Coach Restic, It's Your Call

Dear Coach Restic:

Many people say your Harvard football team has no chance of beating Dartmouth today. I am writing to remind you that the two of us know better.

I have watched every home game for the past two years, and I have even made it to some of the away ones. I have seen that, at times, your team can play with just about anyone.

You stayed with Holy Cross for a half, and it beat Princeton. You gave William & Mary a game for a while, and at halftime you were tied with Cornell, which beat Dartmouth last week. But after six games, you're one to the good and five to the bad and no one is shy about reminding you of that. Today you're facing a very good Dartmouth team with Jay Fiedler, a very good quarterback.

I know you are not fond of the usual band of Crimson writers who hound you for post-game interviews and lambast you on this page. Go ahead, borrow a page from former vice president Spiro T. Agnew (that's a politician that you probably remember) and call them "nattering nabobs of negativism." They don't understand just how difficult your job really is.

At the same time, you have to have the courage, as Bill Clinton says (that's a politician I know), to change. Changing your approach, in fact, is the only way you'll beat Dartmouth today. I'm not talking about sending someone up to Hanover to dynamite the team bus, although that's not a bad idea to keep in mind in the future.

You'll have to beat the Big Green on the field today, and your best hope is to use the weapon you've slyly held in reserve during the 22 years you've coached here: the element of surprise. So throw the Multiflex offense out for a half. Operate with an unbalanced line. Wear a tie-dye T-shirt. Do anything and everything that is out of character for you and your Harvard team.

Give us double reverses and Statues of Liberty and all kinds of trick plays. Try onside kicks and fake punts. I might even suggest a play my high school once used, where the quarterback and one wide receiver pretend to argue over signals while the ball is snapped directly to a halfback, who throws a pass.

All this stuff will startle Dartmouth Coach John Lyon and his coaching staff senseless. They mistakenly think that just because you have a little gray in your hair, your playbook was created back in the Pleistocene Era when dinosaurs walked the earth. (I know the truth, of course, and that is that Henry Ford designed your package of pass plays and you yourself diagrammed most of the runs.)

Even if you do all this, the game will probably come down to the fourth quarter, a period when your charges have been known to fade.

There's a reason why this always happens--it's your halftime talks. Kids these days don't respond as well to triumphant tales of Iwo Jima and stories of the Gipper. (In fact, by the time my generation got to know Ronald W. Reagan, he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's).

Blame it on the decaying values of society or just blame it on Madonna. But it's your team and the fourth quarter fade is your problem. So here's what you do with the halftime speech. Can it Put on some music instead--and I mean Hammer, not Lawrence Welk. And if you really want to get the right juices flowing in these young men, make sure that every player has a complimentary copy of Madonna's Sex sitting in his locker room at halftime.

Hey, I know it's expensive ($50 a book for 45 players is $2,250), but Fran Toland and the boys in the athletic department can find room in the budget if it means beating Dartmouth.

If you do all this, remember to pass on third and long (the runs don't fool anyone), and don't call draw plays when you have the ball on your own 2 (as you did against Holy Cross), you'll win today.

I, for one, can hardly wait until the post-game press conference, when all those annoying reporters will have to ask you how you pulled off the upset of the Ivy League season. I know you're modest, of course, and you'll just say that you always had faith in your team, and that you'll try to make it two wins in a row against Brown next week.

Afterwards, we'll gloat together.

Joe Mathews is a Crimson staff writer. SPORTS CUBE PREDICTS Jay K. Varma,Sports Editor Dartmouth  44 Harvard  16 Joe Mathews,News Staff Writer Harvard  25 Dartmouth  24 John B. Trainer,Sports Writer Dartmouth  27 Harvard  16 Dante E.A. Ramos,Design Editor Dartmouth  27 Harvard  20