Word: restic
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There are the simple, obvious mistakes: "You negate it if you jump offside--if you're offside, it doesn't matter what you do." (In fact, penalties have plagued Restic's Harvard teams since he arrived. The complicated plays and formations tend always to see Harvard receive much more than its share of delay-of-game, offside and, of course, man-in-motion penalties.) There are the less obvious mistakes: "Every time I look at the game films I see the receivers we missed and the plays we could have made." Of course injuries have occasionally crippled Restic teams, most...
...Multiflex lives or dies with the quarterback. Restic says solemnly, "The quarterback has to understand what we're trying to accomplish." Though Restic calls many plays, the final decision about what will happen to the ball rests with the quarterback. Restic uses what he calls "playomatics," two plays selected together in the huddle, narrowed to one by the quarterback calling signals at the line of scrimmage. For example, one current playomatic calls for a sweep to a halfback. If the quarterback reads a zone defense and yells out "zone" while calling signals, then the halfback continues around right...
...logic behind the Multiflex, but in an area where success and failure can be measured with perfect accuracy--i.e. wins and losses--the system has proved only a moderate success, and, for the past three years, not very successful at all. Since 1976, Harvard football is 11-15-1; Restic steadfastly maintains the system is not at fault. The coach says all of the system's problems stem from personnel fallibility: "The only time it [the Multiflex] doesn't go is when we negate it." And Restic has seen his system negated in a staggering variety of ways...
...mixed results he has seen, Restic maintains an almost eerie confidence in the Multiflex. He says definitively, "When it doesn't work, I say to you we have negated it--it's not because we don't have a tremendous advantage." He sprinkles the phrase "tremendous advantage" liberally through his description of the offense. The confidence is so absolute that it seems natural to ask whether he has ever wondered how the Multiflex might work with the best players in the country. He replies quickly, eagerly: "Unbelievable. No doubt in my mind." So does he want to go big time...
...despite Restic's innovations and their considerable concomitant publicity, the word Multiflex became truly well-known in the spring of 1979, when a certain Kirkland House independent study seminar debuted. Called "Fundamentals of the Multiflex," and taught by Larry Brown '79, then a senior and still Harvard's all-time passing leader, the course became something of a symbol of the less-than-substantial intellectual rigor associated with independent work courses. (The rules were tightened shortly after the course was reported in the national press, but Dean Rosovsky still manages to throw a mispronounced dig at the course...