Thomas--who is currently instructing Whittington in Latin 112a, History of Classical Latin Literature--says, "He attends faithfully, except when the buses are leaving early for Cornell or something like that, and that's understandable."

Whittington says Classics was a natural choice. "It's just something I did a lot of in high school. Gonzaga, as a Jesuit school, sort of concentrated on that.

"It's not much more irrelevant than economics or something like that. You might as well spend four years doing something at least mildly enjoyable," he says.

Although academics here remained a very important part of Harvard for him, Whittington has structured his four years primarily around football. Entering with sophomore standing because he anticipated taking a semester off--but still playing four years of football--he trains hard both in and out of season.

About his semester off--which he spent in Cambridge working in the Widener microtext/government documents section--Whittington says, "I knew I was going to be here in the fall, definitely, for football. I would have been a fool not to come back in the fall, because, frankly, football has been the biggest and most satisfying thing here for me."

That's not surprising, because he does have talent. He had enough skill and determination to be a two-year starter, in spite of the fact that Harvard didn't recruit him. "All the other schools I applied to recruited me--Army, William and Mary, practically every team we played this year recruited me--but not Harvard. Harvard didn't have its act together in Washington that year," he jokes, "but that didn't matter, because I wanted to go to Harvard."

Since coming to Harvard he has made the transition from tackle to end--"No more three-point stance for me"--even though he doesn't really have the size for that position.

"His biggest asset is running plays down," Crimson head coach Joe Restic says. "His strength is recovery, getting back in the action. He doesn't give up. He continues the play until it's finished, and that's the same with practice. He continues until it's finished."

"I was never called a jock until I came to Harvard; but when I came here, just because I played football everyone called me a jock. And personally, I don't consider myself a jock at all," Whittington concludes.

As if to emphasize his point, he relates an anecdote about athletic director John P. Reardon. Two years ago--in the middle of the Crimson's six-game losing streak--Reardon had a little chat with the team, telling them that he was concerned about their image, and said that it was alright for Harvard's football players to be friends with cellists.

And in fact, Whittington is very good friends with one cellist, HRO president Joyce Jacobsen; the two of them were part of a quartet which split the rent on an apartement last summer. "He's really quite domestic," Jacobsen says. "He makes a mean corned beef and cabbage."