CBS Reports

I'm glad I didn't go down to Providence this weekend. Driving at 50 mph on I-95 after a summer of crusing through Montana and Nevada (whose only speed limit sign I saw instructed motorists to drive at a "reasonable and prudent" speed, which, of course, I totally ignored on route to setting a new personal landspeed record of 120 mph, downhill) was not my idea of fun. Neither was getting up at 8 a.m. to get to the soccer game on time, something I rarely do. Nor was Providence itself particularly enticing.

Through a fortunate turn of events (the 50-yd. line tickets I was promised fell through) I was able to a) sleep until noon, b) miss yet another Harvard soccer shutout loss in a year full of them, c) drink Rolling Rock beer all afternoon and, last but not least, d) watch Pat McInally catch 26 passes two times for each catch, thanks to those good ol' ABC instant replays.

McInally, whom ABC color commentator Forest Eveshevski insisted upon calling "McNally," had an afternoon nothing short of awesome as he made a shambles out of Brown's man-to-man, zone, double and triple team coverage, the Harvard record book, and ABC's offensive player of the game award.

For some strange reason he reminds me of a combination of Otis Taylor and Morris Stroud of the K.C. Chiefs, with the sure hands and moves of the former, and the sheer size of the latter. For someone as big as he is, McInally makes the impossible catch look easy. He finds the seams in a zone like a pro, seems to be durable (you don't catch 13 passes in a game without taking a few nasty belts from outclassed cornerbacks and safeties), and has the instinctive ability to run a pattern which will get the necessary yardage in clutch third and fourth down situations (remember his fourth down one-handed grab touchdown against Penn, and his forth-and-18 catch Saturday).

With all this going for him, plus his booming endzone kickoffs with their sixsecond hang time (the pros are happy with four) and another year to perfect his moves, he could be, barring a serious injury, Harvard's first bona fide pro superstar. Unless the rest of the country still thinks Ivy League football is rinky-dink, he deserves nothing short of All-American this year.