Sanders received a standing ovation in his coaching debut in Harvard's first game up at UMass. But he did not get such attention in his home opener, and when Harvard was hopelessly behind at the half many of the fans walked out.

There are no athletic heroes made overnight at Harvard. Only those who have been here a long time with winning records, such as crew wizard Harry Parker or squash and tennis coach Jack Barnaby, are truly worshipped--at least as far as any athletic figure can be revered at Harvard.

Out of this affair between Harvard and its more physically endowed, comes a different sort of hero. Eric Crone was such a man. Crone, the quite-often-inconsistent quarterback of Joe Restic's razzle-dazzle ball club, gained immortality among the Crimson football faithful during the Yale game of 1971. With Harvard ahead by a slim lead and little time remaining on the clock, Crone was sent in to eat up time. Eric managed, however, to take the ball into his own end zone and was thumped for a safety. From then on he would be known as "Endzone" Crone, a name he lived with throughout his unspectacular senior year at QB.

And there's Harry. Bob Harrison has become another folk hero in the annals of Crimson sport. The volatile, irascible former coach of Harvard hoop has left an indelible mark upon all who knew him.

Harrison's on-and off-court antics entranced even the most blase fan, who was forced to wonder how a man with so much talent could not motivate it or coach it to a successful season. Harry hoped for Harvard to make the top twenty in the nation, but couldn't even take the Ivy League.

The spirit of Bob Harrison will always haunt the IAB.

Harvard has embraced these men and others of similar achievement in a manner few other schools could. They are the bastard heroes born out of holy wedlock, the illegitimate heirs to our future memories of the glorious days past.

For you, the uninitiated, Crone and Harrison are merely the wild tales of a seemingly dark age, heroes without real form or function. But there will be others in the course of the next four years to take their places, and you will embrace them.

The Harvard experience has bred an uncommon sense of the importance of sports in our lives. Athletics are not "big-time" in the sense they are at USC or Notre Dame or Alabama, yet Harvard still produces teams of national caliber (hockey, Harvard and Radcliffe crew, swimming, squash, baseball, sailing and soccer, to name a few) and has walked away with its share of national championships. You can approach them from either end.

For the average fan, and most of you will be spectators for the majority of your time here, there is a strange attraction to the decrepit facilities that host Harvard's battles with the dreaded foe.

You can go to see the Endzones and Harries, or to become part of a joyous mob in Park St. Station or Harvard Square, or merely have something to do with your date. The strange relationship between Harvard and its athletics has spawned a multitude of choices