A Champion Against Ivy Odds

John Dockery '67 may very well be the only man on earth with a Harvard class ring and a Super Bowl ring. And there's a reason for that, the former sideline broadcaster says--a Harvard degree is not much of an asset in the National Football League.

Dockery played cornerback for the championship-winning 1969 New York Jets. But during his NFL career, Dockery says his Ivy League background created more problems than opportunities.

"People look at you as if you are somewhat of a misfit," Dockery says. "The places that I went, my Harvard degree was not an asset. It gave me an identity, but it was not necessarily something that was going to help me along with my career."

Dockery played halfback and safety for the Crimson and played football with the Jets and the Pittsburgh Steelers until 1974. He said when he first joined the NFL, other players were reluctant to take him seriously.

"My degree was not a detriment, but I would have developed more as an athlete if I had gone to a state school," he says. "The people were very skeptical in the profession about the Ivy League."

Part of this hostility came from the Jets' most famous player, quarterback Joe Namath.

"People joked about Ivy League football that it was 'tough tackle with pads,'" Dockery recalls. "There was graffiti on my locker from people like Joe Namath saying things like 'Ivy League practice today.' "

But Dockery said his education did leave him with an advantage in brainpower. The intricacies of strategy, he said, sometimes proved too much for the other players.

"They wouldn't have any ability with the mental side of the game," he says.

"Even in the football world, when you got over the fact that people would question your toughness, your ability, your grit, you knew that you had the extra intelligence because you went to Harvard," he adds.

After the NFL, Dockery became a sports broadcaster at a New York TV station in 1976. During the course of a career that took him to CBS, NBC and then back to CBS, he covered college and professional football as well as the Tour de France and the Olympics. The basics of the profession came to him quickly, Dockery says, thanks to his academic background.

"Once I got to reporting, the education that I got helped me enormously," Dockery said. "It allowed me to organize a story and present myself in a confident manner. It was Harvard that presented me with the academics that I needed."

It was this "mental edge," he explains, that helped push him ahead of other sports broadcasters who relied on industry connections or their past athletic achievements to get jobs.

Regardless of where it took him, Dockery says whenever the Harvard name came up the reaction was always the same.

"There [is] a momentary sort of quiet as they take it in," he said. "There is always a slight pause. The name carries an image and a tremendous amount of weight."

Still, Dockery said, a Harvard degree is not always an asset in the world of sports.

"Sports casters recognize the smarts," he said. "You want to say to people, 'Hey I have a Harvard degree here, but sometimes they could really care less.' It is a double-edged coin."