When senior Chris Doyle quit football early in September, no one told him he was quitting the rest of his life or told him he was too young to make the decision. Defensive end Doyle wasn't important enough to have to justify his existence in philosophical articles in the Boston Globe. Coach John Yovicsin called him at his home and said that he thought Doyle would miss football. Doyle thought about it and decided to come back.

He came back to a team that did better than most people expected. Doyle is happy he returned to football, not so much because the team has won a lot of games, but because of the way it won the games.

"I suppose winning Is the point of the game, but I don't care about our record," Doyle said Wednesday. "It hasn't been the kind of season where we said, 'We're going to kill 'em.'" We've just sort of hung in there, and I feel good about hanging in there with the rest of the team."

Doyle is a low-key athlete. He has no admiration for high-powered athlete programs of high-powered athletes. He was not recruited, and he went out for football because "it seemed like a good thing to do at the time," Unlike some Harvard athletes who resent the fairly de-emphasized approach to athletics that Harvard takes, Doyle appreciates Harvard's attitude.

"I like the program. I think Harvard has to be careful not to get too aggressive. People sort of looked at the freshman basketball team last year and said, 'Oh, Jesus.'

"Harvard is a bunch of people who are all amazing. Everybody is very cocky. No one is very impressed with anyone else around here. I think that's a good attitude toward sports. It's just one of the many, many things that people can be good at. Athletes are reminded that they have to do something else to be a human being."

Doyle's attitude toward Yovicsin reflects his attitude toward athletics. Although Yovicsin has come under a lot of criticism for being an unimaginative, uninspiring coach, Doyle feels that Yovicsin is right for Harvard.

"Yovvy is a shy man, and he is not completely poised. He lacks the command presence to reach out and touch people, and he gets flustered when he can't understand people and people can't understand him. But he's an honest man, and I think that should be prized. There's too much two-facedness in big-time football. Athletes get used a lot, but they don't get used here."

Exaggerated Benefits

Doyle feels that the supposedly positive effects of football and athletics in general are exaggerated by those who live for the game.

"I really wonder about football giving you all those virtues. I don't think the big stars are such admirable people. Look at Dick Butkus. After the amount of football he's played, you'd think he'd be one of the most virtuous guys around. Instead, he's an animal."

Doyle also questions the psychological mystique of competitive athletics, the glorified capacity of an athlete to perform feats "on guts alone." He feels that the commercialization and intensity of big-time athletics has further lessened the role of psychological incentives.

"Big-time football has replaced being psyched with bennies."