It's hard being Dartmouth football head coach Buddy Teevens these days. After another disappointing 2-8 season in 2009, quiet grumblings from frustrated students, fans and alumni have grown into loud demands for change.
They have good reason to be upset. Since Teevens returned to the head coaching position at Dartmouth in 2005, his teams have a combined record of 9-41 for a winning percentage of just .180. The Big Green has only eight wins in the Ivy League in the past five seasons, while Ivy League champion University of Pennsylvania had seven conference wins last season alone.
Dartmouth's lack of success has been well documented and the finger pointing usually starts with the head coach when a college football program fails.
Within the next few months, the Dartmouth athletic department will have to decide if they want to bring Teevens back or move on to another head coach.
"If I'm an average guy reading the paper and saw the win-loss record, I'd say why did we hire him in the first place?" Teevens said, referring to his own resume. "Get rid of him."
The numbers are certainly not in Teevens' favor, but they tell an incomplete story. Certain intangibles do not show up in box scores, but are crucial for losing programs to develop for future success.
The first thing is establishing a winning culture.
At the end of previous head coach John Lyons' tenure and the beginning of Teeven's reign, a losing culture surrounded Dartmouth football. The early attrition rate was high, players were not highly committed to the football program and the program was consistently outspent by its competition, Teevens said.
This culture, created by chronic disappointment and frustration, inevitably affected the players and their output on the field.
"When I first got here, I could sense the culture of losing," captain Tim McManus '11 said. "I think when you lose a lot there is a human tendency to accept losing, and it is very hard to change that mindset."
The first order of business for Teevens when he arrived at Dartmouth in 2005 was to restore a positive environment for the players, he said.
A good measure of player commitment is the number seniors the team graduates. While other programs in the Ivy League were graduating around 20 seniors a year, Dartmouth only graduated a handful each year, according to Teevens. The culture of losing was a main factor in the low graduation rates because the players were discouraged by the lack of success to the point that they quit.
This was not the first time Teevens had to take over a losing program and turn it around. On his first tour of duty as the Dartmouth head coach from 1987-1991, Teevens took his team from a 2-8 record in his first season to two Ivy League championships within five years.
"We pushed the strength program very aggressively," Teevens said, referring to his first coaching stint at Dartmouth. "The first three years were not so good, and then the next two we won championships."
Teevens then identified several causes external to the football program itself that contribute to the team's persistent lack of success in recent years.
One such issue is the D-Plan, he said, which has proved a major hindrance to the program. With sophomores and juniors going on and off campus, the team only has the fall season to be together as a whole and work as a cohesive unit.
The -la-carte style of the Dartmouth dining plan is another unexpected blow to the football program, as players often do not consume the necessary calories in order to maintain their weight and grow stronger, according to Teevens. Most of Dartmouth's rival schools provide buffet-style dining to their student athletes, Teevens said.
Before the recent addition of the Floren Varsity House, inadequate training facilities were also a major problem for the football team. The aging and unimpressive facilities deterred potential recruits and made weight training extremely difficult and time consuming.
"I shudder to think where our program would be without the new facilities," Teevens said. "When I first got here, the players would put on their uniforms in the same locker room that my dad used."
Teevens said he realized that in order to produce wins on the field, these behind-the-scenes problems needed to be addressed first. The solutions have been impressive and expensive.
The Dartmouth Dining Services now offers significantly larger meal plans with discounts to accommodate the needs of student-athletes. New state-of-the-art facilities including the new FieldTurf artificial surface for the football field and the Floren Varsity House are some of the best in the world of college sports, Teevens said.
Before the new facilities were put in place, the football team used to compete with five other weight-training programs for the weight room in the old field house. According to Teevens, he would spend an entire day in the weight room just so all of his players could get the proper workout done in shifts. Now, the whole team can work out together at any time during the day without having to worry about the other athletic teams' schedules.
"We wake up at six, and go to the workout at seven," McManus said. "The whole team would work out together for two hours and then we'd go to our classes."
The recruitment of future players is also helped by the impressive facilities.
"When 17, 18-year-old recruits come in here and see the field and the rooms, it can make a difference," Teevens said.
Recruiting is an enormous part of every college football program. In order to be continuously successful, coaches need to bring in talented athletes year after year to replenish their rosters.
One way to judge a coach's recruiting ability is to see how a team fares immediately after the coach's departure, while his recruited players still play a major role on the team.
Historically, Teevens' recruits have done very well in this capacity. The year after Teevens left the University of Maine, 1987, the Black Bears went 8-4 and secured a NCAA Division I-AA playoff spot.
In the two years after Teevens left Dartmouth in 1991, the Big Green went a combined 15-5 and capped off an impressive four-year run started by Teevens.
Two years after Teevens left Tulane University in 1998, the Green Wave was 12-0 and defeated Brigham Young University in the Liberty Bowl.
There are other factors that play into a team's success after its head coach leaves, but these results show that Teevens has consistently obtained talented players. The problem for Teevens, then, could be that he has not been given enough time in the past for a team to benefit from his recruits.
This problem was exacerbated at Dartmouth, where many players do not finish all four years of their eligibility due to the program's discouraging lack of success.
With a new attitude and new facilities in place, however, the trend is gradually changing. This year, there are 15 graduating seniors on the team.
"The seniors this year really stuck through," McManus said. "They provided tremendous leadership, and the hard work and dedication they showed set a good example for the younger guys."
Overall, the attitude surrounding Dartmouth football seems to be changing as well.
A majority of the starters from this past season, mostly freshmen and sophomores recruited by Teevens, will be returning next season. There is also a new off-season conditioning program in place to keep the players in better shape throughout the year.
"In the past, we may say that we believe when we really don't, but this year, we genuinely believe that we can win the Ivy League," McManus said.
Over the past few years, Teevens has strived to create a new vibe for Dartmouth football. Instead of hoping and waiting for success, the players now expect success and believe in the program, he added.
"I have whole faith in Coach Teevens, as does the rest of the team," McManus said.
Just like he did for previous programs he coached, Teevens has set up a solid foundation at Dartmouth.
Still, at the end of the day, fans want to see wins. No matter how much Teevens has done for the program, the only thing that ultimately matters is the product he puts on the field and the number on the scoreboard.
"In my profession, they say you are hired to be fired," Teevens said. "That's what this world has become."
Consequences for firing the head coach can be severe, and McManus said that Teevens is by no means the source of the Big Green's problem.
"The outsiders do not understand how hard a job [Teevens] has," McManus said. "They don't see the day-to-day grind of being a college football coach and all the extra work he puts in. People do not see how much he cares about the players and how dedicated he is."
College football is a results-oriented business, but perhaps Teevens has earned another year to deliver them.
