They drove the car right out into the middle of the floor.

Bright red.

A 1986 Honda CRX, the prize for the lucky winner of a local radio station's sweepstakes.

At each of the previous three home games, Big Red faithful had slipped their entries in the ballot box and now, as the car sat there in the middle of Ithaca's Barton Hall and the sponsors stood in a semicircle behind the master of ceremonies, the 5000-strong throng in the stands went crazy.

Five thousand people at an Ivy League basketball game.

I don't know whether or not I would have passed up the Honda if I had won--yeah, I put my name in the box like everyone else--but my conscience breathed a sigh of relief when the slick PR man crooned, "Peter Grossman, of Ithaca. New York, come on down!"

It had all started when I got to Barton and found out Harvard was about to play a basketball game in a ROTC center.

Nothing personal against the armed services, but something seemed a bit off to me.

A bit...frightening.

Then they walked onto the court.

The four cracks in full uniform.

"Please stand as we raise the flag," the public address system announced, as the ROTC color guard stood erect in front of the press table.

Raise the flag?

I thought of games at Briggs, with the good ole Harvard band straggling in minutes before tipoff to crank out the Star Spangled Banner--sometimes.

But now the 80-piece Cornell band--complete with six, count them, six tubas--was pelting out its precision rendition of our nation's anthem.