BRAD AS I WANNA BE: Just One More Crimson Naysayer

The 1920 Rose Bowl banner in Harvard Stadium doesn’t fool me. Nothing can convince me that our institution is still relevant in the world of college athletics.

Brains and brawn just don’t go together anymore; the era of great players at elite institutions is long dead.

Harvard sports are just bad. To most of us, the Harvard sports naysayers, that’s not a bold statement, once you’ve done some creative discounting. Follow my logic.

For starters, I won’t watch the Torino Olympics, which will include four Crimson players (current and former) on the U.S. Women’s Olympic Team, with another two on the roster for Canada.

In fact, I will ignore hockey entirely, so that I can conveniently discount both of Harvard’s oft-ranked and consistently competitive teams.

Four women’s Frozen Four appearances in the last five years is hardly enough to redeem an athletic program, and the men’s team has hung a few too many banners in the Bright Hockey Center over the last few years for me to allow them to be considered.

But after hockey it’s really not that hard. Swimming can be easily cast aside, once you forget about junior Noelle Bassi, who was the 2004 U.S. National Champion in the 200m butterfly while narrowly missing the 2004 Athens Olympics, and ignore freshman Paola Duquet, who swam in the 2004 games for Columbia.

And the fact that both the men’s and women’s teams are nationally ranked is hardly a deterrent.

In tennis, we’ll ignore the women’s team’s recent upsets of 6th-ranked Georgia and 15th-ranked Texas Christian, and no one will mention that freshman Beier “Bibi” Ko played in the junior tournament at Wimbledon before arriving at Harvard, among other players with international experience.

I won’t pay any attention to track and field either, lest I might notice sophomore Lindsay Scherf decimating Harvard distance running records and recording internationally competitive times.

Or baseball, a team that is one of the better units in the northeast.

Or crew, where Harvard wins or finishes close to a national title in both weight classifications of the men’s and women’s divisions every year.

No, I will conveniently ignore all of these details and continue to complain that Harvard athletics are just bad, and that we’ll never catch that peculiar disease known as March Madness here, or win a football national championship.

Of course, those continued complaints will gloss over NFL rookie (and Harvard alum) Ryan Fitzpatrick, as well as perennial Pro-Bowl center Matt Birk, who graduated in 1998 and a staple on the Vikings’ offensive line the past few seasons.

The fact that Isaiah Kacyvenski, another alum, was introduced as a captain of the Seahawks team that just fell in the Super Bowl will also be discounted.

Sure, junior running back Clifton Dawson was a Payton Award candidate this past season, and likely will be again this year. And he is a transfer from a Division I-A program, Northwestern, that is from a BCS conference and was bowl-eligible last season, but that will hardly change my mind.

We’ll ignore Harvard’s proud women’s basketball legacy, which includes numerous Ivy League titles and the sport’s greatest upset, a victory by the 16th-seeded Crimson over 1st seed Stanford in the 1998 NCAA tournament, the only 16-over-1 victory in the history of NCAA basketball, men’s or women’s.

All those things are of no interest to me.

Harvard must lack talented athletes. That’s just the way it’s supposed to be, because if you’re smart, you can’t possibly be good at sports. So next time you hear me or another Harvard sports naysayer complain, don’t argue.

Just call me when we’re in the Rose Bowl again.

—Staff writer Brad Hinshelwood can be reached at bhinshel@fas.harvard.edu.