To the Editor:

As an avid football fan, and parent of an alumna, I was very disappointed in Yale’s outrageously lackluster performance against Harvard. The rout was pathetic to watch, most of all for the spectators who braved the cold. The Yale players were merely plodding through their motions as though yet to recover from extended Friday night revelries. How can the coaching be so poor that there were no adjustments through four quarters? Is it merely a coincidence that the word “shame” rhymes with “Game?”

The only other possible explanation for the unmitigated disaster of the weekend, and this might require one to stretch the limits of rational belief, is Yale’s needlessly mistaken switch of Handsome Dan: from Mugsy to Sherman. Anyone can see that Mugsy was the more mean looking of the two. Surely he would have been an inspiration at halftime. His axing might have cast a hex on the season finale — the only game that mattered.

Sadu Nanjudiah

Nov. 17

Nanjudiah is a resident of New Britain, Conn.