While many of Harvard's most loyal students, faculty and alumni watched the Crimson eleven defeat the New Haven invaders Saturday, other undergraduates did not allow the long-awaited contest to deter them from other pursuits.

If recent reports in the press of an escalation of grade-grubbing on campuses are true, pre-medical and pre-law students ought to have occupied the libraries as usual.

However, attendants at both Lamont and Hilles circulation desks said fewer students than usual had checked out books that afternoon.

Inevitably, a few diehards could be found at the tables and desks of Widener, Lamont, Hilles and Cabot.

As might be expected, a few of the students interviewed, less than avid football fans, ignored the action on the opposite bank of the Charles.

"I just don't get turned on by football," Philip N. Warburg '77 said. "I think it represents the ultimate in Ivy League decadence."

Margaret D. Hurt '76 spent the day writing a history paper in the Widener reading room. She said she dislikes both football and getting drunk.

"Besides," she said, "Harvard spends too much money on football, while it is cutting back on undergraduate education."

John G. Daugman '76 said he prefers battles of brains to those of brawn. Since his discovery of chess, he said, "I find it difficult to feel entertained by watching a pack of Goliaths, that is to say, Philistines, knocking each other down on a football field."

Some students said they prefer what purists might call "real" football. Anne Cherner '76 said, "I'm from Alabama, and compared with Bear Bryant's Crimson Tide, Harvard football holds no mysteries for me."

The Game simply failed to interest Robert L. Cowdrey '77. "It seems a more relevant question why someone would go to the game," he said.

"I don't even know who they are playing," Mary Jo Fernbach '76 said as she scribbled from the Widener card catalogue the call number of another book she needed for her paper on Richard II.

An alumnus of the Class of 1973 who is now a graduate student in comparative literature asked if the Yale game was in Cambridge this year.

At least two pre-meds in Cabot wished they were part of the cheering Crimson crowds in Soldier's Field.

"I do not want anyone to know I'm not at the game," said one who refused to identify himself.

Kathleen B. Sullivan '77, a pre-med biology major, said she had an exam Monday and had not worked at all during the week.

"I love football. I wish I were there," she said. "There are too many exams in this place."