After noting the new attendance records and the unusually excellent quality of play in both professional and college football, Time magazine recently decided that football is the sport of the sixties. The Ivy League, delightfully out of touch with the rest of the country, apparently never got the word. Ivy football attendance remained high, but the play was chaotic, according to tradition.

Primarily because everyone picked them for first, Princeton's bedraggled Tigers collapsed at the first opportunity (a non-League game with Colgate); Dartmouth, playing with a team coach Bob Blackman apparently would have feared to enter against New Hampshire high schools, terrified everyone, and finished with a perfect record and the Ivy title.

Harvard followed its usual pattern of opening with an uncertain October and finishing with a magnificent November. Coach John Yovicsin faced what? a totally inexperienced line and a what? a powerful array of backs when he what? opened drills in early September. The 1962 Harvard experience seemed to settle an old football argument: Is a good line or a fine backfield more important to the success of a football team? Operating without the protection of a dependable forward wall during the first part of the season, Harvard's backs looked rather ordinary. When the line had begun to respond to the coaching efforts of Yovicsin, Jim Lents, Jim Feula, and Paul Mckee, the backfield was able to do what the sportswriters said it could.

The Ivy League championship seems to have been decided by one unspectacular play in the first quarter of the Harvard-Dartmouth game in the Stadium. Although it wasn't clear at the time, Harvard was the only team in the League that could have beaten Dartmouth, and the Crimson was stopped by the Green's near All-American Don McKinnon.

Dartmouth began the quarter with a rapid march through the Harvard defenses to the Crimson 15, where Bill Wellstead kicked a field goal. Harvard came back manfully, advancing the ball to Dartmouth's 32. There the ball rested with fourth down and one to go. Hobie Armstrong took a handoff and headed for right tackle. Had he made it, the Crimson probably would have scored and maybe even won the ball game and the Ivy laurels. When he reached the line of scrimmage, however, he made the acquaintance of McKinnon, and that meeting ended the Harvard drive. The team did not get going again.

The loss to Dartmouth, coupled with an earlier upset loss to sporadic Cornell, removed the Crimson from first place consideration. But it also put determination in the team and was the last Crimson defeat of the year. Harvard picked Penn, apart, player by player, playfully pulled the Tiger's tail, and rejected Brown's bid for an Ivy win to end what Yovicsin called the "first half of the season."

In the second half, the Crimson kicked the Bulldog in the teeth on a cold and bitter afternoon in the Stadium. While vendors hawked tea in the stands, Bill Taylor confused the Yale stalwarts again and again with magnificent punting under heavy Eli pressure, dazzling running, and general excellence. A Yale touchdown, achieved by running a punt back to the end zone while the Harvard team blocked itself off the field, gave the game a sense of drama, but Harvard's line, by then strong and experienced, had too much finesse and skill to be fooled by Yale's generally feeble offensive ploys. The 14-6 win kept the Big Three championship in Cambridge for the third time in four years.

The day before The Game, Harvard's freshman football team withstood a strong Yale challenge and ended its season undefeated. Harvard teams in soccer, football, and touch football, on the varsity, freshman, and House levels compiled a 13-3-1 mark, humiliating the Yalies considerably more than usual.

Any discussion of the football season would not be complete, of course, without mentioning quarterback Mike Bassett's memorable cross country running in the Princeton game. Taking the ball on his own 19, Bassett rolled out to pass, and, finding no receivers, elected to run. The run took him back and forth across the field while most of the Princeton student body joined in the pursuit. He was finally tackled from behind on the Tiger 20, but Bill Grana, who played fine football all year despite a bothersome back, scored the decisive touchdown a few plays later.

Harvard soccer fans, confidently expecting an undefeated season, were some what surprised when the team faltered in mid-season and had to scramble for a tie for the Ivy League championship. Bothered by injuries and perhaps a touch of overconfidence, the squad failed to live up to all its press notices. Chris Ohiri, whose chronic leg ailment cost coach Bruce Munro hours of sleep, did manage, however, to set a new Harvard career record for goals scored with 31.

By far the outstanding individual effort of the Fall was cross country captain Ed Hamlin's first place finish in the Heptagonals in New York. His 26:02.6 time was remarkable by itself, but the fact that it came just one week after he had won the Big Three meet made it even more outstanding. After the race coach Ed McCurdy attributed the win to Hamlin's "great competitive spirit." That spirit also led what was supposed to be a lacklustre cross country team to an unusually fine season, with only a loss to Princeton in the Big Three race casting a shadow on an otherwise perfect record.

The sporting scene at Harvard in 1962 included numerous events and incidents not directly related to competitive play. Last Spring former CRIMSON managing editor Mike Lottmann raised questions both at Harvard and around the League with an article stating Harvard's recruiting tactics were not quite as casual as claimed. Tennis coach Jack Barnaby wrote an angry reply, but some of Lottman's points remained unscathed. Alumni do search for talented athletes, and coaches do meet them, either at Harvard clubs or on specially arranged visits. The unusual dominance Harvard has held in most sports in the League for the past two years has led many observers to conclude that the University's approach to prospective athletes is more than nonchalant. Informed sources indicate that the Admissions committees is paying attention to extracurricula qualifications when college board scores are sub-standard, and athletics are apparently give a significant weight.

Athletic Director Thomas D. Bolles announced his resignation during the Fall. Bolles had built the Harvard athletic program into one of the Ivy League's finest during his 13 years as director, and had been instrumental in establishing the Ivy League as a competitive conference. A wide-spread search was conducted for his successor, and informed sources indicate the list of candidates has now been narrowed. An appointment should be made by March.

The Kinasewich Case

Last June the ECAC eligibility committee decided Gene Kinasewich was a professional and ruled him ineligible for hockey competition. The committee apparently did not realize how much of a storm Harvard would create over the issue, and it apparently was unaware of the Ivy League decision declaring the former Junior A player eligible. A report by the Harvard Council for Undergraduate Affairs and personal interviews with Kinasewich finally convinced the committee to change its mind about Gene, but it passed no policy covering Junior A graduates in general.

Sports Illustrated did little to enhance its reputation at Harvard during the year. In the Spring it wrote a blatantly false article on the Kinasewich situation, and after The Game SI concluded Yale week-end and Harvard were operated only for clubbies, preppies, and wonks.

An HCUA report on ticket policies produced a larger allotment for undergraduates at swimming and hockey events, and led to a new policy of admission at football games. The HCUA investigation was prompted by numerous student complaints over distribution of Army hockey tickets and the complications in tickets for the Yale swimming meet in 1961.

Two major improvements to the physical plant were made in 1962,. Planning began on the new indoor tennis court facility, which will provide year-round courts for both the varsity and students, and the Stadium received a new turf. Nothing was done about seating in the Stadium, however, and a CRIMSON reports noted that heavy rains before the Penn football game caused him and his date Susan to suffer through the contest with freezing hands and "wet bottoms.