On the Bench

For the last ten years or so, Harvard football fans have been able to rely on certain recurring themes. Every year, Harvard would recruit enough talent to play in the Big Ten, and the freshmen coaches and the various local diversions would waste it. Coach John Yovicsin consistently stayed with his dive, sweep, incompletion offense, and if the defense was good, the Crimson would plod to a three-way tie for second.

Then Joe Restic came down from the wide-open Canadian pros, and the Boston sportswriters agreed that Harvard football would suddenly become worth watching. However, the new offense managed only three touchdown drives in two games, and the plays that ground out yardage against Northeastern began to look suspiciously like Yovicsin's. Furthermore, another dependable feature of Harvard football during recent years re-emerged. The players started complaining about the coaching.

Perhaps Restic's biggest problem as a diplomat-coach is his unhappy quarterbacks. The all-too-familiar boredom of Harvard's offense against Northeastern was the work of Rod Foster, who complained that Restic's plays are too complicated. Instead, Foster, who called his own plays, chose to stick with a simple running game and a passing game that produced zero yards and three interceptions in the first quarter. Eric Crone, Foster's injured counterpart, hasn't mastered the playbook any better than Foster, and both he and Foster are unhappy with Restic's refusal to pick one quarterback and stay with him.

To further complicate matters, many players feel that Frank Guerra, a three year bench-warmer, is the best quarterback, and Restic himself feels that sophomore Jim Stoekel has the best command of the offensive, but lacks experience.

In addition to quarterback problems, Restic has to contend with a feeling among many players, particularly those competing for a starting spot, that coaches have not been open and straight forward in their maneuvering of different players.

This feeling is partly the product of Restic's method of picking his starters. Restic frequently moves his players up and down from different units during the week and waits for Friday to announce his starting line-up. Not surprisingly, this is frustrating to players who play with the first team for most of the week but then are told without any explanation the day before the game that they will not start. Restic feels that it is fairer to watch players work with different units than to stick with the same line-ups week after week. This is a system designed to give everyone a chance, but in the sometimes over-sensitive world of Harvard football, it is sure way to create bitterness, especially if the assistant coaches are as impersonal as the players make them out to be.

One conflict came out in the open last week. Senior John Ambrositas, who had been buried in Yovicsin's depth chart for two years, played with the starters the week before the Northeastern game only to discover on Friday that he was once again a third stringer for the game. Ambrosidas quit the team.

The players may not be too happy now, but they should have some consolation in the fact that Restic is willing to talk, and that he does use more players than Yovicsin. Meanwhile, they can always resort to one temporary remedy winning.