> I've been reading with interest the uproar about the whole tennis balls
> thing. I seem to remember an earlier discussion involving other schools.
> For example, I think Cornell throws an animal or something, onto the ice
> when they play Brown.
 
Well, no one at Cornell cares enough about a game with Brown to go to that much
trouble for it. :-)  They are content to just cheer "If it's brown, flush it
down!" and "our team is RED hot, our team is RED hot...your team is BROWN!"
Anyway, what you are referring to is the infamous tying of the chicken to the
Harvard goalpost before the third period.  It was started after Harvard did
that to us in Cambridge as a shot at our College of Agriculture.  Somehow
though, it became a tradition at Lynah.  However, the last couple of years a
better sense of humaneness and polical correctness has made it so that someone
from a frat dresses up as a chicken instead of using a real chicken.
 
The fans have been known to throw sieves, dead fish, and an occaisional dildo
on the ice during the Harvard game too, but that is being curbed as well
(thankfully).  Again, another unfortunate tradition started in retaliation to a
Harvard act (they hit our goalie--Darren Elliot I believe--in the head with a
full beercan during a game in Cambridge).
 
===========================================================================
 
    Some corrections to the Harvard game items:
 
    I attended Cornell during the Dark Ages of unpolitically correctness,
    '81 to '85, when the drinking age was 18 in New York, etc. etc.  I had
    season tickets all four years and never missed a Harvard game.
 
    CHICKEN/FISH The chicken tradition was right on the mark.  Three of
    those years, a live one made it to the goalpost whereas in the fourth
    year the chicken died in concealed transit but was still tethered to
    the post.  Darren Elliot was hit with the beercan at a Harvard away
    game but as I understood from the older students the fish tradition had
    started before then in reference to Harvard being a seaboard town.  I
    saw fish in all forms/sizes, fish, fish still in the shrink wrapped
    styrofoam package, inflatable fish, and one year fish sticks.
 
    SIEVES Sieves were thrown on the ice at all games after a goal scored
    against an opponent.  Analogy was that the opposing goalie was as
    porous as a sieve in letting pucks get by.  The Lynah Faithful counted
    off the goals against the opponent and chanted "Sieve! Sieve! Sieve!
    ..."  I assume they still do this?
 
    DILDOS Self-explanatory I guess.
 
    OTHER ITEMS - NEWSPAPERS/GLASSES  Crumpled newspapers were thrown on
    the ice at the beginning of games.  These were the newspapers read by
    the fans during the announcement of the opposing teams' lines to
    express our infinite boredom with their roster.  Glasses were thrown on
    the ice after particularly bad calls by the refs to improve the refs
    obviously ineffective/jaded vision.
 
    That's all I can dredge up from my dusty recollections.
 
 
    Tom Greenfield - [log in to unmask]
    Cornell '85
    Let's Go Red!