By JOHN DOE

CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

The first thing you should know about senior quarterback Neil Rose is that he’s not going anywhere.

“I’ve been thinking about it, and if I had to picture what it would be like next year,” Rose says, “I definitely think I’d be back.”

Rose has another year of eligibility after a foot injury in 1999 sidelined him for the entire season. His return next year is good news for all Harvard fans, as Rose’s numbers so far this season—66 percent completion rate, 1553 yards, 11 touchdowns and only three interceptions—have been pushing former Crimson hotshots out of the record books. More importantly, he’s led this team to the Ivy League championship, and his return bodes well for the 2002 squad as well.

“Neil Rose is absolutely amazing,” Harvard Coach Tim Murphy said after the Crimson’s 28-21 defeat over Penn, another game in which Rose rallied the team to victory after an early deficit.

Sure, Rose’s story has been told plenty of times on these pages: the son of an Ohio farmboy Marine and his Japanese-born wife, growing up in Hawaii where football takes a back seat to surfing.

But with the exception of a very few guys on the team, Rose has had one long, tough year.

Rose first had to erase the memory of last year’s 34-24 loss to Yale at the Stadium.

“It was absolutely the worst game I’ve ever played,” Rose says. “It was a culmination of all the things we’d been doing bad all year. I was by far in the worst physical shape of the year as well.”

A bevy of Rose interceptions and the Crimson’s poor play in general meant that Harvard fans, most of whom were seeing him play for the first time, got the impression that he was prone to mistakes.

Then in March 2001, Rose entered the journalistic fray when he penned an op-ed in the Crimson that called for corporate sponsorship of Harvard athletics. Among other things, Rose pointed to poor athletic equipment and sparse attendance as some of the things sponsorship could cure, and one of the reasons he “came to love road games.” His article was in response to an earlier story in the paper about the administration’s stance on corporate sponsorship.

“There’s a lot of things I regret since writing that,” Rose says. “I realize that the message I was trying to get across wasn’t received. People thought that what I was trying to say was that I was unhappy with Harvard, and nothing could be further from the truth.”

While Rose regrets hurting some of those in the Athletic Department, he still maintains his stance is correct. Harvard is the only school in the country that does not accept corporate sponsorship, and Rose feels the handouts have very few drawbacks.

“I was pretty much speaking for every varsity athlete,” Rose says. “I shot an e-mail to every team, at least the real visible ones, and 99 percent said to go for it.”