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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 Harvard football players are never just football players. They\u2019re &lt;em&gt;Harvard &lt;/em&gt;football players. They\u2019re &lt;em&gt;smart &lt;/em&gt;football players. They\u2019re &lt;em&gt;cure-cancer, run-for-president, my-classmate-created-a-billion-dollar-app &lt;/em&gt;football players.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which isn\u2019t necessarily the worst thing. Or necessarily the best thing. Take Ryan Fitzpatrick\u2019s experience. Mostly good. Eleven-year NFL veteran. Thirty-one touchdown passes for the Jets in 2015. Harvard alum. Maybe you\u2019ve heard? Smart guy. &lt;em&gt;Went to Harvard&lt;/em&gt;.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But there is a stigma, and it started his rookie season. He played for the Rams in 2005 and \u201906, and his teammates, fellow quarterbacks Gus Frerotte and Marc Bulger, decided to create a \u201CChristmas card.\u201D Create they did. There\u2019s Fitzpatrick, in his crimson football jersey, wide smile, a trumpet photoshopped into one hand and a bouquet of flowers photoshopped into the other. \u201CHappy holidays,\u201D the card reads. \u201CFrom the Harvard band.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The worst part was that several Rams employees actually thanked Fitzpatrick for how thoughtful his card was. They thought it was, you know, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a prank.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The prevailing notion of Harvard\u2019s gridiron prospects has changed in the decade since, as players from the school, like Fitzpatrick, have not only made the pros but reached various levels of NFL success. The thinking has gone from: &lt;em&gt;smart kid, small chance,&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;to: &lt;em&gt;smart kid, real chance&lt;/em&gt;.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That culminated in Feb. 2016, when offensive lineman Cole Toner and tight end Ben Braunecker, two prospects out of Harvard, were invited to the NFL Scouting Combine. That\u2019s the most Ivy League players invited in any one year from any one school. Ever. Oh, and that means there are more prospects invited this year from Harvard than from Texas.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CThat\u2019s a pretty cool stat,\u201D Toner says. \u201CIt\u2019s not an indictment of Texas for me. It\u2019s just a really cool thing for Harvard. It\u2019s a testament to the type of guys we recruit, the type of clout we have. It\u2019s a legitimate program.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Toner says this Wednesday evening, while reclined in an oversized chair in the Indiana Convention Center, in one final interview at the end of a long day. He\u2019s used to all the Harvard jokes, the trash talk, the revenge-of-the-nerds headlines.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Those started before he even went to Harvard. He met Braunecker, another Indiana native, when they played in a high school football all-star game. Their teammates called them Harvard 1 and Harvard 2.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the conversation with Toner meanders, he sometimes can sound very, shall we say, Harvard-ish. He\u2019s not only trained for the combine with Braunecker at Indiana-based St. Vincent Sports Performance, the two have lived in the same room in the same dorm, the Harvard-sounding Cabot House, since they were sophomores in 2013.&amp;nbsp;He describes their non-Harvard obsession\u2014the video game &lt;em&gt;Super Smash Bros.&lt;/em&gt;\u2014but even then gives a very Harvard-y rundown. Of Braunecker, Toner says, \u201CHe\u2019s technically the most sound at &lt;em&gt;Smash Bros.&lt;/em&gt;, if you can be technically sound at &lt;em&gt;Smash Bros.&lt;/em&gt;\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He\u2019s asked if people have the wrong idea about football at Harvard, where the Crimson went 9\u20131 last season and recorded 36 victories in his four seasons there. \u201CPeople just don\u2019t know,\u201D he says. \u201CIt is frustrating a bit. I would say it\u2019s a small percentage, but 10% of the kids there don\u2019t think athletes should be in school at all. They don\u2019t think we should have gotten into school. Do they come to games? Not necessarily.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He continues, \u201CWe\u2019re big men on campus in terms of stature. Not necessarily big men on campus in terms of fame.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That\u2019s changing, though, and has been for a while now. It started, really, with Tim Murphy, who recently completed his 22nd&amp;nbsp;season as Harvard\u2019s football coach, or, as it\u2019s officially called, The Thomas Stephenson Family Head Coach for Harvard Football. He\u2019s won more games (156) than all but two Ivy League football coaches ever. He\u2019s also won nine Ivy League championships, including a title in each of the past three seasons.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He doesn\u2019t think smarts and sports have to be mutually exclusive. \u201CWhen I came from Cincinnati in 1994, coming from a major program, people were like, \u2018&lt;em&gt;you\u2019re crazy&lt;/em&gt;,\u2019\u201D Murphy says. \u201CBut I\u2019ve never been around kids who were athletically more motivated.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Toner and Braunecker are exactly the kinds of players Murphy looks for: under-recruited, multi-sport athletes. Toner graduated from Roncalli, a private, Catholic high school in south Indianapolis. He played baseball and basketball there, at least before he grew into a 6\u20197\u201D, 300-plus-pound O-line prospect who made All-Ivy League first team each of the past two seasons.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;MAAC schools showed some interest, as did Indiana and Cincinnati. But none of them made any offers. When Toner visited Harvard, he found \u201Ca blue-collar program.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CYou don\u2019t really think of that in the Ivy League,\u201D he admits. \u201CBut guys prioritized football as much as they did school.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a freshman, Toner started against Princeton, holding his own against two NFL prospects. That\u2019s when the NFL seemed possible. \u201CHe has become exactly who we felt and hoped and thought he would be,\u201D Murphy says. \u201CA kid that could have played anywhere. A kid capable of playing in the NFL.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That\u2019s obviously not all Toner is capable of. He managed a 3.6 GPA while majoring in government with a minor in economics. He says he might get into politics one day. For the last two summers he interned at State Street Bank in Boston, in their legal and regulatory office. His boss last summer was a prominent lobbyist. He met congressmen. And while&amp;nbsp;most of the top NFL prospects trained full time, Toner took four classes this spring: environmental economic policy; science of the physical universe; money, work and social life; and road to the White House.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;His roommate, Braunecker, grew up in small-town Indiana, in a town called Ferdinand (with a population of roughly 2,000). What sold Murphy on Braunecker was his basketball prowess\u2014last year he won Harvard\u2019s team dunk competition with an alley-oop windmill\u2014and the fact that in track and field, he put a shot more than 60 feet in high school. That, to Murphy, indicated explosiveness. So much so that his Harvard teammates nicknamed Braunecker \u201CBronk,\u201D&amp;nbsp;after Rob Gronkowski.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BBronk\u2019s major: molecular and cellular biology. One NFL team, he didn\u2019t say which, asked him about the Zika virus in Brazil that\u2019s been all over the news. \u201CI\u2019m not a doctor,\u201D Bronk told them. But he hopes to be, perhaps on the research end, after an NFL career.&amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He\u2019s the latest in a short but growing line of Harvard tight ends. There are three in the NFL right now: Cameron Brate (Tampa Bay), Tyler Ott (who is mainly the Giants long-snapper) and Kyle Juszczyk, a Raven who converted to fullback. Murphy says so many have stuck because \u201Cthey\u2019re the SEALs of our offensive unit,\u201D in that they play wide receiver, slot receiver, tight end and fullback. They have to be versatile, tough.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That\u2019s Murphy. Fitzpatrick notes that Murphy placed a national emphasis on recruiting at Harvard that had not been there before. Growing up in Arizona, Fitzpatrick didn\u2019t even know that Harvard had a football program, until a recruitment letter arrived in the mail. Look at the Harvard players in the NFL, Fitzpatrick says. They\u2019re from Minnesota, Toronto, North Carolina, New York.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Fitzpatrick arrived at Harvard in 2001, the team didn\u2019t have a strength coach. Now, under Murphy\u2019s Law, they do. They also get his summer reading list recommendations before every football season. Last year\u2019s included &lt;em&gt;Gates of Fire&lt;/em&gt; the historical fiction novel by Steven Pressfield.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Isaiah Kacyvenski graduated from Harvard in 2000, he was not invited to the combine. He had the Harvard coaches call teams that might be coming to the Boston area to scout Chris Hovan, a BC defensive lineman who the Vikings took in the first round. Kacyvenski did 14 mini-combines, one for each team that showed interest. The Seahawks took him in the fourth round. He played seven NFL seasons for three teams.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teammates told him their high school teams could have beaten Harvard\u2019s college squads. \u201CAt first, everyone expects you to know everything,\u201D Kacyvenski says. \u201CEvery piece of trivia. Settle every debate. If you don\u2019t know, they think that you\u2019re a dumb---. The second thing is everyone thinks you\u2019re rich and pompous and grew up with a silver spoon. Like, \u2018&lt;em&gt;Oh, he\u2019s got a fallback plan&lt;/em&gt;.\u2019\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kacyvenski did have a fallback plan: become a doctor. But only after football, which is the same mindset Toner and Braunecker are carrying into this year's combine. \u201CIt takes guys like this to change the mindset,\u201D Kacyvenski says. \u201CI always tell them football is the great equalizer. If you can play, you can be smart, too.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As long as Harvard 1 and Harvard 2 remember that, they can put it on their Christmas cards.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/nfl/2016/02/25/nfl-combine-harvard-players-ryan-fitzpatrick-cole-toner-ben-braunecker>