The anecdote tells just how intertwined his family life and his passion for sports have become. The blood-lines are there--his father, Al, was a defensive back at Boston College; an uncle, Tommy Thornton, quarterbacked for Boston University and now is a high school coach in Maine.

"It's funny, in a way, that I go to a school where half the people don't even know what football is, it being such a large part of my life," he grins. "I mean in high school, me and my roommates were all studs; I can still go back to Salem and people will come up to me and say, 'Hi, Mike, how's it going?' A lot of them I don't even know; many of them I know through my parents."

But he keeps plugging along in relative anonymity, even though the media won't forget him. "It gets over-whelming at times, but you know you always want to do it because some day its gonna be over and you're going to miss all that stuff."

A rare somber moment for the senior facing his final five games under center. But he knows there is work to be done in pursuit of his first Ivy League ring.

"Each game is an individual game," he says. "You can't look at it as being 'the road to the championship' or anything like that; we'll just take each win and keep going with it. Play our game and we will win, period."

And with Giardi's assuredness leading the Crimson into battle, one senses that Harvard might yet fulfill that promise.