This article is featured in the 2026 Winter Carnival Issue.
With five Ivy League Championship titles since 2014, the Dartmouth Football turned around their earlier lull. Former coaches, who worked with the defensive line, Duane Brooks and Don Dobes have been with the team since 2014 and 2010, respectively. Combined, they have well over fifty years of Ivy League coaching experience. Dobes was also the 2024 AFCA Assistant Coach of the Year.
What will you miss from your time coaching at Dartmouth?
DB: The thing I miss most is the family aspects — our guys like each other so much and it’s horrifying. During practice, we fight like cats and dogs, but they fight. They go at each other, but they always hang out in the same place. I’ve been coaching for 40 years and I’ve never seen, like, the camaraderie. Usually you break out into cliques, but our guys, they hang out. I’ve never seen a team like that before. Dartmouth is a special place.
DD: The people. Whether it’s the players, the linebackers, the defence, really all in all the guys, because we recruit guys on both sides of the balls. So it’s the people; my colleagues on the staff, some really good people; the families of the players; we developed close relationships with them; now, the training staff; the weight room staff; and all the people that are part of our crew. And just the bonding that we do as a team and the closeness that we’ve developed with our families, it really is a tight knit football family and I will miss all the people, and that's something that you just get great joy out of. It’s just the people who are really, really special.
What does Coach Buddy Teevens mean to you?
DB: I played for him at the University of Maine, his first head coaching job. I first met coach Teevens when I was in seventh grade at a quarterback receiver camp in Glassboro, N.J. He had just left DePauw to go to Boston University. I lived in the Hudson Valley, that’s where I went to high school and he recruited me, though he didn’t have enough space, and he said one day I’d see him again. A year later, he became the head coach at the University of Maine. So we’ve been connected ever since. And he’s also the reason I’m probably sitting here, I think I’m the only person in the history of the world to get kicked out of school as a junior in my second semester. He got me back to school. We never spoke about it, but I spoke about it in the documentary. He and I did fight a lot because I think there was a competitor in us. But, I mean, I never asked him why he’d got me back on the team. Obviously, he saw something that a bunch of people didn’t see. I’m grateful for that. I miss him every day. He’s the reason I came back to coach at Dartmouth.
DD: That’s a loaded question because I’ve known him so long. We both started our first jobs together at a small school in Indiana: DePauw. He came with a former Dartmouth coach by the name of Jerry Berndt. Jerry had been the offensive coordinator at Dartmouth, the ’78 season when Buddy led the Big Green to the Ivy League Championship and coach Berndt was the offensive coordinator. He took the head job at DePauw and he brought Buddy with him. And I had played at Illinois Wesleyan, I’m from the South Side of Chicago and I decided to get into coaching and teaching and was blessed to get a graduate assistantship at DePauw. All of a sudden, the head coach there decided to leave in the summer, and I was on the list of coaches. And so Buddy came and coach Berndt came and then Buddy and I ended up being roommates. Then his career went his way, my career went my way, and then in 2010, after I had been let go from my previous job, Dartmouth was looking for a defensive coordinator, and I was looking for a job, and he decided that I was the right guy at that time, and resurrected my career. So I think the world of the guy.
What is one highlight of your time at Dartmouth?
DB: Every week being the underdog. No one thought we were as good as we were going to be. Since 2014, our record is 81 to 29, five championships. I enjoyed every second of being the underdog and kicking people to sleep. No one’s ever expected that from us.
DD: Well, I’d say the first one was the first win in 2010 because that was that senior class. So the five previous seasons, before my arrival, Dartmouth was nine and 41. So in 2010, we played our first game at Bucknell and the guys are crying after the game. And I asked one of the other coaches, I said, “How come these guys are crying?” I said, “Did they cry after every game we win?” And the coach said to me he goes, “Donnie,” he goes, “This is this senior class’s first road victory in their Dartmouth career.” That gave me an idea of what we had walked into, but I would say the championship in 2015. Because that would have been the first one in 19 years. That was really huge. Then the one in 2024 was really special because that was the first even numbered championship since 1996. Winning the Ivy League Championship in 2023 after going through all of the adversity with Coach T and Josh Bellara and just our ability as a staff, as a team to deal with adversity and persevere, those were really, magical times, or I should say very special times.
How has the football program changed during your time here? What do you expect from the team in the near future?
DB: Before I got here, they weren’t winning much. Now they win. If you expect to win, you’ll win. The time that Coach T put in since 2005, it finally came around, but he doesn’t get to really see it finish, which is sad. Hopefully they’ll keep it going. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but they have enough guns and bullets still in their rifles to win their games.
DD: I believe we’ve re-established the football identity of Dartmouth. We’ve rejuvenated, re- energized the whole thing. And what do I expect from the future? We have great leadership with Coach Sammy McCorkle. They have a really, really good football staff that has embraced the Dartmouth way. I think it’s pretty neat that almost one in every six students on Dartmouth’s campus is a varsity athlete. I don’t find many places in the country that are even close in how well the students get along with each other and how much they respect and appreciate each other. So I think it’s a unique combination that Dartmouth has created here for the student athletes and for the students here where they all can end up being good friends if they want to, because they live together and they eat together and they hang out together.
What is one thing you are looking forward to in retirement?
DB: I’m going to go home to my house in Acadia National Park.
DD: First of all, it’s to spend time with my fiancé, my four children and their five children. The number one focus is to be able to be more available and more present for my family. And I’d like to travel and go around the country a little bit and see a lot of the guys that have played for us here that are now doing the grad transfer opportunities. I’d like to be able to go see them play. So between going to Dartmouth games and my family and going to watch the guys that played here, that’s gonna be my motivation for a while to see where it goes.
With the Super Bowl this weekend, are you backing the Patriots or the Seahawks?
DB: I’m kind of stuck in between. Jake Bobo’s the receiver on the Seahawks. His dad graduated in ’96 from Dartmouth. But, I have to go with the Patriots.
DD: I’m gonna go with the Seahawks.
