"The only possible limitation for this team coming up is mental," Restic. "If the attitude is right, if the players want to make the system work, it will. I have complete faith in this system."

HE SHOULD know best. At Hamilton last year, Restic won the Eastern Division championship of the CFL, and over a three-year period he posted a 22-17-3 record using this very approach.

The Restic system is designed to appeal to the players who carry it out, and the response from Harvard's returning lettermen has been generally more than favorable.

At the team's one (and only) day of spring practice with the new coaches in May, there was a feeling of quiet enthusiasm, a desire to test out both Restic and his system. Restic himself noticed a "positive, working type attitude" that day.

"I want to give a maximum number of players a chance to play," Restic says, "The game has to be fun or else there's no point to it. Of course, this doesn't mean that winning is not our primary goal. It is now and always will be."

Restic is fully aware that he faces an overload of personnel at several positions, which lends itself to unhappy benchwarming. The foremost case of unhappiness last Fall involved quarterbacking, where Rod Foster and Eric Crone traded the job every five minutes for five games, and Rex Blankenship got left somewhere in the shadows.

"I don't anticipate any problems there," Restic grinned last week. "Our design is to project players into the overall picture, and to capitalize on the strengths of each one. These guys-meaning the whole team-are mature enough to realize their individual roles in the program, and I know they will."

Another potential, but unlikely, problem Restic may have to contend with is that of racial dissension. Tension between the team's black players and the coaching staff grew during Yovicsin's last years, and it reached a peak after the Dartmouth game last Fall.

It was that the squad's five blacks boycotted practice for two days and confronted Yovicsin with charges of racism and discrimination against several of his assistant coaches.

Not surprisingly, one of Restic's first moves was to hire Ralph Goldston, a former all-star back in the CFL, as a defensive coach. Goldston, who played under Restic for two seasons, was the first black to play for the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL.

RESTIC has recruited three other assistants-two from his staff at Hamilton-and will add another toward the end of this month. Two of the new coaches. Al Bruno and Carl Schuette, are former pros, and George Karras was head coach at Witchita State before moving on to UMass as a defensive coach five years ago.

Restic likes what he sees at Harvard. The players impress him with their enthusiasm; the Athletic Department suits him perfectly, he says. But mostly, he is glad to back at a college.

"The pros are like a business," he explained. "There football becomes a way of life. In college, it is completely the opposite-football is entirely voluntary, people are involved because they are motivated."

Restic has been away for almost ten years. After graduating from Villanova in 1952, he played two seasons as a pass receiver and defensive back for the Philadelphia Eagles (where he first met Goldston). His coaching career began the next year, 1954, at the high school level.

From 1956 to 1958, Restic served as an assistant coach at Brown, then he moved on to Colgate for two years. During his last year at Colgate, the Red Raiders beat Harvard, Yale and Princeton on consecutive weekends.

Restic went to Hamilton in 1962 and became head coach in 1968 after five seasons as first assistant and offensive coordinator.

Now Restic is back to a campus, and there are no regrets. "The experience in the pros enable me to see the total spectrum much better now," he says. "In this way, I can help people to act on the basis of broad experience."

Harvard coaches traditionally are chosen with long tenures in mind. Certainly Restic has the ideal squad to begin a winning career with-next year's Crimson squad, if not the Ivy League favorite, is the prime contender for Dartmouth's title.

Restic knew this, and he plans full well to make the best of it. Indeed, his drive for success is harnessed only by his desire for everyone-coaches, players and spectators-to enjoy the game of football as he does.