"Are you worried about the game?" Dave Matthews asked. "They look pretty solid, unless they're hiding something from us."

"Yes, they're a fine team," football coach Joe Restic said, meaning the Yale team that Harvard would face on Saturday, five days away.

"Are you expecting a big first quarter?"

"Yessir, yessir," Restic said quickly.

"I mean, bigger than usual?"

Just then Matthews and Restic reached Mt. Auburn Street. They waited for a break in the noon hour traffic, then hurried across and continued walking up Holyoke Street, heading for the Varsity Club.

There was still a question pending, but Restic had apparently forgotten about it, so Matthews, trying to make conversation, said, "We'll be playing a team that has only been behind once this year, by a field goal."

"Oh, really?" said Restic. He had not known that.

It was the sort of information that only Dave Matthews among the Harvard sports hierarchy would know. He is Director of Sports Information, which means that all the press releases about Harvard sports, all the team rosters and biographies, all the statistics and press passes, come from his cluttered office at 60 Boylston Street.

Usually, Dave Matthews has to hustle Boston sportswriters into covering Harvard athletics. (Who cares, after all, about some fencing match or a Radcliffe field hockey game?) That is when obscure nuggets of information like the one he gave Restic are useful: sports reporters are a lazy lot, Matthews knows, and if he can dig up some interesting bit of trivia for them about a Harvard team, they will use it. And that is what Dave Matthews is paid to do: help sportswriters and hype Harvard. He is very good at it.

This week, of course, would be different for Matthews. There was no need to entice reporters into covering the Yale game. It is the one Harvard sports event where Matthews does not have to cajole attention from the Boston press, the one week when reporters do not want little nuggets from Matthews as much as two other things: seats in the press box (because it is always jammed for the Yale game) and quotes for their Yale week preview stories from the coach, taciturn Joe Restic.

Restic was holing up with game films and assistant coaches this week, a difficult man for sportswriters to corner. So Matthews would have lunch with Restic at the Varsity Club today and get all the dope, then funnel it to reporters.

They walked quickly up Holyoke Street, then turned right on Mass Ave. Restic, tall and lean, took long strides; Matthews, small and paunchy, scurried to keep up.

People on the street recognized Restic--"Hi, coach," a student said as he passed, and another man shook hands with him--but nobody seemed to know Dave Matthews, the scrappy guy in the blue parka, the Jeff in this Mutt and Jeff duo.

They had lunch in a small, wood-paneled room off the main Varsity Club dining hall, a room with a bronzed track shoe in a glass trophy case. Restic cut his big hamburger into neat squares and ate them with his fork. Matthews put his hamburger between two slices of toast, doused it with catsup, and ate with his hands.