Who: Former goalie for the New York Cosmos, a semi-legendary pro soccer team that once counted Pelé among its members.

Degree: A.B. ’72

House: Mather

Hometown: Roslyn Heights, N.Y.

Spotlight: Once in a Lifetime, a documentary about the Cosmos’ 1970s glory days, premiered in New York on July 7, capitalizing on the higher profile that soccer has enjoyed in America because of the World Cup. The most touching part of the film, according to the New York Times? When Harvard’s own Shep Messing, who joined the team soon after graduating from college, says, “I don’t think any one of us ever felt entitled”–to success, to adulation, even to Pelé. The Times calls it “a micro-view of the film’s perfect balance of heart and hedonism,” a balance one might also attribute to Messing himself, who posed nude for Viva Magazine in 1974 and brought his pet boa constrictor to practices at Harvard.

Equipment: Fielding a question from the Crimson about why, of all the athletes in the world, Messing was selected to get naked for Viva, the Cosmos’ PR director said, “Some guys were too big, some guys were too small, and Shep was just right.”

Gig: Messing now works as a soccer commentator for the Madison Square Garden TV network, alongside Ethan Zohn, who won Survivor: Africa (and kind of looks like a young Shep if you squint hard enough at this photo of him hugging a koala bear).

Enemies: Messing also lent his expertise to ESPN during this year’s World Cup, much to the chagrin of a certain vocal segment of online soccer fandom. He’s been called “the dumbest graduate of Harvard ever to be on television”; one blogger punned, in the title of a post, “Shep Messing Up the Broadcast.” Another soccer fan remarked, “I effin hate Shep Messing, the way he speaks, the way he looks, even his really stupid name…Shep Messing it sound [sic] like a breed of dog.”

Campus chatter: In 1973, future Rhodes scholar, McKinsey consultant, and venture capitalist Bruns Grayson wrote in the Crimson, “Shep Messing, who played in goal for Harvard’s soccer team two years ago, had the good fortune to play as pretty as he looked…Messing moved like a ballet dancer…[with] big cow-brown eyes and long black curly hair.” By this point in his life, Grayson was already a Vietnam vet. That’s how attractive Messing was by ’70s standards.

Broken promise: During his stint with the short-lived Oakland Stompers, in 1978, Messing publicly pledged to crawl to the locker room on his hands and knees if the San Jose Earthquakes beat his team. The ’Quakes won, but Messing never crawled, according to SoccerMagic.com. Asked last year about his reneging, Messing said, “I made plenty of bets that I probably lost,” then lavishly flattered ’Quakes fans, and finally concluded, “So I avoided answering your question.” Clever stratagem.

In a nutshell: “shep went to Harvard / shep drank a lot / shep f**** a lot of beautiful women. / why should he want any of it to die?”—an unintentional poem that appeared in a post on a soccer-fan message board.