Last week, Scott Collins received a pleasant surprise.

"I was standing in the dining hall," the 1986 football captain said, "and somebody congratulated me on being named Academic All-America and said that they had read about it in The Boston Globe. I didn't know anything about it, so I went out and bought a Globe."

By reading the fine print of the scoreboard page. Collins discovered that he had been named a Division I-AA Academic All-America at linebacker for District I, a region comprised of New England and New York.

When asked why Collins learned of his award in idle dining hall banter rather than from the award's sponsors. GTE and the Sports Information Directors of America, Frank Cicero. Harvard's assistant sports information director, said that Collins will be notified officially when the nationwide team is selected from the regional squads.

None of this seemed to faze the Winthrop House junior, who only recently was elected football captain for the coming season.

Regarding that honor, Collins said, "There's quite a tradition behind being captain at Harvard, but what really meant the most to me was being selected by the hundred guys I've played together with for the past two or three years."

An economics concentrator. Collins is weighing law school or a career in advertising after graduation.

Regarding the coming season. Collins was more definitive. "I'm very optimistic," he said. "People probably hink we'll be weak in the offensive and defensive lines and also the defensive backfield, since we're losing so many people. But this is a senior-oriented program, and we've got so many capable juniors and sophomores who would have played this year if they had gone somewhere else who can step in."

They'll be led, of course, by an Academic All-American.