Brave New World?

Bagnoli, Murphy, and Estes: Ivy football's 10+-year men




Am I the only person who thinks we're about to see more big changes in the coaching world of Ivy football?

Yale is already looking for only it's third head coach in 40 years.

There are reports that Harvard's Tim Murphy is actively being recruited by other schools, (more than usual I mean... this is kind of an annual occurrence).

How much longer do Dartmouth Head Coach Buddy Teevens and Cornell skipper Jim Knowles have?

And all this is happening as the schools all deal with a lot less operating money lying around.

On paper, it seems like that could be the perfect recipe for a lot of young assistants, (presumably ones without big salary demands), rising to head coaching spots in the Ivies in the coming years. By "young" I mean real young... like 35 years old or younger.

Of course, one has to pour some cold water on all of this by looking at some other pieces of evidence that point to coaching stability in the league.

I doubt that Murphy, for example, is leaving Harvard... maybe ever. Harvard, and every Ivy school as well, is a great place to be when you're a coach with young kids. When Harvard played Columbia here last season, Murphy's youngest daughter, who I guess is junior high age, quietly sat in the pressbox and did her homework, (how do you RAISE kids like that, by the way? My oldest daughter at 5 is already a pressbox gadfly... not that I haven't encouraged that), and my guess is that Murphy stays in Cambridge for at least another 9 or so years until that young lady has graduated.

Buddy Teevens may be a bit on the hot seat after going 0-10 this season, but I think he's got another year to turn things around. And by "turn things around," I mean get the team back to 3-7, which is certainly possible for 2009.

Jim Knowles is also under some scrutiny now after posting some good seasons in his first years as coach, but then seeing his team fall back to the cellar once again. On the other hand, Knowles is still a popular former player and he can point to the tremendous turnover among his assistant coaches as an excuse for some of the backsliding in Ithaca.

Roger Hughes is amazingly going in to his 10th year at Princeton, (seems like he was the "new kid on the block" just yesterday), and while some fans may not be happy with what seems like some serious recruiting holes, (NO backup QB's and hardly any backup RB's in 2008), he's close enough to the surprising 2005 season and the 2006 championship season to feel safe for now.

I don't think you can say any other Ivy coach is in any possible "trouble" right now.

But things change. And so far, the decade of the 2000's has been historically quiet when it comes to Ivy League head coaching turnover. If you include Yale's impending head coaching change, this decade has seen only seven head coaching changes. Both the 90's and 60's saw eight head coaching changes, the 70's saw eleven, and the wild 80's witnessed 12 turnovers. (Both Penn and Columbia switched coaches three times each from 1980-89, and Cornell and Princeton switched twice... although Princeton's second switch was due to the sudden death of Ron Rogerson after the 1986 season).

What's even more interesting is that since the 1960's, each decade had no more than two schools make no head coaching changes. But so far through nine years of the 2000's, four schools have stood pat, (Brown, Harvard, Penn, and Princeton).

So it would seem logical that someone other than Jack Siedlecki is about to go sometime soon for either good reasons or bad ones.

But one could also look back at the last few years and surmise that mediocrity is now more acceptable in the Ivy coaching ranks than ever before. Now I take Columbia out of this discussion because it's made two coaching changes since 2000 and because of our weaker record historically.

If this were 1988 or 1978 instead of 2008, would an 0-10 Buddy Teevens not be getting fired? Would Jim Knowles be safe for next year? I'm not sure, but I hope the answer isn't somehow related to the fact that some Ivy presidents and alumni are less interested in winning football than they were years ago.

If Siedlecki's ouster had something to do with alumni or administrative dissatisfaction over wins and losses... I actually would have to say that's a good thing overall. We don't want our league, or any team in our league, to start excusing mediocrity even in relative terms. Siedlecki had a great overall winning percentage, but Yale alumni have traditionally demanded better than a .333 winning percentage over Harvard and Siedlecki could not deliver that.

On the bright side, if some of our most successful coaches like Murphy or Phil Estes at Brown get plucked by BCS program schools or the NFL, that's VERY good for Ivy's reputation overall. I say someone should call Murphy and ask him to "take one for the team" and accept a job elsewhere. (Okay, that's self-serving since Murphy is on such a hot streak right now against Columbia and everyone else... but every little bit could help).

So watch the situations at places like Cornell, Dartmouth and Princeton next year at least as closely as you're watching the coaching search at Yale right now. What does or doesn't happen to the head coaches at these schools will be very telling about what is and isn't expected in our league.