But he had the reaction of most specialists when deprived of the opportunity to perform their specialty. "I thought I could have done as well as or better than the guy who played," he recalls.
This summer he took positive steps to avoid a repeat of his sophomore year. He cut his playing weight from 194 pounds to 184, and he spent the summer living at the Pi Eta Club, working for Buildings and Grounds, and practicing his football. It helped.
"He had a super [training] camp," Glueck says. "He's making me a heck of a coach. He hasn't missed a practice."
In fact, Vignali hasn't missed a practice since ninth grade. His memories of football go back as far as first grade. When he was six he played catch with his father Larry, who was an All-American at Pitt, drafted out of college in the fifth round by the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Vignali says his father encouraged his football efforts but didn't pour on the pressure. When the time came to apply to college, he promised his parents he'd visit three Ivy schools as well as three other universities. Vignali almost went for the big time, signing a letter of intent to accept a scholarship from the University of Minnesota.
"I remember Minnesota," he says. "They had girls all over everybody."
But when a Harvard coach came to see schoolmate Eric Fee, Vignali was impressed, and when he left the coal-mining area of Union-town, Pa. for college, he headed east rather than west.
"It came down to Harvard or Yale at the end," Vignali recalls. "Yale had the football tradition. That kind of made up for it being in New Haven."
At Harvard he has gained an appreciation for the less glamorous side of an offensive back's job. "I get as much out of a good block as I do out of a good run," he says. "I never had to block a kick in high school."
Vignali repeatedly praises those who block for him both on the offensive line and in the backfield.
"They told me I have to take them out to dinner at Anthony's Pier 4 if I break any more records," he says.
But if he breaks another record be still won't be recognized by at least half the student body, a fact that he has learned to accept. "It's just the way Harvard," Vignali says. "I had somebody ask me the other day if we'd won the game." *Harvard Record, *Projected Harvard Record.