It's getting trite to speak of Harvard's football coach as "cologist" or "ornithologist" Harlow, but John Kieran has one of the keys to Crimson gridiron success every time he uses that stock description. Dick studies football the way he studies his pet flora and fauna, and has achieved recognition as one of the nation's top experts in both fields. One of his coaching assistants put it this way: "When Dick decides he wants to know about something, he really studies it. Two years ago he got interested in ferns and now he's crossing up the professors."

Nature, the kind that grows in the woods, has been keeping Harlow's spare time occupied since childhood. At Penn State, from which he graduated in 1912, he took an M.A. in zoology and then taught the subject while coaching football. In fact, all through his coaching career at Penn State, Colgate, Western Maryland, and Harvard he has combined his two specialties. Where most football coaches double as athletic director or some other sports sinecure, Harlow has had such titles as Assistant Professor of Ornithology or Curator of Oology for the off-seasons. Even during the fall, when it appears that all the time he can afford to take off is devoted to lighting one cigar from the butt of another, his recreation comes from devouring learned-looking pamphlets from botanical Societies.

But football does cut in. He generally takes Saturday night off, then goes to work on Sunday morning with the scout reports on the coming opponent and spends the rest of that day and most of every other in devising offensive and defensive formations that will hamstring the opposition. The briefcase he takes home every night means at least as much work as the average professorial green bag, but the results are published in the Sunday headlines rather than an obscure monograph. If the other team has shifted its strategy, there's always the opportunity for changing Crimson tactics in the 30 minutes between the halves. That, incidentally, is why Harvard is generally a second-half team. Revised blocking assignments against Princeton and the different defense against Brown were far more effective than any cinematic pep talk.

Pep talks are in keeping with the Harlow personality, however. Although he does prefer scoreboard triumphs to the moral victories his boys were piling up earlier this season, the spirit of his teams does mean almost as much to him as the final score. Harlow likes to win and he likes to fight, and he likes his football players to be the same. Judging from the newspaper comments of the '42 eleven, he has succeeded in this respect. And also judging from newspaper men, he is a tremendous coach as well as fine fellow. To quote the assistant again, "He's the greatest guy that ever lived."