The news from Providence last month was not good. Among the freshman hopefuls for next year's Brown football team are more than 20 would be linemen of the 6-ft. 3-in. 230-lb. variety, the Brown Daily Herald reported. For a Crimson football squad looking to rebound from last season's so-so third-place finish, the prospect of doing battle in the pits with even a pair of those behemoths isn't very encouraging. And around the Ivy League, in many sports, the story is the same: Blue-chip athletes are being vigorously courted, and often successfully wooed, by Harvard's athletic rivals. Yet Harvard continues to stand by its policy of low-level recruiting, with results that have been, at least so far, fairly good.

Of course, what distinguishes Harvard recruiting from the rest of the Ivy League are only a few minor differences compared to the differences between the Ivy League and the real world of Notre Dame and Ohio. The most important difference is money: the Ivies have placed strict limits on athletic scholarships and grants-in-aid, which means the average Ivy League athlete can't make a living out of going to school. This restriction places all the Ivies in a bind--they simply cannot compete with Midwestern athletic mills on a financial basis. Yet Harvard, despite these handicaps, continues to place itself at a further disadvantage by strictly limiting the recruiting activities of its coaching staffs.

By far the heaviest burden for the coaches is the University's ban on recruiting trips by athletic personnel. Admissions Office rules prohibit Harvard coaches from visiting the homes of prospective students without special permission from the dean of admissions; in fact, no coach can even "initiate contact" with a high school athlete. The theory is that the athlete is not a special quantity, that he or she must seek out Harvard rather than vice versa--an interesting fiction the athletic staff has perpetuated by delegating its responsibility for finding promising athletes to a national network of alumni.

As one varsity coach noted, "If there's somebody out there who's good, then I'm sure to know his coach, or else I know somebody else who does. And if we can get an alumnus to talk to him and he still doesn't have the desire to send in a goddamn letter of application, then for Pete's sake, who wants him?"

In some cases the alumni operation is formal, such as football coach Joe Restic's practice of assigning each of his assistant coaches to coordinate the alumni efforts in a different section of the country. Other coaches, including baseball mentor Loyal Park, tend to rely more on a few individuals they know personally, and even on the advice of an occasional professional scout. But regardless of the sport, it is the alumni and other interested volunteers who bear the burden of finding and approaching high school prospects.

Alan O. Dann '55, an active recruiter in Connecticut, says the alumni's athletic recruting efforts blend in with its attempts to attract high-caliber high school students with different talents. Much of the recruiting drive is channeled through the National Student Scholarships Committee and the Schools Committees established by each of the 80 Harvard Clubs around the country. A total of about 3000 alumni are active in recruting students, with about 400 to 800 primarily involved in athletic recruiting, Dann says. "We just keep our eyes out for names--National Merit lists, science fair winners--and we also read the sports pages. It's a way to keep in touch with Cambridge, with something that meant a great deal to us when we were young," he adds.

Combined with the activities of "booster groups" such as the Friends of Harvard Football, which search for students and frequently sponsor dinners and outings for prospective Harvard athletes in a given area, the alumni network provides what Harvard coaches agree is an essential tool for digging up needed talent. Throw in the efforts of recruiting "superstars" such as F. Philip Locke '33, who scours California for the likes of All-American Pat McInally '75, and the Harvard athletic program is clearly at no loss for talent scouts.

But finding a prospective student is the easy part. Getting him or her into Harvard--leading the prospect carefully through the maze of tempting scholarship offers from Big Ten schools, and then seeing if he or she will be accepted by an admissions committee that doesn't roll over and play dead for every all-state linebacker that comes along--often creates problems. Pure athletic scholarships and submissive admissions committees, the two weapons that have built many an NCAA champion, are not in the Ivy League arsenal. But Harvard has disarmed itself even further by stripping its coaches of the ability to bring their sales pitches into the living rooms of their prospective charges.

The admissions office ban on coaches' recruiting trips has, in the eyes of a few coaches, put Harvard at a major disadvantage in its attempts to woo scholar-athletes away from other Ivy League schools. Restic says that each year, the football team loses prospects to the personal appeals of rival coaches, and adds that "'the competition is getting heavier." Baseball coach Park agrees. "There's nothing like personal contact as far as I'm concerned. We feel we still get the good student-athletes, we get great athletes. But when a guy's in the kid's house, talking to him, talking to his parents--it makes it tougher on us." The familiar idea that Harvard is good enough to "sell itself" to prospective students fades a bit when a Brown or Yale recruiter is around to give the opposition a hard sell, and to clear up misconceptions a high school student may have about Ivy League life.

As John Lee, varsity wrestling coach, notes, "The biggest barrier is often the feeling that they can't make it. The reputation is too scary." It is often necessary to talk Harvard down, to humanize the place by making it clear that people other than Roosevelts and Cabots go to the school, to make the apprehensive athlete realize he can survive in Cambridge. Yet the Harvard myth, the Crimson tradition that is supposed to "sell itself," runs counter to such a self-effacing approach.

The possible misconceptions about Harvard life may also explain why Harvard enjoys more recruiting success in some sports than others. Some sports, coaches note, need less of a hardsell than others, and therefore Harvard is able to get by with its low-key approach. Kevin Mackey, basketball coach at Don Bosco Technical High School in Boston, says "suburban sports" such as football and tennis are more likely to attract students who are interested in the long-term benefits of an Ivy League education. Other athletes need to be sold harder, he says: "Basketball, for instance, with few exceptions, is a game that the economically deprived now dominate. It springs from an inner-city situation. These are people that don't have the money for ice skates to play hockey, they don't often have someone to take a great deal of interest in them--they are less interested in being a scholar-athlete, they want the instant gratification playing right away."

Royce N. Flippin Jr., athletic director at Princeton, disagrees with Mackey. "The real key is not what sport it is, or whether it's Ivy League or not, it's the quality of the program. If the student thinks he or she can excel he'll come, hardnosed inner-city kid or not." But Flippin admits that personal contact between coaches and players is often necessary to remove misconceptions about Ivy League athletics--especially in sports such as basketball and wrestling, two "inner-city" sports in which Princeton is the Ivy League champion.

Harvard realizes that athletic recruiting is a necessary part of maintaining a good athletic program, and part of keeping up the good image that helps the school "sell itself." Robert B. Watson '37, retiring athletic director and former dean of students, credits the College's active recruitment program with helping Harvard adapt to the post-World War II generation of students. "You've just got to have a varied student body, and that includes athletes, if you're going to continue to attract the right kind of students, he says. As a result, the ancient taboo against recruiting in any form does not blind the admissions office to the practical needs of the athletic staff.

One sign of the co-operation between coaches and admissions office is the current loosening of the once-rigid attitude against coaches' travel. While Harvard still enforces the ban, the protests of a number of coaches may have had some impact. L. Fred Jewett '57, dean of admissions and financial aid, who has the final decision on the issue of coaches' travel, says he does not think such a form of recruitment is necessarily wrong. "I'm not so hung up on the philosophical issue of whether coaches should travel," Jewett says, adding, "I simply would not argue that this is a necessary item of expense." The cost of financing a typical year's worth of recruiting trips--which Ivy League athletic officials estimate could run from $10,000 to $20,000--is the main barrier to opening up the Harvard travel restriction, he says. Jewett does not rule out the possibility of lifting the travel ban if recruiting trips could be financied in a way that would not add to the University's current expenses.

The biggest barrier to Harvard recruiters, however, remains the fact that the ultimate decision to accept a student-athlete still rests with the admissions committee. Because a coach cannot guarantee admission to a good athletic prospect, he or she runs the risk of wasting effort to promote an unsuccessful candidate. "You don't get a kid interested who's not in the ballpark," Lee says, but even then there is a danger of misjudging badly. Lee recounts the story of a how he courted one wrestler--who has since gone on to post a phenomenal NCAA tournament record--with hopes of Harvard admission, only to see the committee reject him. The rejection soured the wrestler's family on Harvard so much that his younger brothers--who probably could have made the school--never considered coming to Cambridge.