Super Sunday, 1989.

The nation is talking football. The 49ers and the Bengals. Joe Montana and Boomer Esiason. Bill Walsh and Sam Wyche. The Ickey Shuffle.

But the talk around campus is of a different sort. Students speak of rushing and passing in terms of "rushing" to the library and hoping to "pass" the course.

Students don't want to miss that extra point on the identification section, nor do they want to have to punt on a question.

Super Bowl XXIII falls right smack in the middle of exam period this year. And once again the folly of January exams is exposed.

It has never been more clear that Harvard and the NFL have nothing in common except Pat McInally (the former Harvard gridder who played with the Cincinnati Bengals). Harvard's defiance of the ways of the nation has already forced many students to miss the inauguration of the President of the United States. Worse, it has forced many to forego that most American of rituals--the Super Bowl.

"No Super Bowl for me," a student said. "I gotta study."

"I've got three exams in the next four days."

"This is the first time I've missed the Super Bowl in ten years."

This state of affairs could potentially alienate Harvard from the rest of the country, maybe even more than President Bush realized when he spoke of the "Harvard boutique."

Imagine the following conversation on a plane out of Boston at the start of intersession between a Harvard student who spent all of yesterday studying and your average American traveler.

"Hey, how about that Super Bowl?" the traveler asks.

"Uhh, well, I..." mumbles the Harvard student, squirming uncomfortably.

"Should've used the shotgun more, don't you think?"

"I don't know about that, but I could tell you about the Shogun," the student answers hopefully.

"And how 'bout that Boomer?"

"Actually, I was in a library all day and didn't hear the storm," the student confesses.

"What did you think of Ickey and Rice?"

"Well, I wouldn't call the rice we had at dinner ickey. Maybe malodorous."

"Montana had his rough spots..."

"It certainly does. I went mountain climbing there once."

"Do you know what the hell I've been talking about all this time?" asks the exasperated traveler.

Hopefully none of us will be put in such an uncompromising situation but, in this day of books calling for academic institutions to help students become culturally literate, forcing countless Harvard students to miss what over half the United States saw yesterday doesn't make them any more in tune with what American culture is about.

Right or wrong, someone who knows nothing about Milton, Marlowe and Jonson is safer from ridicule than someone who is ignorant of Ickey, Montana and Boomer. At least for this week.

Fortunately, there are enough diehard fans or lucky souls already on intersession that most of us can hold our own when we venture out of Cambridge next weekend. For those of you who were locked in a library yesterday, for those who still say "Einstein" instead of "Bill Walsh" when asked to name a genius, a little research into yesterday's happenings in Miami would be in order. And I don't mean the riots in Overtown.