Old Harvard and New Wave

From start to finish, the 1979 Harvard Basketball Banquet was a reflection of the current men's basketball program. Caught between the academic aversion to athletics-only ethics and the pride-motivated desire for victorious teams, the Harvard hoopsters are searching for a new identity.

Under the Great Dome at Quincy Market last night, the problems emerging from the debate between the two schools of thought were easily apparent. The evening was a study in contrasts, from the pedestrian Chicken Cordon Bleu served at Ritz-Carlton prices, to the disparate guest speakers, the Hon. Hamilton Fish Sr. '10 and former Marquette coach Al McGuire.

Fish, the only living member of Walter Camp's legendary All-Time, All-America football team, came to Faneuil Hall as the expression of Old Harvard. He was the World War I Republican, a 25-year Congressional veteran, a decorated infantryman and never-say-die competitor.

In contrast to Fish's tradition-heaped ways, McGuire represented the opposite end of the spectrum. From the childhood days over his parents' bar to progressive coaching with the cast of athletic psychology, the NBC color commentator pulls no punches, rejects tradition as trouble and lives by a self-concerned conviction that would make the Schlitz gustograbbers ecstatic.

Yet in one sense, both men lined up on the same side of the podium: they made much of the audience squirm with their comments.

In his old school way, Fish dismissed Jimmy Carter as "the biggest asset the Republican party has," and rejected the notion that athletes are intellectually inferior. He said, "The last four presidents [before Carter] all played football for their college teams."

McGuire, moving into his New York City-smart psychological arguments, echoed Fish, saying the academics must "dismiss the pink elephants" that haunt them about high-powered athletes. "My father was an Einstein. He was a Michaelangelo because he ran a bar that was successful," McGuire quipped.

But while Fish reveled in stories about Harvard's wild 10-9 loss to Yale in the 1908 basketball championships, McGuire dug deep into the soul of Harvard's half-hearted, wavering flirtation with powerful athletics.

Athletic Director Jack Reardon had announced earlier in the evening that Harvard was committed to completing a 3500 or 3600 seat basketball arena. McGuire shot down the grandeur of that announcement, saying, "Thirty-six-hundred seats is half a rope. If you really want to go uptown, you don't go to the bank and ask for two stories--you ask for 40."

And while Reardon squirmed, President Bok groaned and Frank McLaughlin experienced internal ecstasy, McGuire, in his own style, hit home at Harvard's dilemma. He opened a tender wound, telling everyone who was busy spooning his chocolate mousse that not even Harvard can pretend to improve its athletics without facing up to the difficulties.

McGuire was positive about everything. He lauded women's sports, saying, "They should've been up there 25 years ago. Anyone who fights it is sick--they should go ice fishing."

He also said Harvard could find athletic success--in the Ivy League.

"We all get the opportunity to get away from the minnows, we get a pop to go after the oysters. But you've got to go out after it," he said. McGuire was also realistic, acknowledging sports are not "an end in themselves." He said sports "are like dolls," and pointed out how important it is that athletes be "two-fisted," with sports in one hand and a diploma in the other.

For all his obscure philosophy and ramblings about "soaring with the eagles" and feeling "the nauseousness of failure," McGuire came through loud and clear, though, saying, "You do what you say or you don't do it!"

In a way, he was updating Fish's cry for Harvard's return to athletic excellence, adding to it the understanding that Harvard in the '70s can't expect to compete with sports factories. And updating is just what Harvard needs.

The University finds difficulty in accepting the reality that we are out of the days of Hamilton Fish. The promise of athletic excellence that McLaughlin wants can't be achieved easily, because the great athletes who went Ivy in the early 1900s now go Big Ten or Pac Eight.

But as different as Hamilton Fish and Al McGuire are, they have a basic common element: they are totally committed to being only themselves. They assume no facades to appease other's feelings.

Fish lives today with the same ethics he preached forty years ago. Though his expressions of anti-Communist sentiments and gratuitous-sounding pitches for black equality make the '70s children uncomfortable, he remains constant to his world. He is totally committed to preserving the America he idolizes.

McGuire, through his words and actions, lives dedicated to the belief that "you have to be tough and play to win." He is the advocate of the self-made man, the "orchestra leader" who shaped a basketball power by harmonizing the minds of his players

And last night, he showed that Harvard was playing a discordant tune. University brass are promising athletic gains with one hand and unyielding academic standards with the other. It can't be both ways; the two must blend. Promising athletic success without the conviction to make it happen just increases frustration.

Co-captain Glen Fine said last night we need three things for a successful basketpall program: a new arena, a 6-ft. 10 in. anchor man, and another full-time coach. Harvard wants to make it with half an arena, a big forward and a part-time assistant.

It's difficult to reconcile the realistic and idealistic elements in McGuire's ideas. Harvard is grappling with the problems that reconciliation involves. But to think that the troubles will just go away is to live deluded, and McGuire was saying last night that we have to beware of the compromise ethic that brings not only delusion, but frustration. Both McGuire and Fish are products of avoiding such compromises; it is our turn to judge if we can live with such extremes.