Ah, and about that much-maligned offensive creation from the mastermind of Joe Restic. Clearly, Giardi has become the definitive product of the revolutionary creature known as the Multi-flex, but he can recall his initial horror upon first reading the playbook.

"The first meeting I sat in [as a sophomore]," he smiles, "we had nine quarterbacks who sat down in Coach Restic's office. He started drawing plays on the board, and I just said, I'm moving to split end. I mean, I just had no idea.

"But it's not arcane--it's just a system that needs to be learned. I know it well enough that I can start making my own plays up in the huddle...which can be a problem when the other guys start looking at me as if I have 16 heads. It's difficult to break into the system, but once you're in, you've got it."

Giardi has had three years to figure the system out, a period of time in which he has drawn closer to Restic both as an athlete and a person.

"I have a lot of respect for him, and I think it works both ways," he says of a man who has coached the Crimson since 1971. "I can almost talk to him in terms of a player talking to another player, and he often asks me questions he might ask another coach. 'Can the offense do this? he might wonder.

"But we're always talking about things outside of football, too. Like today, I came into practice and we started talking about the NLCS [here he mutters something under his breath about the Braves' inability to win the big ones]. A lot of people seem to think that he's almost a god, some kind of untouchable, but he's really a down-to-earth kind of guy."

With Restic stepping down at the end of the season, critics have wondered if the graduation of his star QB might have a lot to do with the timing. Giardi thinks there's much more to it than that, but it does make some sense.

"Obviously, Coach thought in my sophomore year that I would be able to run the Multi-flex; why would he leave if he thought he still had a player who could effectively run it?" he says. "If he's going to leave anyways in the next few years, why not go out with a quarterback he's had for three years who he thinks can do some things?"

Giardi has thrived on pressure throughout his career; last year's solid performance in the 14-0 victory over Yale salvaged a frustrating season. But then again, he grew up just down the road in Salem, where the rivalries and passions run just as hot.

"The big game in high school was Salem-Beverly, on Thanksgiving; I think it's the fourth-oldest high school game in the country. It's just like Harvard-Yale: if you have and 0-9 record going into that game and win, you're champions, because that's the game everybody remembers, and it gets everybody pumped up.

"There's so much going on out there, it's such a circus. You try to get it all out of your head, but then you realize just how great it all is. It's a lot of fun."

Giardi grew up coming to the Harvard-Yale games, but it wasn't so clear-cut that he would always wear the Crimson. North Carolina, the Air Force Academy and several other local schools were in the running, but in the end, all the factors pointed to Harvard.

"I wanted to play two sports, I wanted to get a good education, and I kinda wanted to be close to home," he says. "It just so happens that Harvard came out on top; I wasn't thinking that I had to get A's my freshman year because I was going to Harvard."

In addition to successfully balancing his studies with his two on-field passions, Giardi the shortstop has another hobby: baseball card collecting. Sitting in what can euphemistically be termed the "ordered chaos" of his Mather House low-rise residence, one can hardly expect the patience and diligence associated with that hobby. But he has over 20,000 cards, many of them valuable.

"My dad was a high school baseball coach, and when he'd come home from work he'd always have two packs of baseball cards, one for me and one for my brother. Every day since, like, 1978. All of the sudden I had a big collection, and then I started buying on my own. I've got some valuable cards--some Clemens rookie cards, some Goodens, but I've gotta hide them now. My mother might throw them away."