Great College Hoaxes

Today starts March Madness, and I'm all over it, as you would expect, surfing the scores at work. Oddly, I'm getting plenty done as well, despite the urban rumor that these are the least productive two weeks of the work year. Maybe it's because I'm at my desk and fired up that the games have begun, but I really couldn't care less.

In keeping with all-things college today, I present the two greatest football hoaxes of all time. The first, and grandaddy of them all, is the Great Rose Bowl Hoax:

The Great Rose Bowl Hoax was a 1961 prank at the Rose Bowl, an annual American college football game. That year, the Washington Huskies were pitted against the Minnesota Golden Gophers. At halftime, the Huskies led 17 to 0, and their marching band took the field to lead a card stunt, a routine involving flip-cards depicting various images for the audience to raise. However, a number of students from the California Institute of Technology managed to alter the card stunt shown during the halftime break, culminating in the display of the word "CALTECH," a common nickname for the Institute.

Comparable in scope and in daring, if only to prank one's nemesis, the Yale "We Suck" prank of Harvard has its own making-of video

On November 20, 2004, at The Game, Yale tricked hundreds of Harvard students and fans into a prank card stunt: holding up placards spelling out "We Suck" in Harvard colors. The plan was meticulously co-ordinated and involved the Yale pranksters disguising themselves as a Harvard pep squad and handing out the cards with the misinformation that it would spell 'Go Harvard.' A video hosted on the website Harvard Sucks shows the planning for the prank and the event itself.

That video, which is pretty damn funny, can be found here.