For longer than any Harvard student can remember, the Crimson Sports Grille has been the freshman class' worst-kept secret.

According to Harvard Student Agencies' Unofficial Guide to Life at Harvard, the JFK Street restaurant and bar is "a legendary spot in the Square that people love to hate. Its status as a freshman final club makes it a wonderful sanctuary from the often dull yard scene but it's not just your fake ID or the glasses at the Grille that are made of plastic. By junior year most students have moved on."

Given the tattered cloak of secrecy around this contemporary Square speakeasy, its legal survival over the eight years since it was purchased by Paul C. McCarthy ranks as one of the wonders of the contemporary Cambridge world. Its continued operation is even more remarkable in the context of current trends in area nightlife--after MIT first-year Scott Krueger died of an alcohol overdose in 1997, city authorities have cracked down on bars and clubs serving minors all over the Boston area.

But according to city licensing officials, the Grille, primarily by virtue of deft legal representation and restrictions on the Cambridge and Massachusetts agencies responsible for overseeing it, has managed to elude the clutches of the Cambridge License Commission and Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (ABCC), despite a plethora of underage students found drinking there in stings conducted over the past decade.

Now, however, the bar--and the first-years who perennially frequent it on Thursday through Saturday nights--may be crashing back to earth. Two weeks ago, ABCC investigators who found six minors drinking at the Grille in a December sting recommended that the Commission refuse McCarthy the option of paying a fine in lieu of a license suspension, as he has done after each finding of underage drinking--at least five to the state and one to the city, according to the commissions' records.

And according to Cambridge License Commission Executive Director Richard V. Scali, the Cambridge commission plans to schedule a hearing on the bar's entire record in late April to early May that could result in a revocation of its alcohol license, after the ABCC makes it disposition.

The Grille's lawyer, James J. Rafferty, says the bar's days may be numbered.

"I'm starting to feel that there are a lot of forces lining up against Mr. McCarthy," he says. "This seems to be reaching a critical mass, and I'm not sure what the future holds...It's very obvious that if he's caught again, his chances of survival are nil. All eyes are on the Crimson Grille these days."