Harvard's Real Radical Flak

"Are you worried about the game?" Dave Matthews asked. "They look pretty solid, unless they're hiding something from us."

"Yes, they're a fine team," football coach Joe Restic said, meaning the Yale team that Harvard would face on Saturday, five days away.

"Are you expecting a big first quarter?"

"Yessir, yessir," Restic said quickly.

"I mean, bigger than usual?"

Just then Matthews and Restic reached Mt. Auburn Street. They waited for a break in the noon hour traffic, then hurried across and continued walking up Holyoke Street, heading for the Varsity Club.

There was still a question pending, but Restic had apparently forgotten about it, so Matthews, trying to make conversation, said, "We'll be playing a team that has only been behind once this year, by a field goal."

"Oh, really?" said Restic. He had not known that.

It was the sort of information that only Dave Matthews among the Harvard sports hierarchy would know. He is Director of Sports Information, which means that all the press releases about Harvard sports, all the team rosters and biographies, all the statistics and press passes, come from his cluttered office at 60 Boylston Street.

Usually, Dave Matthews has to hustle Boston sportswriters into covering Harvard athletics. (Who cares, after all, about some fencing match or a Radcliffe field hockey game?) That is when obscure nuggets of information like the one he gave Restic are useful: sports reporters are a lazy lot, Matthews knows, and if he can dig up some interesting bit of trivia for them about a Harvard team, they will use it. And that is what Dave Matthews is paid to do: help sportswriters and hype Harvard. He is very good at it.

This week, of course, would be different for Matthews. There was no need to entice reporters into covering the Yale game. It is the one Harvard sports event where Matthews does not have to cajole attention from the Boston press, the one week when reporters do not want little nuggets from Matthews as much as two other things: seats in the press box (because it is always jammed for the Yale game) and quotes for their Yale week preview stories from the coach, taciturn Joe Restic.

Restic was holing up with game films and assistant coaches this week, a difficult man for sportswriters to corner. So Matthews would have lunch with Restic at the Varsity Club today and get all the dope, then funnel it to reporters.

They walked quickly up Holyoke Street, then turned right on Mass Ave. Restic, tall and lean, took long strides; Matthews, small and paunchy, scurried to keep up.

People on the street recognized Restic--"Hi, coach," a student said as he passed, and another man shook hands with him--but nobody seemed to know Dave Matthews, the scrappy guy in the blue parka, the Jeff in this Mutt and Jeff duo.

They had lunch in a small, wood-paneled room off the main Varsity Club dining hall, a room with a bronzed track shoe in a glass trophy case. Restic cut his big hamburger into neat squares and ate them with his fork. Matthews put his hamburger between two slices of toast, doused it with catsup, and ate with his hands.

Between bites, Matthews put questions to Restic ("You'll obviously be passing a lot..."), and Restic usually answered, "Well, Dave..." or, "You see Dave..."

After a while, a woman peered her head in to call Matthews to the phone. "That was Larry Claflin from the Herald," he said when he hung up. "He wanted two seats in the stands. I told him they were all sold out. So he said, 'Ask Joe the next time you see him."' Matthews laughed. So did his assistant, Bob Donovan, who had accompanied Matthews and Restic to lunch.

"The next time you see him," Donovan repeated, then he laughed again.

"I told him that Joe had his hands full," Matthews said, turning to Restic as if for confirmation. Matthews is very fond of Restic and tries to hard to please him.

"That's right," Restic said softly.

***

They had lunch together the next day, Matthews and Restic, but not alone. It was Tuesday, day of the weekly football coaches and writers luncheon at Boraschi's restaurant in Boston. Sportswriters, remember, hate legwork, so they gather upstairs at Boraschi's each week during college football season to talk with coaches...collectively. About ten writers, ten coaches, a few hangers on--all there at once, to make things easier.

Matthews hates the lunches. The coaches stand, one by one, to analyze the game their team just played and talk about their upcoming battles. He finds what they say so boring, so painfully corny:

"It's always better when you win more than you lose," said the Bridgewater coach. Matthews, sitting at a long banquet table, fiddled aimlessly with his cuff-links.

"We're looking forward to next year," said the Tufts Coach, whose season had already ended. "We're looking for the future..." Matthews played with his spoon.

He would not have come this week--he often sends Donovan, his assistant, instead--but the reporters had last minute questions about plans for the Yale game, the biggest by far of the upcoming weekend. They wanted to know if enough telecopiers would be available to send their copy back from the press box after the game ended, and whether there would be a post-game coaches' press conference. And they wanted to bitch about tickets: either that they did not get enough seats in the press box, or could not get enough seats in the stadium for their friends and relatives.

The game was sold out, but still reporters expected Matthews to pull seats out of the air for their pals. He would always tell them to talk with Gordon Page, Harvard's ticket manager. Page is sometimes able to help desperate sportswriters and alumni, and when he does, he often gets gifts of whiskey at Christmas in gratiude. Page does not drink, so he sells the liquor to the Varsity Club, and recently he used his earnings to build a tool shed at his Bedford house, a few blocks from where Matthews lives.

Finally the cigar-chomping M.C. introduced Restic, who stood and said earnestly, "This [Yale] is the best football team I've played against since I've been at Harvard, without a doubt. By far." Matthews rested his chin in his left hand, gazing at his coach. It was hard to move behind Restic's placid look and guess what he was thinking. Was he worried about the Yale game? Harvard had bumbled away last Saturday's Brown game, and would have to beat undefeated Yale to share the Ivy championship. A piece of the Ivy title was important to Restic, and important to Matthews, who had never seen Harvard beat Yale in the three years he has been Director of Sports Information. Matthews does not have many winning teams among the 29 he publicizes for Harvard, and a championship football team...well, that is the dream of every "DSI," as they call Matthews's job in college sports circles. And although they are not very gung ho about things down at the Sports Information office--Matthews tells athletes not to waste time with interviews if they have school work to do, "this is not Ohio State"--beating Yale might make the easy-going Matthews even more easy-going than usual when he cleared football debris off his desk early next week to begin hyping the less exciting winter sports.

By the time Restic had imparted his last homily to the writers, Matthews was visibly restless, anxious to escape the heavy cigar smoke and drive back to Cambridge. (But at least this was not as bad as the last sportswriters luncheon Matthews had attended, during Dartmouth week, when the M.C. announced it was time to eat by blowing a shrill whistle and yelling "Half-time"; when Restic said admiringly of a Harvard tackle there to receive a player-of-the-week award, "I have not heard Bob Shaw say two words on the football field. It's not because he can't talk. He can. But he just gets the job done..."; and when one of the hangers-on in attendance, an old Boston football expert asked by the M.C. to explain why that week's games had been such high-scoring affairs, answered: "This may sound like a stupid remark, but now you've got a lot of colored boys playing football, and they're damn good athletes who put a lot of pep into the game.")

When the lunch program ended, the Globe's Ernie Roberts stopped coaches on their way out to ask for "humorous anecdotes" for his column. Matthews waited for Roberts, eager to feed him a story. But this was not a Harvard story. Matthews wanted Roberts's help with a cause, of sorts. The president of the University of Vermont had decided to dismantle the school's competitive athletic program to save money. Matthews was horrified. He grew up in Burlington, right next to the school's football stadium, and later graduated from the University. When he finally got Roberts aside, Matthews urged him to write a piece supporting reinstatement of the program. Roberts puffed a cigar, looking disinterested.

"There's no more football, no more baseball," Matthews finally said as they stood by the door, writers and coaches filing past them. "That's my back yard! Without football and baseball, I wouldn't be here."

***

There was only a wire fence separating his house from the end zone of the University's Centennial Field, so as a child in Burlington, Matthews could watch college football games from an upstairs window. Or he could jump the fence and play football himself--or baseball, or basketball. It was a well-equipped field with facilities for every sport, and Matthews played them all.

He was not much of an athlete, though, and even in the sixth grade, he enjoyed writing about sports in his school newspaper (which he edited) as much as playing. When he thought about his future, Dave Matthews saw himself as a sportswriter.

Matthews received his first money for writing sports when he was a high school junior: $10-15 a week for covering local games in the Burlington Daily News, a now-defunct William Loeb paper.

After graduating from high school, he entered the University of Vermont in 1961 and almost immediately found himself in serious academic trouble. Matthews hated his courses (especially Spanish and Geology) and never studied, preferring to play cards, drink and write for the Daily News. He landed on academic probation and barely made it through his freshman year. In the middle of his sophomore year, he "blew it or something in the clutch" and flunked out.

The University forced Matthews to take a semester off before applying for re-admission, and he spent the time as a deck hand on a Lake Champlain ferry. "I had a great time," he says.

He returned to school a more serious student, but hardly a dedicated scholar. He took grade school-like courses (majoring in history, with a minor in geography), and spent part of his time working as an assistant in the school's sports information office (and most of his time, in something of a conflict of interest, writing sports for the Burlington Free Press.)

When he graduated in 1966, Matthews became assistant sports editor of the Free Press, but left after a month to join the rush of young men volunteering for the National Guard to avoid being drafted (Matthews considers himself moderately left-wing in his politics and did not support the Vietnam war.)

After a year in the Guard, Matthews returned to Burlington to become the University of Vermont's director of sports information. He held the job until August 1969, when Baaron Pittenger, then Harvard's "DSI," offered Matthews a job as his assistant. The job meant a raise of $1000 a year for Matthews. He quickly accepted.

A year later, Pittenger became associate director of athletics, and Matthews hoped to succeed him. But Harvard hired a replacement from Detroit. Matthews was hurt but not bitter, and he devoted himself to a massive re-designing of all the office's publications, from football programs to statistical brochures. When his Michigan boss left a year later, Matthews had no trouble getting his job.

In running the office since then, Matthews has used the quiet, silver-haired Pittenger as his model. Matthews does not, for example, cheer lustily for Harvard, as he once did for Vermont. Not dignified, not professional. He now roots silently, and vows not to give himself ulcers by stewing over defeats.

Matthews figures he would not last long as DSI at some Big Ten School. He does not see undergraduate sports as sacred battle, and in that sense he is a metaphor, of sorts, for the Harvard community, which rarely whips itself into a frenzy about any "big game." Matthews does not publish brochures touting his prospective All-Americans, as some schools do to garner votes for their stars in post-season honors races ("I'd be fired if I did!" he says), and he does not sit in on interviews with Harvard players to gently steer the conversation away from delicate areas. He thinks the primary1