Some of you may remember the Yale (link) prank on Harvard (link). These schools are obviously huge rivals, which made the prank that much better. In the 2004 game, Yale students dressed up as “Harvard Pep Squads” and passed out red cards to Harvard fans. With 4:47 minutes left in the second quarter, Harvard raised up their sheet of paper expecting it to spell out “Go Harvard,” as they were told by the pep squad. Little did they notice, the signs actually spelled out:
This prank was influenced by the 1961 Rosebowl game between the Washington Huskies (link) and Minnesota Golden Gophers. The Huskies won by 17-7 in front of an estimated 30 million viewers at the Rose Bowl. But it was the school down the road, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who got the last laugh. The Huskies planned that the fans hold up a bunch of posters to make an image of their mascot and read “HUSKIES” across. When the so when the cheerleaders gave the signal. During the half time show, the cheerleaders started to signal for the first set of posters to rise. The bear didn’t look like a bear at all, but the cheerleaders had to keep signaling. Letter by letter, the image started looking a lot different from the originally planned image. When the image read:
the entire stadium lay in silence. Even the reporters didn’t know what to say. After a about 45 seconds, everyone started realizing what had happened and laughed their asses off.
