When the Detroit Lions went 0-16 this year, they made history. Yet when the Dartmouth Big Green football team went winless for the first time since 1883, no one blinked. Why? Because no one cares anymore. There exist many explanations for why being a football fan at Dartmouth has taken a back seat to other Saturday traditions -- like doing homework -- but one reason stands out above the rest: Dartmouth football stinks.
Before head coach Buddy Teevens '79 joined the team in 2004, many in the Dartmouth community were questioning the College's commitment to maintaining a competitive football team. It was thought that in hiring Teevens, a relatively big-name coach (by Ivy standards) with previous stints at several Division I-A schools, Dartmouth was reaffirming this commitment. But it will take more than a high-profile hire to put Dartmouth football back on the map.
In the four years since Teevens took over as head coach, the Dartmouth football team has compiled a 7-34 record for a .170 winning percentage. Tack on the final seven years under former head coach John Lyons, and Dartmouth football has gone 23-87 since 1998 for a .209 winning percentage. Dartmouth last captured an Ivy League title in 1996.
Coincidentaly, just as Teevens was hired, a controversy brewed over remarks that then-Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg made in a personal letter to the president of Swarthmore. He commended Swarthmore for its decision to eliminate its football program and wrote, "I wish this were not true, but sadly football, and the culture that surrounds it, is antithetical to the academic mission of colleges such as ours."
Whether or not you agree with Furstenberg is a topic for another debate, a debate that would undoubtedly bring into question all athletic recruiting, legacy admissions and affirmative action policies. However, even if we assume Furstenberg's belief is fundamentally wrong, Dartmouth's current approach to football leaves much to be desired.
After all, the idea behind loosening academic standards for athletic recruits is that any academic shortcomings will be compensated for by contributions on the athletic field. Grades and test scores do little to accurately gauge an applicants' potential contribution to the greater college community.
At manyuniversities, football is often a large revenue generator that helps support other unprofitable teams and garners alumni donations. Yet in the case of Dartmouth football, the other end of this quid pro quo has been missing for some time now. As such, it seems to me that the administration should make a fundamental decision about how much it values the continuation of football at Dartmouth. Either the admissions office should give the coaching staff the leverage it needs to field a competitive team, or Dartmouth should simply eliminate the team all together. The state of limbo in which the team currently resides benefits no one.
I can't imagine attending a college without a football team, and it would be a shame to abandon Dartmouth's longstanding tradition of Ivy League football. Thus I hope Dartmouth takes the former route. Dartmouth should fire Teevens, who, after four years, is now responsible for recruiting every player on his team yet still has achieved no success.
Although Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League, and cannot lower academic recruiting standards to compete with those of larger schools like Harvard and Yale, it can still make a concerted effort to strengthen its recruiting program. It is often thought that hiring a high-profile coaching staff will attract more talented recruits and improve the bottom-line, but with Teevens (and, more notably, with Charlie Weis at Notre Dame) we have seen no evidence of this phenomenon. Progress will be incremental, but as the number of wins per season continues to grow, the program will attract better recruits, who in turn will generate more and more wins. The glory days of Dartmouth football may be gone forever, but a few consecutive winning seasons would go a long way towards restoring respectability to the program.
If that happens, I'll be the guy in the stands with the giant foam finger.
