Teevens Looks Ahead to Football

By Kale Bongers | Friday, February 10, 2006

Buddy Teevens returned to coach football at the College in the wake of scandal—a letter, sent by Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg to president Alfred Bloom of Swarthmore, denouncing the culture of football as “antithetical to the academic mission of colleges such as ours.” Succeeding Coach John Lyons, whose final season’s record of 1-9 was the worst in Dartmouth’s 124 years of football; it was hoped that Teevens, himself a member of the College’s class of 1979 could reinvigorate the fallen program. After a first season marked by improvement in all areas save the win-loss record, we sat down with the coach to discuss the season and his hopes for the future of Dartmouth football.

It must be noted that Teevens is a consummate salesman. As an Ivy League football coach, he has to be. Even speaking after a whirlwind two-week recruiting tour, he still is a walking advertisement for Dartmouth: enthusiastic, positive, ready to talk football, and always eager to promote the school. He loves Dartmouth, and wants everyone around him to love it too.

Though disappointed by the results of the 2005 season (Dartmouth went 2-8, with wins against Colgate and Columbia), Teevens is optimistic for upcoming campaigns; “once you have that foundation” of training, he noted, success will come. Much of that future foundation will depend on the upcoming recruiting classes, where the coach will have opportunities to construct a team well-suited to his distinctive style. New talent, combined with more rigorous weight training and continued practice by current players, will help the team in its quest to regain its former glories.

In our discussion, Teevens stressed his hopes for the future, including an expansion of Dartmouth’s geographical range of opponents, recruiting, and physical facilities. In particular, he is in negotiations with several universities outside the Northeast for games in future seasons: Dartmouth has not played a team from outside the Eastern time zone in decades, and it hasn’t faced an opponent from outside the Northeast since it faced off against Davidson in 1988. These games, hopefully against schools “near major urban areas” would not only work to reach out to alumni, but also widen the College’s recruiting net, another major point of emphasis for Teevens (he prides himself on the fact that many of his assistant coaches scout the state or states in which they have family or professional connections to ensure no prospective Dartmouth player is left behind). Noting the NCAA’s “increased emphasis on academic achievement” as a response to widespread academic problems in major programs, and the resultant competition for student-athletes of high academic and athletic prowess, he remains confident in Dartmouth’s “unique” draw; while some colleges and universities “apologize for being in rural areas,” Teevens sees an opportunity, as Ivy rivals “Harvard, Columbia, and Penn are all in major cities.” Dartmouth, then, in addition to providing a more rural environment, also has other advantages: faculty members “live in nearby towns [and] aren’t stuck in rush hour trying to leave” an urban area. Further, there are the obviously strong academic opportunities within a small, more accessible college environment. The College, the coach stresses, has a special place in the recruiting world, and he aims to use it.

Once his players arrive in Hanover, it is stressed that achievements in the classroom are equally important as achievements on the field. Teevens has regular meetings with his players about their grades, and encourages them to involve themselves in their classes, both by “sitting in the front half of the class” and by talking to their professors (he wants his players to find and respect the faculty’s “passion” for their subjects). Further, Teevens is known for bringing in storied Dartmouth football alumni to speak to his players about the importance of attaining their degrees and maintaining a high grade point average. Almost invariably, the alumni, whose chosen fields range from banking to medicine to administration, stress the value of studying hard, and regret not having worked toward “a 3.5 instead of a 3.2, or a 3.2 instead of a 2.6” in their college days. Such alumni are part of a (broad-scale) effort toward greater networking; Teevens has been known to call up former teammates who are now prominent in their chosen fields and encourage them to advise and hire particularly promising players. Ultimately, Teevens hopes to steer his players toward success, in classes, football, and finally in the world beyond Hanover.

Ivy League recruiting is more difficult now than in Teevens’s playing days because of the Academic Index (AI), a league-wide system which sets a series of restrictions on each school’s recruiting (mainly by obliging certain academic qualifications in an incoming class). In the late 1970s, when the current coach was a quarterback leading the College to its fourth consecutive Ivy League championship, “fifty to sixty players” would comprise a single recruiting class; now, that number has been whittled down to an average of thirty student-athletes per year. Further, in the 1970s the AI was “more of an average” of the entire incoming recruiting class; now, a complex series of bands places more emphasis on each individual’s achievements. The whole process, Teevens noted, is an extended version of “niche recruiting;” each player is specifically and painstakingly selected based on.Nonetheless, Dartmouth has successfully jumped through the narrow hoops set up by the Ivy League: for the past two years, the College’s recruits have exceeded the AI requirements. Despite accusations of poor institutional support dating back to the Furstenberg letter debacle of last year, Teevens says his relationship with the dean of admissions is “seamless” and that College President James Wright has been “great.”

Teevens’ arrival also brought about what is potentially the biggest recent development for the Dartmouth program. With the upcoming construction of a new football building near the current east stands of Memorial Field (the facility will include a large weightroom, meeting rooms, and another “smart classroom” big enough for the football team and staff, as well as an amply-sized reception area for alumni and other gatherings), Dartmouth will have “the premier football facility in the Ivy League” as another weapon in its recruiting arsenal.

As a coach, Teevens believes he has changed since his first stint as Dartmouth’s coach, though he claims the College “hasn’t changed appreciably” since that time. In particular, Teevens “appreciate[s] the second chance [to coach in Hanover] more than the first.” Though he once wanted a position in a major college program, which he achieved as the head coach at Stanford, he was quite happy to return to the Dartmouth he loves so much. It speaks to the ‘spell’ Dartmouth holds on her alumni that Teevens is one of only two Ivy Leaguers coaching football at their alma mater (Cornell’s Jim Knowles is the other). Indeed, Teevens has encouraged his fellow alumni to “get involved” and reminded them that “the same things that drew us” to Dartmouth still draw young men today. Though last season’s win-loss record might not have showed it, Dartmouth students and alumni can expect great things in the future from the disciplined Coach Teevens, whose undying affection for Dartmouth will surely bring good recruits and outstanding seasons to the expansive green of Memorial Field.

Teevens Looks Ahead to Football

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