It is no secret that Dartmouth's football team is in the midst of some of the worst days of its storied history. The Big Green's 17-game losing streak is currently the second longest in the NCAA's Football Championship Subdivision behind only that of Indiana State University and the signs of hope Dartmouth showed early this season are starting to look like false omens.
As the streak grows, whispers about the need to replace head coach Buddy Teevens '79 have turned into grumbles, moans and finally columns on this page. Teevens, it seems, has even lost the support of Dartmouth "superfan" Joshua Drake '08, who suggested this week that the embattled head coach should be relocated to Alumni Gym if Dartmouth does not beat Columbia and Princeton ("On Their Way to Do or Die," Oct. 21).
Drake is right that both of those games are winnable for the Big Green. The Lions, though no longer the punching bag of Ivy League football (that honor now falls to Dartmouth), lost to Penn by a wider margin than did the Big Green, and Princeton, well, lost to Columbia.
Beating down-on-their-luck teams, however, will not restore faith in a down-on-itself program. The Big Green must prove that its 384 yards of total offense against Holy Cross and 314 yards of offense against the University of New Hampshire can result in more than two late-game touchdowns and three red-zone turnovers, respectively.
The Columbia game is a just day away, and while a win against the Lions wouldn't mean instant validation for Dartmouth, it would provide much needed catharsis and might create some momentum for future contests against Princeton and Cornell. A 3-7 season might not seem like an impressive goal to most but it would be a success for the Big Green.
While many of our contemporaries are blinded by recent disappointments, we remember well the excitement that accompanied the announcement of Teevens' return to Dartmouth as well as the successes that he achieved in previous stints at the College. And, to be fair, Dartmouth has yet to lose a game this season that it "should" have won although it is unclear whether a team that has gone 5-30 since the members of the Class of 2010 arrived at the College "should" win anything.
Still, we're finding it increasingly difficult to defend Teevens' resume.
Although we know that we cannot blame him alone for the culture of losing that seems to have displaced Dartmouth's winning ways it takes 22 men and 60 minutes to win a football game the buck must stop somewhere.
Coach Teevens, we do not want the story of your time at Dartmouth to end with another winless season. We won't resort to ultimatums, but the writing is on the wall: You need to win a game, and you need to win one soon.
