Ivy League isn’t the SEC, ACC or any of the above. While that may all be true, it doesn’t lessen the importance and greatness of the Harvard-Yale rivalry. It’s one of the oldest rivalries in the sport and, as such, one of the most storied.

Harvard won the first meeting with Yale back in 1875, running away with the game by a score of 4-0. Since then, it’s been an evenly matched rivalry for the most part.

In 135 total meetings through the 2018 NCAA season, the Bulldogs hold the narrow margin over the Crimson with a record of 67-60-1 (the one tie came nearly a century ago in 1925).

In addition to heated, evenly matched football, where the Harvard-Yale rivalry might go unmatched throughout college football is in regards to the students and fans.

Yes, they’re loud and always show up on the day of The Game. However, they’ve also given us a litany of tremendous pranks against one another.

In 1983, Yale students infiltrated the Harvard marching band and disrupted their performance. In 2004, Yale students also doctored fan signs to where the Crimson students held up cards that ultimately read “We Suck”. And that’s just to name a few.

This battle for the Little Red Flag may not ever have title implications or anything remotely close to that. But when you look at nearly 150 years of history between these two rivals, the stories that have come out of The Game, and the parity between these Ivy League foes, Harvard-Yale deserves even more love than it gets.