FROM THE IVIES TO THE PROS: Some make it big, and some walk away

If you’re viewing the situation from the wintry wonderland of Minnesota, you might consider Matt Birk ’98 “the one who never really left.” He might have taken a four-year hiatus from the North Star State for a college degree and a few football games in Harvard Stadium, but Birk joined the National Football League’s (NFL) Minnesota Vikings straight out of college and hasn’t gone anywhere since.

“I still hang out in the same places I did when I was in high school, pretty much,” he says, “so I know a lot of people around here, and people know me.

“For a fat offensive lineman,” Birk laughs, “I get a lot of recognition.”

If you’re viewing the situation from the manicured lawns of Harvard, on the other hand, you might consider Birk “the one who made it out,” the rarest of the rare, the Ivy League athlete-turned-professional star.

He has been the starting center for the Vikings’ two highest single-season rushing totals in team history. He was a keystone of the NFL’s top offense in 2003. And despite the fact that Birk had never played center before joining the Vikings, the 6’4, 308 lb. hulk has been named to the Pro Bowl five times at that position.

Of course, throughout his professional career, he’s also been known as “that Harvard kid.”

“I still get it,” Birk admits, “even seven years later. At first it was a little rough, and it was something I was kind of hoping would fly under the radar. It didn’t, and a lot of older guys would bust my chops about it.”

But a certain sense of pride accompanies a career that peaks in the National Football League and begins in the Ivy League—as opposed to “big-time college football,” says Birk, where “the linemen are probably 20 or 30 pounds heavier, and the receivers and running backs are probably two or three tenths of a second faster.”

Birk still remembers the time now-retired Vikings veteran Cris Carter said that a Harvard education “was pretty cool, and that he admired it.”

But Birk represents one-half of the Crimson’s representation on active NFL rosters—Isaiah Kacyvenski ’00 is a Seattle Seahawks linebacker—and this success is far from typical for Harvard athletes in any sport.

The Harvard men’s hockey program, which won the NCAA championship in 1989, produces the most professional draft picks of any major sport on campus—there were nine on the 2004-2005 squad—and yet those who make it to the highest level, the National Hockey League, are few and far between.

Rob Fried ’04 was one of five skaters who attempted the to crack the professional ranks after graduation, skating four exhibition games with the NHL’s Ottawa Senators, one with the American Hockey League’s Binghamton Senators, and one with the East Coast Hockey League’s Gwinnett Gladiators.

Due to the NHL lockout, and the subsequent accumulation of high-end talent in middle-level leagues, competition at tryout camps was fierce and spots on minor league teams were few.

“That was certainly a factor,” Fried says of his decision to walk away from hockey. And so was the story of his old teammate Dominic Moore ’03, who is, thanks to the lockout, still paying his dues in the minors despite experts’ projections of NHL playing time.

“I was by no means a sure bet to make the National Hockey League,” Fried says, “and so I was just anxious to get going on a career, and it wasn’t really worth it for me to wait around for the three or four years it might take to have a shot.”

Stories like Matt Birk’s exist, and Crimson athletes lap them up—but for Fried, now a comedy writer in Los Angeles, the idea of a long, embattled career in the minor leagues was too risky.

“If it’s something you really want to do,” he says, “the sacrifices are marginal.”

But sometimes, other options beckon.

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.