Brown is The Game for Harvard alumni

The night before the Harvard football team opened its season against Holy Cross, team captain Matt Curtis went with his coach, Tim Murphy, to a dinner with alumni at Dillon Fieldhouse.

They call it the huddle. They have one Thursday nights before every home game, and generally the room is flooded with Harvard grads.

"They were all class of 1960, 1965," said the Lynn English graduate. "And they're all coming up to me asking, 'What Ivy League team do you not like?' "

As captain of the Crimson, Curtis was tapped along with Yale captain Bobby Abare to throw out the first pitch at Fenway in honor of the storied rivalry, so that only makes sense.

But most of the alums he talked to had a different answer.

Brown.

And even though the Holy Cross game was the next day, everyone in the room wanted the captain of the Crimson to, "Make sure you beat Brown, make sure you beat Brown."

"This was my first time interacting with these alumni at one of these dinners," Curtis said. "And they were pumped up about [Brown] two weeks before we were playing them."

Harvard's rivalry with Yale stretches back 125 years, but the rivalry with Brown runs about 45 miles.

"The alumni," explained the 6-foot-2-inch, 295-pound defensive tackle. "A lot of them work in Boston, a lot of Brown alumni work in Boston."

When the two schools met yesterday, it was for regional bragging rights, and as the Crimson's first Ivy League game of the season, it's always the tone setter. Harvard came into the season as the Ivy League's top ranked team in the preseason poll. Brown was two spots behind.

"Since I've been here," Curtis said, "the Brown game has always been a huge game. Brown has always been a very tough, very physical team. It's the first Ivy League game for a lot of teams and it dictates how our season's going to go. It's tough having a game that early on that's so important to your season."

In Curtis's freshman season, Harvard beat Brown in double-overtime and Brown managed to bounce back and win the league. Last season, Harvard won by a touchdown late and went on to win the league.

"To win a game like that, it really helped us with the momentum and the ability to close games out," Curtis said. "Which I think we did better as the season went on."

Rivalry aside, just being at that alumni dinner was big for Curtis, who grew up in Lynn. It allowed him to see everything he's learned at Harvard through Lynn-colored lenses.

"It's really been truly a blessing to come from where I have, to be able to see things from an inner-city, working-class city point of view," he said.

"To come to a school like Harvard and be able to rub elbows with politician's sons and sons and daughters of CEOs and to be able to meet the CEOs of companies is amazing."

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.