“I’ve told Carl that if he needs a point of reference, I’m here, and to keep his head on,” Patterson says. “Don’t let the hype and the pressure get to you. Because it can—you see your name in a couple of magazines, read ‘Terrence Patterson’s a pro prospect,’ and you start thinking about the future.” Patterson says that his own nervousness hurt his performance late in 1999.

Of course, the calls are not all business. Patterson routinely reminds Morris that only one of them ever returned a punt for a touchdown—one of the reasons Patterson playfully clings to the “Greatest Of All Time” title. And it’s hard to conceive that very many conversations with Nowinski could be serious for long. But here is another force to be considered in all this—the stabilizing influence of Harvard’s football network.

Since we’re traveling through time, let’s go a bit further back, back to the 1970s and to the man who held most of Harvard’s receiving records before Patterson and Morris were born. Pat McInally ’75, was selected in the fifth round of the NFL draft and made his living as, of all things, an All-League punter. McInally had been the Crimson’s highest-ever Crimson selection until Kacyvenski in 2000. The laws of physics don’t change over time, presumably, and so it makes sense to ask someone who watched McInally grow.

Joe Restic, both the winningest and losingest coach in Harvard football history, answers the phone from his Milford, Mass., home. Retired now, Restic hasn’t been around the program much since 1993. But he is familiar with Morris—he works with the East-West Shrine Game, and was instrumental in getting Morris invited to that postseason showcase.

“They’re different types of receivers,” Restic says of McInally and Morris. “Morris has great speed and gets open, he runs really precise patterns. McInally had great jumping ability, size, great hands.”

And, when asked, Restic will tell you that McInally never had to deal with the same pressures. There weren’t late-night calls from agents, early-morning meetings with scouts. Unlike Morris, who saw teammates like Kacyvenski and Mike Clare ’01 visited by scouts as he grew up, McInally developed in a world largely insulated from such forces.

“It’s much more involved today,” Restic says. “More scouts, more combines. They test them, run them, weigh them. It really complicates it for the young man.”

Throughout his tenure, Restic worried publicly about the professionalization of college athletics. He saw it in the Ivy League’s demotion to I-AA status in 1981 based largely on TV revenue. He saw it in the elimination of Ivy League freshman football programs in the early 1990s. And he worries still. If ideals are in the mind of the beholder, Restic’s mind is made up.

“I worry about it at any school,” Restic says. “Once you buy into the professionalism, to whatever degree you do, you’ve bought into the system.”

Restic finishes his interview, and adds that he is very interested in how Morris will do at the Shrine Game. “It will give him a chance to test himself against young men from across the country. Our game is on Jan. 11.” And he says goodbye.

The Prospect

Eleven-year-old Jacob Friedman looks even younger as he bounces around the stands in Harvard Stadium, wearing a No. 10 Harvard football jersey he turned into a Morris tribute. He lovingly doctored it with masking tape so that the 10 became a 19 while adding “M O R R I S” in tape letters across the back for good measure. He and his family have driven in from Lexington, Mass., every week to watch the home games, and have left early to make many of the road games as well.

“Carl Morris is really good, so we like him a lot so we’re kind of crazy for him,” Friedman blurts. “So ever since he caught that 65-yard pass we’ve just been going crazy.” Jacob’s father, Bill Friedman ’79, called the sporting goods store in Arlington that supplies the team’s jerseys and bought the closest thing to a “19” he could find, only to discover a week later that Harvard sold its own at home games. Jacob’s older brother, Zach, proudly notes that Morris once tossed them his gloves.

And maybe here, in Harvard Stadium, is the only place where you can put Morris in perspective. Yes, Harvard benefits from the jersey sales—Bud Murphy, who sells them at the games, complains that he only has five left after opening the season with two big stacks. But they wind up in the hands of kids who watch football games at Soldiers Field, for goodness’ sake—not Notre Dame, not Florida State. Harvard. The games are rarely sold out, ineffective kickers aren’t booted right off the team and the national press comes once in a blue moon—although the lunar cycle looks to be quickening.

Sometimes the jersey buyers aren’t kids. Bud Murphy recalls the first “19” he sold this year. “A guy comes up to me and asks for a Harvard jersey,” he says. “I tell him the only one available is 19. He says, ‘That’s no problem. That’s my son.’”