SPORTS Run Backward, on a Mission Cornerback Norman Hayes’s rituals include shutting down runs and passes. orman hayes likes rituals. At your will. You might not touch the ball, The Game, Larkee saw Hayes “limping ter- Tucker High School in Tucker, but it feels great to stop somebody from do- ribly, in real pain” in the hotel lobby. “But Georgia, he ate the same din- ing what they want to do.” as soon as he noticed me, Norman stopped ner—chicken, green beans, As a Harvard sophomore, Hayes an- limping,” says Larkee, chuckling. On the Nmashed potatoes—before each football nounced himself with a splash in the 2012 field, Hayes declared, “No, I’m fine,” and game. Then the town got quiet: nearly eve- Brown game. The Bears’ huge, 225-pound gutted it out, not only playing about a third ryone was in the stadium before the team running back Spiro Theodosi, who out- of the snaps, but breaking up a pass and even arrived. Under “Friday night lights,” weighed Hayes by 30 pounds, sprinted forcing a fumble in Harvard’s 34-7 victory. his Tigers (Hayes played quarterback) took wide on an outside run. Hayes came over Hayes’s foot speed, quickness, reactions, up a prescribed formation in the end zone unblocked and leveled Theodosi at full and mobility impressed coaches who re- and made their ceremonial entrance onto throttle, taking him off his feet and send- cruited him as a defensive back. Safeties the field. “Football in the south,” he says, “is ing his helmet flying. “The best part of and cornerbacks (including nickel backs, unreal.” At Harvard, Hayes, the team’s captain, watches the 1996 sports comedy Space Jam, featuring Michael Jor- dan playing basketball with Looney Tunes cartoon char- acters, every Friday night be- fore his Saturday games. “It calms my nerves,” the Eliot House senior says. “Reminds me that we’re just playing another game.” The ritual observances have had positive results. Hayes’s high-school teams went 50-6 and won the state championship his sophomore year—and win- ning a state football title in Georgia is no cakewalk. In college, his three Crimson squads have posted a 26-4 mark and captured two Ivy titles, including an un- defeated campaign in 2011. Last fall, Hayes (now a defender who plays Norman’s game is how he can tackle,” says “In the secondary, we’re the last line of cornerback, nickel back, and safety) made defensive coordinator Scott Larkee. “He’s defense,” says Norman Hayes, a speedy, versatile defender. “If we get beat, it’s the All-Ivy First Team. The star quarter- a natural—he does it exactly right. Every likely to mean a touchdown.” back with a strong arm who runs well has game he makes at least one spectacular, come to love defense, and relishes a good highlight-film stop.” the “third” cornerbacks who at times hit. “Offense is structured. You play with Last fall, Hayes sustained a severe ankle join the defense, putting five men—hence composure and finesse,” he explains. “On sprain against Penn, and didn’t practice in “nickel”—in the secondary) are the fastest defense you can be physical. It’s very lib- the week before the Yale game. “I assumed defensive players, as they need to stay with erating, taking out whatever aggression we didn’t have him for Yale,” says Larkee. the fleet-footed wide receivers. In straight- you have on the offensive guys. You impose “He could barely walk.” On the morning of line acceleration, wide receivers may be Photograph by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 35 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 JOHN HARVARD'S JOURNAL the fastest players on the field, but the on the field, so they have the best chance of fall’s Ivy League Defensive Player of the secondary defenders are close, and excel at catching up with whoever made the pick.” Year. And in the secondary, his mission is running backward and changing direction Hayes, a psychology concentrator, is clear. ”Our job,” he says, “is to make sure at full speed as they mimic the receivers’ also active off the field in the Omega Psi that whatever happens in front of us, zigzag routes. Phi fraternity, Harvard Men Against Rape, we’ll be there to save the day.” That, and Defenses ordinarily design their schemes and the Porcellian Club. On the gridiron a DVD of Space Jam, may be all that Hayes, to funnel running plays toward the line- this fall, he’ll take the field with stalwarts and Harvard, need. backers, who, as a group, are the best tack- like defensive end Zach Hodges ’15, last vcraig lambert lers. Cornerbacks make sure that running backs do not get outside of them, and try to push ball carriers inward. When a corner- back has too much success thwarting the “Cleat” Hands Off run, offenses often try to draw him off the play by sending a wide receiver toward his sideline: does he take the bait, or still read Among many other accomplishments, string of six shutouts the running play? Defenders play cat-and- John T. Bethell, this magazine’s editor posted by Yale from 1902 mouse games of their own. “Sometimes we from 1966 through 1994, covered a lot of to 1907. How long will the current bait the quarterback to throw to a certain Harvard football games. He began writ- streak last? “Statistically, this is un- location by making it look like we are out ing, beautifully, about the sport he loves, sustainable,” said coach Murphy at of position,” Hayes explains. “You act like in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin of Septem- his postgame news conference. you’re covering a different zone, and leave a ber 20, 1971, reporting on new coach Joe “Yale is coming back.” Time will wide-open area to throw into. Then when Restic’s first day of practice. That dis- tell. he throws there, you go get it.” patch appeared above Bethell’s initials. But Bethell/“Cleat” won’t do the tell- But for the October 11 issue, he adopted ing. Happily, however, the magazine’s “Sometimes we bait the “Cleat,” the nom de football used by an tradition of rich, nuanced football cover- earlier editor, Bill Bentinck-Smith, who age continues, in the capable hands of quarterback to throw may have thought it up. Bethell says un- Dick Friedman ’73, who spent two de- dergraduates had long confected the Bul- cades as an editor and writer at Sports to a certain location by letin’s football columns; lacking a suitable Illustrated. One of his most enjoyable candidate, he assumed the task “tempo- tasks was helping edit SI’s The College making it look like we rarily.” Now, he is hanging up his cleats. Football Book (2008), for which he could It has been a remarkable run. Readers call on more than a half-century of are out of positon.” have come to rely on the archetypal watching Crimson football. Friedman saw “Cleat” dispatch, full of the historical his first Harvard game at the Stadium at That can lead to pass interceptions or resonances and records—long breakups. In his first start at cornerback, as thought invincible, only to be To receive weekly a sophomore, Hayes had a nation-high five overcome—that make college pass breakups against San Diego. When athletics such vivid fun. Of late, football reports, sign up at disrupting a pass, “You always want to se- “Cleat” has upped his game, filing harvardmag.com/email. cure the tackle with one hand, and with weekly online reports, e-mailed [ ] the other hand knock the ball away,” he to registered readers. “I think says. Interceptions with runbacks rank I’ve seen all but two or three home age seven, in 1958. Harvard lost to Penn, among the game’s most exciting plays. games over the past 43 seasons,” Bethell 19-6. “I was too young to know it, of They are superb opportunities to move the recalls. “Haven’t traveled to Ithaca since course,” he says, “but that first chilly football, because the opponents’ offense, the early 1970s, and had to skip a few plunge readied me for a lifetime of disap- not defense, is on the field, and they are other road games.” But only last Septem- pointments and triumphs.” likely in a disorganized state—they were ber, beginning what became his final sea- His forthcoming history of the golden trying to complete a pass, not stop a ball son, “Cleat” was there when the Crim- age of Harvard football, Crimson Autumns: carrier. In the meeting room, Harvard de- son opened their campaign at the When Harvard Was Number One, chroni- fenders like to joke about the razzle-dazzle University of San Diego. His final dis- cles the 1908-1915 teams coached by the plays they plan to make: “When I intercept patch, “Over the Moon” (January-Feb- brilliant, innovative Percy Duncan Haugh- the ball, you come up behind me and I’ll ruary, page 34), taking in a 34-7 win in ton, A.B. 1899, who “would be thrilled by pitch it to you.” The Game, concludes on this character- the brainy play of current coach Tim Mur- In real life, the first rule of interception istic note: phy’s teams.” Look for Friedman’s dis- returns, Hayes explains, is for another de- Harvard’s seven-game winning patches, continuing the “Cleat” tradition, fensive back to immediately block the in- streak eclipses what had been the online after games and in print through- tended receiver: “They are the closest to longest streak in the H-Y series, a out the season.