Art is just as methodical in his approach to a specific team or game. He figures that the coaching staff can "bring up" a team for only two games a season, and plans beforehand which two games these will be. In these calculations, he does not include the games for which a team will bring itself up, as Harvard always does for Yale, and vice versa. His "game plan" also is much more complete than most coaches use. Others may tell their quarterbacks to use a certain group of plays which scouting reports indicate will be effective, but Art teaches Bill Henry the whole game plan series, from beginning to end. For instance, against Brown last week it was straight down the middle for the first ten minutes to draw in the defenses, and then around them with end runs and over them with passes.

Jinx Worries Him

But all this precision in the business of football does not make Art the perfect scientific man. He is, in fact, quite superstitious. He will not sit in a certain chair at the Monday morning Gridiron Club luncheon because he thinks it is a jinx. The last time he sat in it, his team ended up the week by losing to Connell, 40 to 6. He doesn't want pictures of the team taken in game uniforms--another jinx. He was even afraid this very article might be a jinx, until he was assured that a story on the rival coach, Herman Hickman, would appear in the same issue. And he admitted that he was more concerned over the Hickman story being good than this one.

Art's superstition is only one phase of the nature which keeps his precision plus a 13-hour work day from turning him into an automaton. His sense of humor also helps. When a fan asked him after the Princeton game if Harvard had lost because it had not spent enough time on defense, he answered, "What do you mean? We spent all Saturday afternoon on defense."

His family doesn't know too much about Art's life as a coach, and that's exactly the way he wants it. He figures existence around a football field is somewhat glamorized and unnatural, and he doesn't want the children mixed up in it.

But more than all this, what truly keeps Art stable is his stoic philosophy about the business he is in. He best expressed this philosophy himself, when he addressed a student rally before the Columbia game: "When 22 men are chasing a pigskin spheroid, it's hard to tell which way the ball will bounce. And when that spheroid is not even round, the variables are unlimited." All he can do as a coach, he feels, is get his 11 men in a better position to chase the ball--and then pray it isn't jinxed. A mortal can do no more.

This philosophy keeps Art relaxed all week, but on Saturday it only serves as oil slick on rough waters. Except for indulging in his only vice, cigarettes, to the limit of chain smoking, he appears perfectly collected. He has a quiet, good word for everyone, and once the game is started, he never raises his voice unless it is to call in a substitute over the roar of the spectators. In the locker room between halves, he also wants quiet. When the boys are at such an emotional pitch, the effect of an exhorting coach can only be harmful, Art feels. This reassuring coolness lasts until the winning team picks up the ball and carries it off the field. Then, and only then, can he ease up and let the inner tension seep from him. And when it is gone, as he has admitted at several post-game press conferences, "I'm numb!"

You can explain and explain Art Valpey, but it doesn't seem to help you figure out how he walked into Cambridge unpublicized last spring and six months later had a team playing better football than anyone had thought it capable of.

This much can be said. He gave Harvard football players a reason for winning--not for the name of Harvard (that had been tried by his predecessor), not for personal glory (he didn't expect to win enough games to make anyone an All-American), but for their coach, Art Valpey