Grandstand quarterbacking is supposed to be a Constitutional right-like eating Mem's apple pie or rooting for the Dodgers. If so, perhaps the Constitution should be amended.

Sitting behind me Saturday was a particularly raneous grandstand quarterback. He knew little about the rules of football and still loss about the Harvard team he was presumably rooting for. But that didn't stop him from criticizing both players and coaches freely.

On the field below, a good Harvard team, still badly shorthanded because of injuries, was putting up a game fight against a superb Cornell squad. But the grandstand quarterback didn't see it that way. First he started working over the coaches, as if he expected Art Valpey to rush off the bench and single-handedly half the Big Red tide. But when the Crimson made a good gain on a tricky play, the coach never got credit for devising the play and teaching the team how to execute it.

But even more irksome was the criticism of the players-and it was hero that the grandstand quarterback displayed himself in all his ignorance. The particular member of the species who was behind mo reached two major conclusions during the course of the game, and he was not averse to letting others know about them. First, he thought that the Harvard quarterbacks should call more end runs. Second, he thought that Harvard should use fewer passes.

As Al Smith once said, "Look at the record." And the record shows that the grandstand quarterback was wrong. Take his theory that Harvard should have used more end runs. Now look at the facts. Cornell has one of the fastest teams in the country. That means that backer-ups should be able to get to the flanks quickly to squelch end runs. On the Harvard side of the picture, the Crimson's one breakaway runner, Hal Moffie, was out of action. And two men who must throw crucial blocks on end-around plays, quarterback Bill Henry and running guard Howie Houston, were playing despite injuries which slowed them up and made it difficult for them to carry out their assignments on end runs. These circumstances combined to make an outside game very difficult against a team with Cornell's speed.

Now what about our grandstand quarterback's second suggestion, that Harvard should throw fewer passes. This was a magnificent example of the second guess in action, coming, as it did, hard on the heels of the Cornell touchdown scored by intercepting a Noonan pass to the right flank. What the second-guesser forgot was the Harvard Managed to gain twice as much yardage through the air as on the ground (187 to 91). In fact, lack of defense against short passes was just about the only weakness Cornell showed. It was this that led Valpey to make short passes the key to his "game plan," and the fine showing the Crimson made certainly bore out Valpey's analysis.

But the grandstand quarterback ignored the facts. Perhaps he was trying to impress the girl sitting next to him. Perhaps he sought the approval of a small band of disciples that sat around him. He should stick to student politics-or plumbing.