Revisiting MIT’s Harvard-Yale balloon prank

MIT doesn’t didn’t even have a football team on the field, but that doesn’t mean it was a passive observer of the Harvard-Yale rivalry. Thanks to Boston Magazine, we’re able to revisit MIT’s crowning achievement from 30 years ago -- an achievement that took years of planning, a little bit of ingenuity, and a few actions that would probably get the members of Delta Kappa Epsilon tossed in jail these days. Let’s take a look back at the balloon hack.

Watch the video below, dug up by Boston Magazine this week. It’s about 10 minutes, but it’s full of amazing.

It’s a scene straight out of animal house. The balloon hack received so much attention, members of the fraternity decided to hold a press conference. Notice the mugs on the table during the press conference, and the man sipping beer from a bottle. And this man:

The 80s were the greatest. Just the greatest. These are some of the brightest minds in our country ... and they’re building devices to inflate balloons during a game their school isn’t involved in; after all, MIT doesn’t have a football team.

To pull off the balloon hack, the DKE brothers snuck into the stadium eight different times in the weeks leading up to the game. They powered the device used to inflate the balloon by rewiring a circuit, using an empty sprinkler circuit breaker. And still, the balloon almost didn’t inflate.

During the game, someone from DKE snuck down to the field, talked his way past security and flipped breakers until the balloon started to inflate -- a last minute curveball that forced the perpetrators to adjust. They did, and the balloon appeared out of nowhere, inflated by a device buried 36 inches deep and hiding about six inches below the field level.

The clip is worth watching for the final segment alone. It includes the balloon hack and The Play, from Cal-Stanford. And all of this is another reminder that college football, and everything that goes along with it, is the best.