"Even in the football world, when you got over the fact that people would question your toughness, your ability, your grit, you knew that you had the extra intelligence because you went to Harvard," he adds.

After the NFL, Dockery became a sports broadcaster at a New York TV station in 1976. During the course of a career that took him to CBS, NBC and then back to CBS, he covered college and professional football as well as the Tour de France and the Olympics. The basics of the profession came to him quickly, Dockery says, thanks to his academic background.

"Once I got to reporting, the education that I got helped me enormously," Dockery said. "It allowed me to organize a story and present myself in a confident manner. It was Harvard that presented me with the academics that I needed."

It was this "mental edge," he explains, that helped push him ahead of other sports broadcasters who relied on industry connections or their past athletic achievements to get jobs.

Regardless of where it took him, Dockery says whenever the Harvard name came up the reaction was always the same.

"There [is] a momentary sort of quiet as they take it in," he said. "There is always a slight pause. The name carries an image and a tremendous amount of weight."

Still, Dockery said, a Harvard degree is not always an asset in the world of sports.

"Sports casters recognize the smarts," he said. "You want to say to people, 'Hey I have a Harvard degree here, but sometimes they could really care less.' It is a double-edged coin."