"Crew is very fickle" said Pennsylvania stroke Gardner Cadwalader with practiced conviction last week. "Last year, we beat Harvard one week and lost to them the next. But I think that this year's shell is made up of more interesting and diverse people than in the past."

Cadwalader, however, neglected to mention whether they rowed . any better than in the past, and even after today's Adams Cup showdown at 6 p. m. on the Charles River, the question may not be answered any more decisively.

Ever since the Quakers began mounting a serious challenge to Harvard's heavyweight supremacy in 1966, the Adams Cup has served as the first of two battles between the two crews to decide an unofficial national championship.

And until last May, when Penn shocked the Crimson by a length and a half on the Schuylkill, there was no question that the best oarsmen in the nation rowed out of Cambridge.

Harvard had always followed up its Adams Cup victory with a similar decision at the EARC sprints a week later, so the issue was usually fairly well settled.

But when Penn failed to do the same at Worcester last year, it raised an important question. As long as Harvard stays out of the IRA championships in favor of its four-mile race with Yale on the same day, which is the better crew if each wins a race?

Just Ask Your Heart

The Crimson oarsmen felt that their Sprint championship carried more weight nationally than Penn's victory in the Adams Cup, since it was achieved in the presence of all of the EARC's crews, and since Penn traditionally goes downhill after the crews' first meeting.

Last year, after beating Harvard so decisively at Philadelphia that most Eastern newspapers called it the end of the Harvard dynasty, Penn lost just as badly to the Crimson the next week. By the time the IRA race rolled around in June, the Quakers were a shadow of their former selves, defeating Dartmouth by only a length.

This spring, from the performances of both boats, it seems impossible to predict a victory this afternoon with any degree of accuracy. Penn, as usual, has been superb, ripping Princeton and Columbia by two lengths, and breezing past Yale by three.

And Harvard has been no less so. After crushing Brown by four lengths, coach Harry Parker shuffled his boat, and the Crimson went on to trounce Princeton and M. I. T. last week by three-and-a-half lengths.

The race will have a third boat-the Navy heavyweights.