Buddy Teevens (1956-2023), Part II

Part II of our look at the career of Buddy Teevens takes us to his return to Dartmouth in 2005. You can read Part I here.

2005: The return of Buddy to Dartmouth came when the program was in a deeply troubled state. The Big Green fired coach John Lyons after a 1-9 campaign in 2004. Long story short: After Dartmouth won the Ivy League title in 1996 with a 10-0 record, the college — perhaps freaked out over the football team doing so well — changed its academic index, which affected recruiting greatly — Dartmouth went 15-53 over Lyons' last seven seasons (1997-2004). 

A couple weeks after Lyons was fired, the Valley News (where your humble servant worked at the time) reported that Karl Furstenberg, Dartmouth's dean of admissions, had written a letter in 2000 — on Dartmouth stationery — to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, essentially congratulating the school for dropping football. (This was forever known as the "Furstenberg Letter.") Needless to say, Dartmouth had to go into damage control, and as this column points out, it might have been the best thing for the program. 

First, Dartmouth brought back Teevens, who had just been fired as Stanford's head coach. Later, the school announced plans for badly needed renovations to Memorial Field and the construction of the Floren Varsity House, a facility behind the visitors' grandstand that includes a weight room, locker rooms for football and other athletic goodies.

But, as an old baseball player once said, "Rome wasn't born in a day," and Teevens 2.0 was no different. The Big Green went 9-51 over Teevens' first five years, including an 0-10 disaster in 2008. (To this day, I still regret putting all 10 scores on the front of the Valley News sports page — I was the page design guy — after the Green lost to Princeton in the season finale.)

The uniforms were about as inspired as the team on the field. All-green? Machine font? Jersey side panels? Let's put it this way: Several years later, I had a chance to get as many of these as I wanted for $10 a pop at a Dartmouth equipment sale, and I still passed. 

2009: After the 2008 disaster, Dartmouth hired a consultant for advice on how to save the floundering program. The short answers: More money for recruiting and for assistant coaches, better facilities (see above) and an easier nonconference schedule. In 2010, Teevens abolished live tackling in practice in an effort to prevent concussions and keep his players fresh for gameday. By 2010, Dartmouth was 6-4, its first winning record in 13 years. From 2010-13, the Big Green plodded along with five or six wins a year; they weren't up to the early-mid '90s level of success, but at least they were respectable. 

The uniforms also were respectable. While the looping lines and panels didn't age well, the design was still fairly clean. Also, the numbers and lettering were stitched, rather than screened, onto the shirts, a big upgrade.

2015: In 2014, Dartmouth shot up to 8-2, second behind only Harvard (the Big Green's longtime bugaboo) in the Ivy standings. One year later, Dartmouth ended a 19-year wait by capturing a share of the Ivy League title with a come-from-behind win over Princeton in the season finale at Memorial Field. Down 10-7 with five minutes left, the Big Green tied the game at 10-all on an Alex Gakenheimer field goal with 4:54 remaining and won the game on Dalyn Williams' 12-yard TD pass to Kyle Bramble with 24 seconds left.

This Valley News front page from 2015 (designed by moi)
celebrates Dartmouth's (shared) Ivy League title. 

They even had an Ivy League champs sign ready to go
to match the ones in the background!

The uniforms took a dramatic turn during this period. As I noted in Part I of our little series, Teevens eliminated the black trim from the uniforms when he first took over in 1987. Well, by 2015, not just was black back, but as an alternate jersey, pants AND helmet. And Dartmouth also trotted out gray alternate pants and helmets, giving the Big Green 27 possible combinations. I always thought Dartmouth should have gone with the traditional look for the Ivy title clincher, but what do I know? At least they didn't bring back the green pants.

Also note the tree on the sleeves; introduced as an alternate logo, it later became part of the school seal to honor Dartmouth's connection to the great outdoors.

The mighty but humble Dartmouth tree.

One other note: Teevens finally won the Ivy title in his 11th year of his second stint at Dartmouth. I say this as a huge Teevens fan, but I wonder if any other coaches have been given that long a leash? Jack Cosgrove won his first league title in his ninth year at Maine. ...  Rich Brooks won the Pac-10 in his 18th year at Oregon, so that might be the winner, although I've also read that as long as Brooks finished around .500 and beat Oregon State (he was 14-3-1 vs. the Beavs), everyone was happy.

2019: After a 4-6 season in 2016, Dartmouth finished second in 2017 and '18 before reclaiming the Ivy crown in '19, sharing the title with Yale. The Big Green's only loss came to Cornell (huh?) in the season's ninth game. The wins included a 27-10 win over Princeton at Yankee Stadium in a game celebrating Princeton's 150th anniversary of college football and Dartmouth's 250th anniversary as a college.

After burning through as many as nine combinations in recent years, Dartmouth pared the uniforms down a bit by '19, going with white helmets and pants the whole season. The green and white jerseys were slightly modified, with the back numbers getting super-sized. 

2021: After COVID-19 wiped out the 2020 season, Dartmouth returned in '21 with a vengeance, going 9-1 and splitting the Ivy title with Princeton (which Dartmouth destroyed 31-7 during the season). From 2017-21, the Big Green went 35-5, which has to be among the best records of any FCS team during that period. 

The gray and black alternate pants were brought out of mothballs, and Dartmouth also introduced an alternate helmet with a big ol' tree on the side. But the Green was shut out by Columbia 19-0 the night the helmets debuted, and they haven't been seen since.

Dartmouth's decision to bring back Buddy Teevens, and its patience while he slowly rebuilt the program, paid huge dividends on and off the field. He loved and cared about his game and his school, but he wasn't afraid to bring innovations to the table: robotic tackling dummies, women coaches, etc. His impact on football, hopefully, will be felt for years to come.