"There's no more football, no more baseball," Matthews finally said as they stood by the door, writers and coaches filing past them. "That's my back yard! Without football and baseball, I wouldn't be here."
***
There was only a wire fence separating his house from the end zone of the University's Centennial Field, so as a child in Burlington, Matthews could watch college football games from an upstairs window. Or he could jump the fence and play football himself--or baseball, or basketball. It was a well-equipped field with facilities for every sport, and Matthews played them all.
He was not much of an athlete, though, and even in the sixth grade, he enjoyed writing about sports in his school newspaper (which he edited) as much as playing. When he thought about his future, Dave Matthews saw himself as a sportswriter.
Matthews received his first money for writing sports when he was a high school junior: $10-15 a week for covering local games in the Burlington Daily News, a now-defunct William Loeb paper.
After graduating from high school, he entered the University of Vermont in 1961 and almost immediately found himself in serious academic trouble. Matthews hated his courses (especially Spanish and Geology) and never studied, preferring to play cards, drink and write for the Daily News. He landed on academic probation and barely made it through his freshman year. In the middle of his sophomore year, he "blew it or something in the clutch" and flunked out.
The University forced Matthews to take a semester off before applying for re-admission, and he spent the time as a deck hand on a Lake Champlain ferry. "I had a great time," he says.
He returned to school a more serious student, but hardly a dedicated scholar. He took grade school-like courses (majoring in history, with a minor in geography), and spent part of his time working as an assistant in the school's sports information office (and most of his time, in something of a conflict of interest, writing sports for the Burlington Free Press.)
When he graduated in 1966, Matthews became assistant sports editor of the Free Press, but left after a month to join the rush of young men volunteering for the National Guard to avoid being drafted (Matthews considers himself moderately left-wing in his politics and did not support the Vietnam war.)
After a year in the Guard, Matthews returned to Burlington to become the University of Vermont's director of sports information. He held the job until August 1969, when Baaron Pittenger, then Harvard's "DSI," offered Matthews a job as his assistant. The job meant a raise of $1000 a year for Matthews. He quickly accepted.
A year later, Pittenger became associate director of athletics, and Matthews hoped to succeed him. But Harvard hired a replacement from Detroit. Matthews was hurt but not bitter, and he devoted himself to a massive re-designing of all the office's publications, from football programs to statistical brochures. When his Michigan boss left a year later, Matthews had no trouble getting his job.
In running the office since then, Matthews has used the quiet, silver-haired Pittenger as his model. Matthews does not, for example, cheer lustily for Harvard, as he once did for Vermont. Not dignified, not professional. He now roots silently, and vows not to give himself ulcers by stewing over defeats.
Matthews figures he would not last long as DSI at some Big Ten School. He does not see undergraduate sports as sacred battle, and in that sense he is a metaphor, of sorts, for the Harvard community, which rarely whips itself into a frenzy about any "big game." Matthews does not publish brochures touting his prospective All-Americans, as some schools do to garner votes for their stars in post-season honors races ("I'd be fired if I did!" he says), and he does not sit in on interviews with Harvard players to gently steer the conversation away from delicate areas. He thinks the primary