I'm warning you. Look where that kind of sports fanaticism has led.

According to department chairman Robert Putnam, several government professors at one of the department's regular Monday night meetings threatened him with a no confidence vote if the session did not finish in time for the members to watch the Miami-Chicago showdown earlier this season.

"One of the few controversies in the government department that The Crimson has not picked up," Putnam said.

Though Putnam says that the movement was spearheaded by some of the leading scholars of the department (he would not go on the record with their names), no high level academician will confirm Putnam's accusation. In fact, Professor Robert Keohane said that it was Putnam himself who was in the greatest rush to get home that night.

Professor Morris Fiorina--a Steelers and Patriots fan--did say that he was obliged to sit through several hours of department politics and just barely arrived home in time to see the last quarter of the Miami-Pats Monday night battle, just in time to see "Eason throw it away."

With delicate diplomacy, Putnam may be able to get out of this mess unscathed. But with "a significant sum" riding on the outcome of Sunday's game and saying that he couldn't "imagine anything in the Government Department that could get me up from the game," Putnam is clearly not taking things seriously enough.

Unlike Putnam, Dean of Students Archie Epps, speaking for his family, said that football is simply "not our game" and added that he might watch the Super Bowl only "if I'm in town."

But those who don't care much for professional football should realize that even they must make way for the Super Bowl.

An intrepid Mather House resident invited David and Patricia Herlihy, co-masters of Mather House, to a cocktail party which was scheduled during the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, the Herlihy's had a previous engagement with NBC.

"She eventually had to postpone [the cocktail party] because no one was going," David Herlihy said.

Oh, well.

I guess in this crazy, mixed-up world of ours, the fortunes of a bunch of men running around in funny uniforms may in fact amount to more than a hill of beans.

Sometimes, it's a life-and-death issue.

Dershowitz--a die-hard Celtics fan who had never missed a Celtics playoff game--was in the midst of defending Danish socialite Claus Von Bulow against murder charges while last year's Celtics-Sixers semi-final playoff series was being played. The jury was out and was expected to return at any moment when the players took the floor for the sixth and final game.

That night, Dershowitz was at Boston Garden.

He went to the Garden, to watch his beloved Celtics, with a beeper just in case the jury returned a verdict that evening. A car waited for him outside the area to take him to Providence where the trial was being held.

It was a hung jury.

"The Celtics lost but Von Bulow won so I guess I came out even," says Dershowitz.