Intuition Says Harvard

NEW YORK--They're doing their best to hide the excitement, but the cunning Gothamites can't put one over on this reporter.

Baker Field is being dedicated today and this whole town's gone wild.

Ever since both the Jets and the Giants headed over the George Washington Bridge for the swamps of Jersey, Columbia football's been the only game in town.

The streets abound with anxious sports fans (I wonder how Baker Field will hold them all), and you can't find a parking space anywhere in Manhattan.

Fourteen hours before the opening kickoff, the Lions faithful have flooded the city. And they've already started queuing up.

Heading up one line, a tuxedoed Mike Keating stood in the shelter of the Baronet Theater, feigning nonchalance.

"I'm an actor from Billings, Montana," he said. A long way to come for a football game. I thought, as I asked him who would win.

"Columbia, Harvard, I don't know," he hedged. "Have they been hot this year?"

He obviously had something to hide. I gave him my fiver and stepped into the dark back room.

It wasn't long before I knew I'd found the place. The first "preview" was titled The Bostonians.

* * * * I remembered my trip to the ice cream store, sweet victory. They put on a front there, too. "Harvard, Columbia? They're both wusses. Oh. You're from Harvard? They are very intellectual schools," said Lorie, as she scooped me a peanut butter and jelly tofutti.

The challenge has electrified the entire city, and no one wants to admit it. In Ray's Pizza (the one on Third Ave.), noted French, Italian and British screenwriter Andre Bisconti scanned his New York Times.

A self-proclaimed disciple of famous coach Jean-Paul Sartre, Bisconti revealed how he went undercover in Cambridge, lecturing to "40 professors" on the topic of "Existentialism: Its Political Implications."

Peering out from under his rain-soaked fedora, Bisconti let slip the following information under piercingly intensive questioning by former Crimson President Jacob M. Schlesinger '84:

* The Cubs will win the pennant:

* The United States is 150 years behind the rest of the world:

* Harvard will beat Columbia. Bisconti explained, "I know it intensively."