Harvard's Line Is All Right

When one thinks about Mike Clark and Joe Kross, one thinks not so much about their accomplishments on the football field, but more about all the things that haven't happened to them--the attention in the press they haven't received, the big showboat plays they haven't made and the "Coop Player of the Week" awards they haven't won.

Mike Clark starts at right guard for the Harvard football team; Joe Kross starts at right tackle. Together, they comprise one of the best chunks of an offensive line this side of State College Pennsylvania.

No Cheerleaders

They are similar kinds of players, to an extent. Both are experienced (Clark's a three-year starter); both play with power and uncanny consistency; and both lend a quality of quiet, non-rah-rah leadership to the Harvard program. And both are very, very good.

"If they play well, we play well. If they don't, we don't. It's that simple," Crimson offensive line coach George Karras said this week.

"We don't rely on any one side of our offense," Karras continued, "but when it comes down to a situation when we have to get the job done, those are the guys we go to."

*****

You look at Joe Kross; he looks like he should be a football player. Look at Mike Clark, and he doesn't.

Everything about Kross is big--listed in the football guide as 6-5, 249, he has a massive frame and a large, pleasant face. And if his size doesn't clue you in on what he does for extracurricular activities, a nagging scab on the bridge of his nose tells you that he's been butting heads in the trenches.

Atypical

Clark is smaller, a little thick through the middle, perhaps, but not, at first glance, a football jock. Listed as 6-1, 220, in the press guide's inflated figures, Clark has a broad, square-jawed face and curly hair.

They're known as "Library Joe" and "Captain Nasty," which tells you that the carbon-copy metaphor of two big, quiet, talented linemen goes only so far.

The contrast probably has something to do with the positions they play. Tackle is a brutal pit position, requiring unfailing consistency and punishing straight-ahead blocking. Guard demands a greater variety of skills, the quickness to pull, trap and range around the field.

So "Library Joe" has more of a methodical approach to the game, while "Captain Nasty" has a more passionate approach.

"I think Kennedy or somebody once said there are two things that make a man--war and football," Clark said, sitting across from his linemate at breakfast yesterday morning.

"And I don't mean to say that you're not a man if you don't play football or anything, but whenever you go on a football field you expect to do battle. It has something to do with the invincibility of youth--you're looking for someone to hit," Clark explained.

"To me," Kross answered, "It's more that I've played football so long, and it's almost like a job. You try to do your best. If my job tomorrow is to move this particular guy, then I'm trying to move this guy--so I go out and move the guy. It's almost like working with inanimate objects."

Man of LaMancha

"Geez," Clark countered, "that makes what I just said sound awful. But I do prefer the Don Quixote image of single combat; although, of course, it's part of a larger team effort. Ideally, a perfect play for an offensive lineman is to knock down every guy on the other side of the ball--almost like a broken-field run."

Kross laughed and shook his head. For him, the ideal play was to make your block, to methodically beat your man--there was nothing else really to fantasize about.

*****

While the average fan knows flawless pass-protection or a gaping hole when he sees it, hardly a one actually watches offensive line play during a game, and very few could tell you what differentiates an unskilled lineman from a skilled one.

In terms of technique, though, these guys have got their act together, at least in terms of the level of play demanded in the Ivy League.

Target Practice

Clark can pull, pass-block or trap capably. (Karras: "When he's assigned to trap a linebacker, he hardly ever misses."), while Kross's down blocking stands out among his all-around strengths.

"Both have a good feel for who they have to block," senior halfback Ralph Polillio, who is having his finest year ever behind them and the rest of the front wall, said Wednesday.

"Joe's greatest asset is his strength, while Mike's greatest asset is his quickness," Polillio continued. "What I like best about Mike is that he'll be going upfield turning a linebacker inside out, and he'll still have a good feel for where the back is behind him."

Mac DeCamp, Clark's counterpart on the left side, has nothing but praise for the right-side pair: "Both are very good at making adjustments based on the defensive man's first move. On our last TD against Dartmouth, they picked up the blitz on a '25 blast' play, and because they saw it coming there was a huge hole for Ralph to run through."

Polillio himself has perhaps the highest words of praise for the Joe-and-Mike Moving Co. "If a lineman isn't capable of controlling the action, you can just forget it; but I don't think they've ever let the team down," Polillio said. "They're doing a helluva job. I love to run behind 'em--I really do."

It should be noted that both Clark and Kross fit the traditional jock stereotype about as well as a pair of size-32 shorts fits Vasily Alexeyev.

Kross has spent most of his free time this past week burrowing through the paperwork involved in applying for the Rhodes Scholarship. Clark, on the other hand, has been interested in human rights issues for years and was active in the South Africa protests last spring.

Compulsion

But for the next four weeks--their last in organized football--Harvard's two standout lineman have one goal in mind: to win four straight and possibly take the Ivy crown.

"I've been having this dream lately where I wake up the day after the Yale game, and we're champions of the Ivy League," Clark said yesterday as he picked up his breakfast tray.

And, of course, the championship remains a possibility, albeit an elusive one. Ironically, when Kross and Clark talk about such moments of glory, they talk about it from the typical offensive lineman's point of view--not an individual one at all.

"One of the best feelings for an offensive line is when you look back and see you're part of a machine," Kross said. "It's almost like an art."

And for four more weeks, Harvard's trench artists non-pareil will keep fashioning their fine work, for the most part unnoticed.