Harvard Athletics: A Casual Romance

Harvard, with its hallowed Ivy playing fields surrounded by the concrete of the city, has spawned a strange relationship between its athletic teams and their fans.

It is not a torrid affair. It is certainly not characterized by unquestioning loyalty on the part of the student body as a whole toward the squads that represent it in intercollegiate play. Harvard does not live or die by the outcome of the battles between its chosen forces and those of an opposing college.

This is a casual romance between a school and its jocks. A team may be embraced when things are going well or the competition is worthy, or given the cold shoulder a week later. There is no marriage, and in fact, except with a minority of fanatic and devoted fans, only an occasional date.

This is not Michigan, where 60,000 frantic football fans come to watch their gridiron heroes. Nor is it the University of Maryland, whose student body rocks the SRO house as it watches Lefty Driesell and his hardcourt heroes work their magic on the hated opposition. And it is hardly a St. Lawrence, where students line up hours before a hockey game in order to get in, and literally raise the roof once inside.

But all this is not to say that Harvard does not care about its team. There are events, such as the Harvard-Yale football game or the Beanpot hockey tournament, that arouse the passions of the school. But out of the entire schedule, these definitely rate in the minority.

And there are many hard-core supporters who manage to be at every event. But out of the entire student body they too are definitely in the minority--and, many, of course, are friends and relatives of the players.

Harvard athletics is a triangular tryst, between the athletes, the undergrads and the alumni. Those grand old alumns make up a large segment of the Crimson's spectating force. Harvard's proximity to Boston, where many graduates live and work, makes it easy for them to get to most of the contests.

The grads are perhaps the most devoted of Harvard's fans and without their financial support many of Harvard's teams could not survive--at least not in the manner to which they are accustomed.

But graduates' presence, in many cases, drastically changes the make-up of the crowd. Whereas Dartmouth, whose location makes it difficult for alumni to appear en masse at many athletic events, can fill Lynch Rink with student rowdies who create earsplitting and often obscene bedlam, Harvard's Watson Rink is mild, with rowdiness limited to the notorious Section 18.

The presence of many alumni in the best seats in the rink keeps much of the noise level at games to a minimum, as the usual over-zealous screams are replaced with polite applause. Face it, most alumni (notice not all alumni) cannot afford to be rowdy. Watson Rink is not in any real danger of becoming a "snake pit" like the rinks at St. Lawrence, Dartmouth, Clarkson, Cornell or a number of other colleges with nationally-rated hockey squads.

For such teams as the baseball squad, however, the grads and old timers are a welcome sight, since they provide most of the crowd at games. Most students find more excitement lying on the banks of the Charles on a sunny afternoon than in watching Harvard hardball. Only the big games draw decent crowds, despite the fact that coach Loyal Park has sent Harvard teams to the College World Series in three of the last four years.

Where have all the followers gone? Why doesn't a nationally-ranked baseball, hockey or swimming team draw more spectators? Why isn't Harvard Stadium sold out every Saturday afternoon? How come no one supports the basketball squad?

Perhaps part of the answer lies with the Harvard jock himself. Unlike many big-time athletic programs in big colleges, Harvard athletics does not and cannot recruit heavily and blatantly. The Ivy League does not permit it, and scholarships are severely limited. The athletic department does not have a very large budget to work with.

At Harvard, more than at non-Ivy schools, you must be an athlete and a scholar at the same time, corny as that may sound. This means that there is no time for practicing all day. If someone is put on academic probation for flunking a course, he becomes ineligible to play sports for the remainder of the term.

The Crimson jock is not an athletic god or goddess. He was not admitted here merely to uphold the honor of the school on its playing fields, and he is not worshipped as such.

Athletics, then, are not taken out of proportion. They are clearly secondary to academic pursuits and the attractions of the surrounding city. Even the athlete cannot consider sports his total reason for being at Harvard. Very few jocks here can go on to make a career as a pro after graduating. Most of the famous Crimson heroes have gone on to make it big in fields other than sports.

With the seemingly endless, mindless expansion and dilution of professional sports, with a pro franchise in almost every city in the country, Harvard athletes now stand a much better chance than they have in past years of making it in the big time. In football, for instance, only John Dockery, who can flash a Superbowl championship ring from his days with the New York Jets, has been successful in recent years with the NFL.

But as soon as the World Football League was born, former Crimson gridders like Rod Foster, Bill Craven, Ted DeMars and Eric Crone have had a chance to try out with the big boys. While only Foster and Craven have broken into the lineup in the new league, it is an indication that more will come.

Maybe more fans will show at Soldiers Field to see future members of the Bell or the Storm or the Fire, providing the WFL hangs on, but that is a doubtful lure. Harvard fans are not so easily conned.

But really what is a Harvard fan?

He is the class of '36, a Friend of Harvard football or hockey or baseball. He has season tickets next to some old teammates who share with him memories of the good old days and compare them with the teams of the past couple of years. He is truly devoted to Harvard sports, yet reserved in his displays of emotion, win or lose.

The Harvard fan is the undergrad, with his date from Pine Manor who he is taking to the game. He wears a tweed jacket over a sweater to the stadium, and brings a blanket to sit on and a thermos of milk punch or a flask to stay warm.

He is the stripper at Watson Rink, who in between periods begins to remove his clothes in Section 18 to the tunes of the Harvard band. He is drunk and rowdy and having a great time--that is, until the University Police escort him from the building.

Or he might be the kid who is a brother of one of the players or son of an alumnus or just a local guy, who runs onto the field to get a chin strap, or collects broken hockey sticks or just wants to be near a seeming athletic hero.

Maybe it's the cheerleaders, who wouldn't be caught dead doing any sort of straight cheer. Harvard does not have a line of pretty coeds with pom-poms doing cute routines, but rather a casual bunch that stroll around on the sidelines giving an "H" and an "A", etc. now and then, but mostly clowning it up.

Or then there's that venerable institution known as the Harvard Band, which mixes those traditional fight songs of eras past with suggestive (and sometimes downright lewd) halftime formations, as well as biting sarcasm about the state of the University, the nation or the world.

But the Harvard fan is also part of the throng that invaded the Boston subways returning from the Crimson's dramatic victory over Boston University in the Beanpot tourney at the Garden--the raucous mob that rocked the train with shouts of "We're Number One" and loud, though not tuned, versions of "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard."

There are events that spark the fire beneath the seeming mask of indifference to the world of jockdom. A winning team or a big game can turn that quiet evening out with the team into an orgy.

But a team that is not winning will have to settle for a peck on the cheek now and then. Take Harvard's basketball squad, for example. The dingy old court on the top floor of the Indoor Athletic Building draws about as many spectators in a season as Maryland will get for a single game.

Granted that Boston is not a hotbed of hoop (you can ask the Celtics about that), but even by Beantown's standards the crowds are thin. Many felt that the addition of, Thomas "Satch" Sanders, former Celts star of many years, as head basketball coach would boost attendance. It did initially, but after the excitement wore off and people realized that Satch was no miracle worker and that the team was still losing as many as they were winning, the crowds dropped again to pitiful levels.

Sanders received a standing ovation in his coaching debut in Harvard's first game up at UMass. But he did not get such attention in his home opener, and when Harvard was hopelessly behind at the half many of the fans walked out.

There are no athletic heroes made overnight at Harvard. Only those who have been here a long time with winning records, such as crew wizard Harry Parker or squash and tennis coach Jack Barnaby, are truly worshipped--at least as far as any athletic figure can be revered at Harvard.

Out of this affair between Harvard and its more physically endowed, comes a different sort of hero. Eric Crone was such a man. Crone, the quite-often-inconsistent quarterback of Joe Restic's razzle-dazzle ball club, gained immortality among the Crimson football faithful during the Yale game of 1971. With Harvard ahead by a slim lead and little time remaining on the clock, Crone was sent in to eat up time. Eric managed, however, to take the ball into his own end zone and was thumped for a safety. From then on he would be known as "Endzone" Crone, a name he lived with throughout his unspectacular senior year at QB.

And there's Harry. Bob Harrison has become another folk hero in the annals of Crimson sport. The volatile, irascible former coach of Harvard hoop has left an indelible mark upon all who knew him.

Harrison's on-and off-court antics entranced even the most blase fan, who was forced to wonder how a man with so much talent could not motivate it or coach it to a successful season. Harry hoped for Harvard to make the top twenty in the nation, but couldn't even take the Ivy League.

The spirit of Bob Harrison will always haunt the IAB.

Harvard has embraced these men and others of similar achievement in a manner few other schools could. They are the bastard heroes born out of holy wedlock, the illegitimate heirs to our future memories of the glorious days past.

For you, the uninitiated, Crone and Harrison are merely the wild tales of a seemingly dark age, heroes without real form or function. But there will be others in the course of the next four years to take their places, and you will embrace them.

The Harvard experience has bred an uncommon sense of the importance of sports in our lives. Athletics are not "big-time" in the sense they are at USC or Notre Dame or Alabama, yet Harvard still produces teams of national caliber (hockey, Harvard and Radcliffe crew, swimming, squash, baseball, sailing and soccer, to name a few) and has walked away with its share of national championships. You can approach them from either end.

For the average fan, and most of you will be spectators for the majority of your time here, there is a strange attraction to the decrepit facilities that host Harvard's battles with the dreaded foe.

You can go to see the Endzones and Harries, or to become part of a joyous mob in Park St. Station or Harvard Square, or merely have something to do with your date. The strange relationship between Harvard and its athletics has spawned a multitude of choices