Harvard kids seem to be getting the hang of this sports stuff

• Harvard Athletics

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• Lin Knicks

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• Lin Harvard

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  Boston, Mass. -- Harvard men's basketball defeated No. 17 Boston College, 82-70, at the Conte Forum, Jan. 7, 2009. (Copyright John Quackenbos)

• Fitz Buffalo

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• Fitz Harvard

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For 346 years, Harvard University has been considered the most eminent educational institution in the United States. The prestigious school in Cambridge, Massachusetts has been a magnet for the intellectual elite since it opened its doors. Founded 140 years before Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, Harvard has helped mold some of the brightest minds in the world.

The school’s alumni include seven U.S. presidents and fifty-five Noble Prize winners. Forty-six faculty members have won the Pulitzer Prize. Many of their graduates, including Conan O’Brien, Natalie Portman, Tommy Lee Jones, Darren Aronofsky and Terrence Malick, have even gone on to become leaders in the entertainment industry. Their two most famous dropouts, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, rank amongst the most brilliant, successful and influential minds in U.S. history.

Over the course of the past three centuries, Harvard graduates have quite simply dominated almost every field. Holding a degree from the esteemed institution opens nearly any door – except to the locker rooms of professional sports franchises. While Harvard alumni may have conquered every academic pursuit, as well as the political realm and the financial industry, for 346 years they have failed to make the slightest impact in sports world – until now.

Jeremy Lin, a soft-spoken, humble point guard from the Bay Area is currently, and improbably, the most popular man in New York City. Never has an athlete been accepted and lauded so quickly by the notoriously hard to please New York fan base. The undrafted Harvard graduate has sent once desperate Knicks fans into full-blown hysterics. His jersey from his first game as a Knick sold for $40,000 on Ebay. The New York Times reported yesterday about the owner of a rare Lin rookie card is hoping for around $60,000 in an Ebay auction — it’s currently bidding at $15,600. T-shirts and jerseys are flying off the racks. Stubhub ticket prices are going through the roof. Linsanity has New York sports fans, and others, approaching padded white room in Bellevue-levels of excitement.

Every article seems to focus on one of two things about Lin. 1.) He’s Asian. 2.) He went to Harvard. Both of these details are key to the Lin phenomenon. He is currently the only Asian player in the NBA, and he’s the first Harvard player to make it to the NBA since Ed Smith in 1954. Two NBA teams released him this year, and up until 13 days ago he was a complete nobody. Today, he’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Lin is the first player in NBA history to score at least 20 points and notch at least 7 assists in his first four career starts. He saved head coach Mike D’Antoni’s job and further energized a city already riding high after the Giants’ Super Bowl victory. And most importantly, he has the Knicks winning basketball games – seven in a row.

While Jeremy Lin may be an aberration of Harvard’s basketball tradition, the current Crimson team is also turning heads in Cambridge — and across the country as well. The Tommy Amaker-led program has been in the Top 25 for the majority of the NCAA season, and is primed to become the first Harvard team since 1946 to make the NCAA tournament this March. Their hard-nosed defense keyed an early win against ACC leader Florida State, as well as one of the most memorable seasons in recent Ivy League history.

In the NFL, Buffalo Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick got this year’s Harvard-craze going back in September, when he led the perennial cellar-dwelling upstate New York team to a 4-1 start. For the first quarter of the NFL season, Fitzpatrick and the Bills were the talk of the league, and in nearly every article the first thing mentioned was his Harvard degree. The career backup who was best known for his near perfect Wonderlick score was all the sudden out dueling future Hall of Famer Tom Brady. For his efforts, the Bills rewarded Fitzpatrick with a $59 million contract extension. Unfortunately, the injury bug hit the Bills hard, losing multiple key starters for the season. Soon after his extension the Bills went on a seven game slide, eliminating their playoff chances.

But Fitzpatrick’s fast start had Harvard on the minds of sports fans for the first time in recent memory. The Crimson basketball team continued to keep Harvard athletics relevant, until Jeremy Lin grabbed the torch and sent the Harvard hype to a different stratosphere.

Now, I realize that most people at Harvard could care less about something as inconsequential as professional sports. It pales in comparison to more worthwhile pursuits like curing cancer, solving the world energy crisis and winning Pulitzer or Nobel Prizes. In the grand scheme of things sports truly don’t matter. They are a pleasant, though sometimes incredibly frustrating, distraction from our painful present and uncertain future. But no matter how much people refuse to care about the NBA or the NFL, there is no denying the incredible influence it has over society, and over the last 300 years no school has influenced our society more then Harvard. Now it appears as if their overachieving nerds are starting to get a hang of this sports stuff, and it’s been surprisingly pretty damn exciting.