Say It Ain't So, P. Wayne

There are a lot of things you can say about Perry Wayne Moore.

You can say that he's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, with a quick wit, a dry Arkansas drawl, and the best sense of humor this side of North Little Rock. You can say that he had a passion for running the football, and for playing the game, that surpasses any passion most people have for anything their whole lives. And you can say that he had the most pure running talent of any back ever to attend Harvard University. And that he never got a fair shake here.

You will get arguments on the last two points--if from no one else, certainly from Joe Restic and the Harvard coaching staff--but you will get no arguments on the first two points. And you will get no arguments if you say it's a goddamned shame Wayne Moore broke his ankle last week, and that his place in the Harvard scrapbook will be limited to three brief, glorious moments last fall and this.

*****

Wayne Moore is talking to a friend on the phone in his single atop Leverett G-tower Friday morning. He is wearing two things--a blue bathrobe and a plaster cast entending 2/3 of the way up his right thigh.

"Yeah, last night was miserable," he says with lifted eyebrows. "I moaned (pause) and groaned (pause) and beseeched God (special emphasis) to deliver me," he continues with a grin.

"Naw, I'm not goin' out today," he says. "It's too wet out for this leg. I'm going to fast, and read my Bible."

Hanging up the phone, Moore turns to the subject of football.

"Fifteen years I've been playing football," he says. "That's a long time, isn't it?"

He smiles, and it's the only time in the course of the conversation that his big, broad smile looks the least bit pained.

"I was a tailback in high school. In that part of the country, football's really wild. We had a great team, and huge guys, and we ran all over everybody. My senior year I carried the ball something like 308 times.

"It was just on an impulse that I came out freshman year. I really was thinking of not playing, 'cause I thought maybe I'd just get away from it all.

"I got a bad hip pointer and missed three weeks, but I broke two long touchdowns against Navy and I was starting to get in the groove pretty good.

"Sophomore year, the intention was that the returning varsity players were going to play unless someone really went out there and beat them out badly. It isn't the talent type they want here, it's more who's been out for a while, and understands the system.

"I can understand that, but the fact remains that you could line me up in a sweep that year against any of those guys--and I could run right past 'em.

"I think I got in one play against UMass in the game we blew 'em out on TV. That was about it for the year."

*****

Moore graduated from Ole Main High School in North Little Rock in June of 1975, running for more than 1000 yards his senior year. He has a unique running style--not exceptionally quick with his feet, Moore has a striding motion well-suited to outside running, and superb accelerating ability.

But freshman year, he had to share the spotlight with Ralph Polillio, a gifted wingback-type halfback. Sophmore year he failed to play much, and junior year he found himself seventh on the depth chart. But some people got hurt, and he broke a 38-yard run against Dartmouth, setting up a touchdown, and he hauled in a long pass to set up a touchdown against Brown.

*****

"People came up to me after that season and said, 'Wow, we didn't know you could do that,'" Moore continues.

"I said, hey, what do you do if you've been on the team three years and they don't know about what you can do yet. And then we get to the end of the year, and they start telling me how I was a pleasant surprise."

"Pleasant surprise?" he says, laughing incredulously. "I said, 'Didn't you know I ran the 100 in 9.6, didn't you know I weigh 190 pounds? That's odd, a pleasant surprise."

"I was never concerned that if I got in the game I could do the job. But, God, getting in the game was so hard."

Moore turns from the problems he's had with the Harvard football bureaucracy to the game itself. "Football's a very egotistical thing," he says, "you say, can I pop this guy, can I drive him out?"

"I know it's a very selfish drive that has made me play--to see if I can do it or not. If I do it, I strut around like a peacock.

"It wouldn't mean anything to me to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated with people saying, 'Wow, you're the best running back in the world,' if I knew I couldn't do it out there.

"But if I went out there and knew I could do it better than anybody, that would be very satisfying and I'd be very pleased."

*****

Wayne Moore will survive his injury--by the time he got to college, football was no longer an ultra-serious, life-or-death matter.

For the fans, all that's left of Wayne Moore's running are the memories of three great plays--against Dartmouth and Brown last year, and his miraculous, driving, 73-yard touchdown gallop in this year's Columbia opener.

His final varsity statistics read as follows: just 27 carries for 191 yards, a 7.1 yard per rush average, and one touch-down. So there are the three memories of glory, and the bitter memory of so much more that never transpired.

"If I had it to do over again, I woudn't play," Perry Wayne Moore said yesterday, not bitter, just truthful.

I, for one, disagree with that, Wayne, and I think there are other Harvard fans who feel the same way. And we thank you, so very much, for the memories you've given us.