A Program in Transition

In 1981, Harvard Stadium stood as one of the few lasting symbols of the University’s since-lost relevance within the collegiate sports world. But a series of events beginning that year threatened what was possibly the longest-living possession of the Harvard athletic department.

The string of bad luck began as the 1981 school year wound to a close, when a local teenager set fire to Harvard Stadium’s press box.

According to Jack P. Reardon Jr. ’60, who was Harvard’s director of athletics in 1982, the blaze—accidentally set by a straggler who had taken to living in the press box—was just one in the long line of proverbial cries for help from a facility desperately in need of repair.

“Through the years, it didn’t get a lot of attention,” Reardon says. “From time to time, an engineering crew would come through and make sure it was okay. One of those engineering studies suggested it wasn’t okay, and if we didn’t do anything to get it in shape, we’d lose it in a few decades.”

SAVING A LANDMARK

As the stadium’s concrete seats began to fracture in the late 1920s and early 1930s, water began to seep through the cracks and make contact with the steel underneath. Fifty years of corrosion later, Harvard Stadium, a gift from the class of 1879, needed a makeover.

But this was not the same as the renovations that have taken place over the past year. Recently, FieldTurf, an off-season bubble and new lights have been installed to greatly increase the stadium’s functionality. Both Crimson lacrosse teams now call the structure home, Major League Lacrosse’s Boston Cannons began play there in May, and the football team’s 2007 home-opener will be the squad’s first-ever Friday night game.

The renovation expenditures of 1982 were double those of the $5 million project 25 years later.But, Reardon says, the tab could have been much larger.

“The cost was $10 million, and today it’d be about $35 million, and we got it done before there was major, major inflation,” he says. “We considered just ripping it down and having up-steel stands, but by this time, it was a national historic building, and I think our alumni generally frowned upon the thought of just throwing in steel stands.”

Then-University President Derek C. Bok, however, hesitated when told that so much money would go to an athletic project that would not produce an entirely new building.Reardon says that Bok actually called in another engineer with no prior experience inspecting the stadium in the hopes of finding a less expensive opinion. But his conclusion was the same—the stadium was on its last legs.

And as the Class of 1982 lived out its last days at Harvard, even more questions were raised—not in regard to whether the project was a worthy use of funds, but whether it would finish at all.

“We figured that if we started this in April, we could get it done by the end of the season the following fall,” Reardon says. “We had to play sold-out for the Yale game, and the year before the seats weren’t in. I told the contractor, ‘Your reputation’s on the line now, you’re going to be in the headlines if you don’t get it done.’ But we got it done.”

UNSWERVING PRIORITIES

According to Bruce G. Schoenfeld ’82, editor of The Crimson’s sports board at the time of the stadium renovations, ths student body paid noticeably little attention to the project’s progress.

“I don’t remember much of it at all,” Schoenfeld says.

Schoenfeld says the administration of his time was reluctant to pay too much attention to athletics. It’s a philosophy that has been with Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League since the 1945 inception of the Ivy Group Agreement—the infamous accord that barred the conference’s eight schools from awarding athletic scholarships.

“I think a lot of schools have come around to Harvard’s perspective, which was, when I was there, it wasn’t supposed to win in football and hockey, but it’s good to win at other sports,” Schoenfeld says.

He called the athletic department “ambivalent” to success in the bigger sports during his time there.

“We used to joke that Reardon would love to go 6-5 one year and 5-6 another,” he says. “He didn’t want to get too good because, what does that say about your priorities?”

It was an attitude that extended to all of the so-called “big” sports and one that was recognized by the comparatively more athletic-minded schools of the time.

When the Crimson men’s basketball team was scheduled to leave the Malkin Athletic Center in 1982 and move to the team’s current home, the 2,195-seat Lavieties Pavilion, the University of Texas agreed to play Harvard in the new venue in the final season of legendary coach Abe Lemons’ tenure. The only problem? Lavieties still wasn’t finished in early 1982.

“We ended up playing the game at the Malkin, and it went into triple-overtime,” Reardon recalls. “Abe Lemons and Derek Bok came to a dinner after the game. Lemons said he wouldn’t have come if he knew he would play at the Malkin, and he was happy to get out alive.”

Reardon, who currently serves as Harvard’s associate vice president for University relations, says that it was another comment from Lemons at the dinner that was most telling of Harvard’s most pressing concerns.

Unlike places like Texas—where big athletics seemed to exist with virtual free reign, able to do what they wanted with little oversight from university officials—sports programs at Harvard were often in close contact with the the upper levels of administration, perhaps indicative of their relatively low stature.

“He said, ‘It’s really fabulous that the president of Harvard went to the game and the dinner,’” Reardon recalls. “‘I have yet to meet the president of Texas.’”

DIVERSIFYING THE DEPARTMENT

While a rigid, hierarchical gap between the perceived importance of events on the field of play and events in the classroom was growing only larger, a glaring gap of another kind—despite an initial step by Harvard in the direction of change—has made little in the way of progress since 1982.

It was in that year when James E. Greenidge was hired as Harvard’s sports information director, making him the only high-ranking African-American in the athletic department at the time and the Ivy League’s first-ever black man to hold the position. But 25 years later, the question of athletic departmental diversity remains at the forefront.

A Boston Globe story in March discussed Harvard’s lack of coaching diversity, pointing out the fact that though there are more Crimson sports teams than any Division I school in the country, none of the programs are headed by black coaches.

Nichols Family Director of Athletics Robert L. Scalise did his best to answer critics soon after, when he hired Tommy Amaker as the new head coach of Harvard men’s basketball in April. Still, he’s just one of 32 head coaches at Harvard—a single African-American face in the athletic department of a university perpetually claiming its commitment to diversity.

Amaker, who previously coached at Michigan and Seton Hall, notes that compared to its peers, the Crimson’s teams have done a relatively good job.

“I think our history has been pretty good with hiring a diverse coaching and athletic department,” Amaker says. “I’m the third African-American basketball coach at Harvard, and it’s hard to find that many places with that kind of track record.”

Ironically, part of the problem of promoting diversity is the longevity often associated with Crimson athletic positions. Hired in 1982, former track and field and cross country coach Frank J. Haggerty ’68 didn’t retire until last year. And legendary crew coach Harry Parker has been at Harvard since 1963.

Still, with only a single big name African-American presence then as there is now, it’s a matter that will continue to receive discussion.

“No one has done enough,” Schoenfeld says.

Reardon agrees. He also notes that any change—whether physical, philosophical or racial—takes time to implement.

“It’s not so simple,” he says. “Nothing happens overnight.”

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.