Cow Tipping

What's even better than watching Amherst beat Williams at Pratt Field? Watching them win in a sports bar across from Wrigley Field, surrounded by yellow-hat-wearing, bloody-mary-drinking, EJ-Mills-booing Williams alums.

We must have been four of the twelve or so Amherst people there, in a packed room of about a hundred, which made the victory that much sweeter. Of course I had no confidence in Amherst right up until about five minutes left in the game. The first three quarters were ugly: we turned over the ball three times and missed the extra point on the first touchdown we managed somehow to score. But it weren't over till it were over, and Amherst pulled it off.

Then we walked out into the dazzling autumn sunshine, down Clark and over to the Addison el stop, where I bet 9 out of 10 people standing on the platform would have no clue what or where Amherst or Williams Colleges were. Still, for the rest of the afternoon we were happy to float around in our little New England liberal arts college bubble, basking in the glow of an Amherst win.

We felt superior in our mascot above all because we knew Amherst had not resorted to using an animal as replacement for its stodgy, smallpox infected Britsh soldier cum founder. We even asked an older gentleman from Williams where the cow came from, and he was clueless. Tongue in cheek, I think he said. Well, I'd still rather be a Lord Jeff than a mooing, cud-chewing bovine. And evidently, cows aren't very good at football.