He used to love the pre-game excitement, when he'd walk around Dillon half-dressed, shouting bragadocio. Junior year, for example, he predicted that the Brown game would earn him "total immortality." He then went out and hauled in thirteen passes, setting a Harvard and Ivy League record. He once told Dave Matthews, director of sports publicity "I'll run your inkwell dry."

THWACK! THUD!

But he wouldn't visit Dillon today, as he had on a visit earlier this year. He felt sort of embarrassed about the whole thing now. McInally had graduated amid much hoopla-- he was the first Harvard All-American since Endicott "Chub" Peabody '42 and the owner of a three-year contract with the Bengals-- but in the past four months he hasn't done much except nurse a broken leg, collect coins in his Cincinnati house, read Henry Miller, and draw his full salary (which he won't disclose.) He has yet to wear his Bengals jersey, a jarring detail to those who remember McInally going virtually everywhere last year wearing a big 84, his Harvard number. (At times, it seemed as though he had stepped straight out of a Doonesbury cartoon.)

So he would not visit Dillon. "I feel self-conscious coming back," he said later. "Sometimes our society says if you've done well somewhere, you don't come back."

THWACK! THUD! A young man with smoothly coiffed blond hair walked up as McInally was kicking.

"Hi, Bob," McInally said, breaking into a wide grin. It was one of McInally's freshman coaches.

"How the hell did you mess it up in that game?" the coach said. McInally smiled. People will ask him about that game last summer for a long time-- in part because the way he broke his leg has the ring of Doonesbury to it.

There McInally was, after all, in the College All-Star game, an Ivy League end starting against the World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers. He was basking in the glory of a national TV audience, having a great time. On the fourth play of the game, quarterback Steve Bartkowski of Berkeley hit McInally on a short slant pass, and the lanky All-American stretched every muscle to beat the Pittsburgh defenders to the goal line. At about the four, a tackler leapt at McInally-- McInally still doesn't know who it was, although he has seen the vide tape replay--and made the stop. The impact broke McInally's leg, but he fell into the end zone for the touchdown; and later, after he was carried off the field on a stretcher, he would tell reporters that the experience had been a great thrill. To score a touchdown against the Pittsburgh Steelers! A Harvard split end!

Still, there are those who doubt McInally has the sturdiness to play pro football. They say he is too lanky for his own good.

"They said that of Leonardo da Vinci," McInally answers.

They said da Vinci was too lanky?

"No, they laughed at him."

According to the McInally scenario for pro football success, this is his rebuilding year. "It's given me a lot of time to mature and adjust, and I'm making the most of it," he says. "There's a great possibility I'm not ready for pro football, as I wasn't ready for college football when I was a sophomore."

But even if he is ready to play next year (he almost certainly won't play this year), McInally faces stiff competition from excellent Bengal ends, with more on the way, probably, after this year's draft. But he still thinks he has a future in the NFL-- kicking.

"Kicking has always been the greatest joy of my life," McInally says. "I'd put it a little ahead of Henry Miller, but not ahead of the finer things in life he tends to treat."