For others it may take a little more time to learn the history behind the Crimson.

"I didn't know that hockey was a big deal," said Uma Viswanathan. "The only way I knew was from Love Story and that was it."

Some of the less glorified sports are starting to make their impressions on the new students. Instead of football and hockey championships, tennis, squash and soccer have surged to the forefront as students have become more impressed with the Crimson's athletic diversity than its brawn.

"I was looking to do crew, but not now because I realized what a time commitment it was," Cox said. "I realized that we had 41 sports, but it didn't really hit me until the sports meeting when I heard the coaches stand up and tell about all the sports that we could do."

"I knew that it had more intercollegiate sports than any other college supposedly," Stryer concurred. "But I wasn't really interested in that because I just wanted to do intramurals for fun."

Sometimes it is the athletes, like Jen Lee and Dan Varnes, who learn to appreciate the legacy of Harvard athletics by simple immersion.

"I'm a lacrosse player so I heard a lot about it," Lee said. "And my sister is a senior too so I got those newspapers which said a lot about how Harvard is doing."

"I was a swimming recruit so I got all the information and knew what was going on," Varnes agreed.

Still, it is hard to imagine at a school with such a respectable history in athletics that Harvard's own youth do not see it as an athletic powerhouse.

In the end it may take a national title run by the football or hockey teams-or else a number one rating in Sports Illustrated instead of U.S. News and World Report-for Harvard to finally be respected among its own.