Ivy League Icons: The Legacy of Al Bagnoli, Tim Murphy and Buddy Teevens

Picture Al Bagnoli, Tim Murphy and Buddy Teevens in your head. 

You probably see them working their magic on a football field.

The three were such a constant in the Ivy League across fall weekends that it may have felt the sight of them along the Penn and Columbia (Bagnoli), Harvard (Murphy) and Dartmouth (Teevens) sidelines would last forever.

The many thousands of people whose lives they touched on their respective campuses and across the nation might say the relationships built are even more vivid.

“Each in his own way, honestly, they’re legends,” said Ivy League executive director Robin Harris, who had a front row seat to three of the league’s winningest and most-impactful coaches competing together for decades.  

Just a few years ago, only one conference in Division I college football – either in the FCS or the FBS – had more than one active head coach of at least 20 years in its league, and it was the Ivy League with Bagnoli (he finished with 30 seasons across 31 years), Murphy (29 across 30) and Teevens (22 across 23).

Today, however, Ivy League football feels so different than just one year ago. Bagnoli retired in August due to health reasons. The beloved Teevens died at the age of 66 in September while recuperating from injuries sustained in a bicycling accident six months earlier. Murphy announced his retirement this past January, two months after guiding Harvard to a share of the league title.

The trio of coaches served as walking encyclopedias of Ivy League history, advancing the game and developing student-athletes for even bigger and better accomplishments beyond college. Across their combined 84 years in the league, Bagnoli, Murphy and Teevens totaled 807 games, 503 victories and 24 championships.

While it’s impossible to fill the void left behind, the memories of this special time period in the Ivy League are just the opposite – they’re overflowing.

All due to three extraordinary coaches.

Eugene Francis “Buddy” Teevens III (Dartmouth, 1987-91 and 2005-22)

Raise your hand if you knew Coach Teevens’ full name. 

Too formal? Surely, if you experienced his authentic style. 

He was “Buddy” to many, “Coach T” to some.

Oh yes, he also preceded Bagnoli and Murphy into the Ivy League.

Teevens bled the green and white of Dartmouth from the time he was a student-athlete and played quarterback for the Big Green, leading them as a senior to the 1978 Ivy championship and receiving the Asa S. Bushnell Cup as the league’s player of the year. He also was a member of the school’s successful ice hockey program.

He went into coaching after graduation, first on DePauw’s staff in Division III, then Boston University, where he was assistant alongside Murphy. When Teevens held his first head coaching position at Maine in 1985 and ’86, Murphy served as his offensive coordinator.

Coaching at his alma mater was a natural for Teevens, and he did so while posting a 117-101-2 record (83-70-1 Ivy) over two head coaching stints – first from 1987 to ’91, winning Ivy League titles in his final two seasons, then from the 2005 to ’22 seasons, with three more championships as well as four second-place finishes. Between the two stints, he worked at four FBS schools, including as head coach at Tulane (1992-96) and Stanford (2002-04).  

But that doesn’t even tell half the story of Buddy Teevens – many feel what he did for football was as important as his success coaching the sport in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Perhaps what made him perfect for the Dartmouth program was the way he related being a Big Green student-athlete to his team. Those “old Buddy” stories served as motivation, a way of Teevens showing he understood the demands facing his players both on and off the field.

No project was too big or too small for Teevens, whether he trimmed the hedges near Memorial Field or would clear off the Dartmouth logo at midfield after snowstorms.

He had an acronym or saying for everything. CARE – Consider, Accept, Respect, Educate. A and I – Adjust and Improvise. “We want a great player when it’s football time, a great student when it’s academic time, and a great man all the time.” “That (saying) meant a lot to him,” Dartmouth athletic director Mike Harrity said, “because he loved this place.”

He was always observing, thinking, reading. “He had so many books always piled up,” his wife Kirsten Teevens said. “I’m like, ‘Honey, really?’ Like reading 10 books at a time. He was always just learning about things.”

That included studying about and having concern for player safety and sports-related concussions at a time when football wasn’t showing enough interest in such topics. Dartmouth’s tradition-rich program had declined before Teevens’ return and his second coaching stint was off to five straight losing seasons, but he still made player safety his priority. To the surprise of his assistant coaches, he suggested the team eliminate tackling between players in practice to lower the risk of injury, using only blocking sheds and stationary tackling dummies. He maintained the players would become more effective by the decrease in contact.

“We had to convince people – there were doubters, everybody is going to second-guess you,” said Sammy McCorkle, then an assistant, now Dartmouth’s head coach. “We knew we were going to have to block that out, stay true to ourselves and stay true to our beliefs. We did a lot of research and we had a plan ready to roll out there. And then we knew we were going to have to learn every day about how to adjust. Every day we did it and every day we came out with an idea of how we wanted to go about doing this ‘no tackling.’ We got more confident in what we were doing and why we were doing it and that it was going to work.

“The fact that he came in with this idea at a very, very tough time, unstable time, it goes to show he was able to keep the outside voices away. He didn’t care, he had an idea, he felt strongly about it, he was going to follow through on it.”     

Always one to connect people around a common cause, Teevens partnered the football program with Dartmouth’s engineering department, which developed a remote-control tackling dummy called MVP (Mobile Virtual Player). It allowed for practicing tackling technique without player-to-player contact.

All Ivy League programs eventually followed Dartmouth’s lead in eliminating tackling during practice, and ultimately a movement spread across football to encourage safety and make rules changes to try to eliminate brain injuries. While appearing before a Congressional hearing on concussions in 2016, Teevens said, “I love the game of football, but I love my players more.”

Teevens also went against conventional practice by making a big push for female football coaches. In 2018, he named Callie Brownson as the Big Green’s offensive quality control coach, which made her Division I football’s first full-time female coach. After Brownson left, Jennifer King was hired to the staff, and both have gone on to NFL teams.

“Buddy was just courageous, creative, an innovator,” Harrity said, “and did the right things even when it wasn’t popular to do it.”

Added Murphy, “I looked at Buddy as arguably the Ivy League coach who has had the most impact.”   

The Ivy League collectively gasped in March 2023 after Teevens’ accident.

Ever since, the football world has rallied with support, even beyond his passing. Among the recognitions, Dartmouth is hosting a community celebration of his life in May and will rename its home field to Buddy Teevens Stadium at Memorial Field in October. Also, Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Peyton Manning, whose family shared a close relationship with Teevens, has announced the creation of the Buddy Teevens Award, which annually will go to a coach who makes a lasting impact in football both on and off the field.

Eldo P. “Al” Bagnoli (Penn, 1992-2014, and Columbia, 2015-22) 

Ask Al Bagnoli about his funny side and he says, “I’m not sure there is one.” 

He laughs, of course, because while he was defined by a business-like approach, his student-athletes knew he had their best interests in mind and founds way to emphasis their strengths.

And, well, winning was fun. 

Had Bagnoli not retired for health reasons a month and a half before Columbia’s 2023 season – he underwent a heart procedure earlier in the year – he would have matched former Yale head coach Carm Cozza’s record 32 years in the Ivy League and passed him in games coached (Bagnoli’s 298 were five less than Cozza). Nonetheless, Bagnoli had passed Cozza already and ranked second to Murphy in wins (186), and he guided nine Ivy League championship teams at Penn, which is the third-most in league history behind the same pair of coaches.

“What I tried to do through all my tenure is treat everybody with respect and dignity and correctly,” Bagnoli said. “And hopefully all the players that I’ve coached felt like I cared about them not only for what they can bring to the field, but also cared about them as individuals.

“It’s not necessary a legacy of won-loss records. I was blessed to have a lot of really good players.”

Before Penn, the 1975 graduate of Central Connecticut State enjoyed stunning success in 10 seasons at Union College – his first season in 1982 produced the Division III program’s first winning record in a dozen years, and he went on to go 86-19 and twice reach the national championship game.

Penn was coming off three straight losing seasons when Bagnoli became head coach prior to the 1992 season, and the Quakers went 7-3 in his first campaign, then had back-to-back unbeaten teams in ’93 (10-0) and ’94 (9-0). That marked the first time an Ivy program had consecutive 7-0 league records, and it occurred two more times under Bagnoli – in 2002 and ’03, then 2009 and ’10 (no other program has done that even once). Of particular note, the 2002 Quakers, who featured the Mike Mitchell-to-Robert Milanese passing combo, won every league game by 30 points on average and hosted Harvard for ESPN’s first “College GameDay” visit to an FCS host school.

“His sense of game management, how to run a program like a CEO of a company, I just thought he did a tremendous job with that – working with people, recruiting, all depths of it,” said Ray Priore, who preceded Bagnoli on Penn’s coaching staff and succeeded him as head coach. “It was a great learning experience for a number of years.”

Bagnoli retired after the 2014 season and accepted a position in Penn’s athletic administration, but a funny thing happened shortly afterward – he realized he hadn’t lost the coaching bug. 

Just three months later, he was off from Philadelphia to New York to take over Columbia’s struggling program. 

The Lions were in the midst of a 21-game losing streak, but they became competitive under his guidance. An 8-2 record and a tie for second in the league standings in 2017 marked the program’s best season in 21 years, four of his final five teams posted winning records and their 35 wins over his seven seasons were the most ever for the program in such a span. 

Mark Fabish, who played at Penn under Bagnoli, then coached under him at Penn and Columbia, led the Lions last season. Jon Poppe is their new coach, and he’s had apprenticeships under both Bagnoli and Murphy. 

“I think the kids are very similar,” at both schools, Bagnoli said. The 71-year-old is still involved in fundraising initiatives at Columbia. “I think kids want to be coached hard if you coach the right kid. They want people who will invest in them and surround them with people who can help them achieve their athletic potential. At both schools, you’ve got kids who are dealing with a lot of outside interest and aren’t just strictly athletes. They tend to give back to the neighboring community or whatever their preference is in terms of charity or social work or time. I think all that’s similar. 

“The difference is, and it’s starting to change now, but I think Penn has a different expectation having won so many Ivy League championships. … Columbia, I think we’re getting to that point now.” 

Said Murphy of Bagnoli: “To do what he did at two different schools was just remarkable. Every time you played an Al Bagnoli team, whether at Penn or at Columbia, wow, you knew they were going to be prepared, you knew they were going to be motivated, and you knew it was not going to be an easy day to get a game into the win column.”

Add in Union and Bagnoli posted a 269-134 (.667) career record, placing him in the top 25 of coaching wins in college football history – no joking matter, of course.

Which leads back to the funny side of Bagnoli. Oh, it exists amid that serious, direct nature.

As Priore said about his close friend, “Coach on Saturday at 1 o’clock is a lot different than Coach on Wednesday afternoon at 1 o’clock.” 

Tim Murphy (Harvard, 1994-2023)

Bagnoli was already a fixture in the Ivy League when Tim Murphy took over at Harvard prior to the 1994 season. Murphy met the challenge in competition while helping to forge a great rivalry of teams and epic games.

But to get to that level with Bagnoli, you have to first look back to someone else who pushed Murphy. Way back to Buddy Teevens – even before they coached together at Boston U. and Maine.

They were best friends, Murphy said, “since seventh-graders at junior high school, starting with having played an all-star baseball game against each other and having had a collision at home plate that to this day we would still argue about, whether I was safe or not. I was; Buddy would never agree to that.”

Murphy’s incredible career at Harvard almost didn’t happen. A Springfield College graduate, he took graduate courses while he was an assistant at Lafayette, Boston U. and Maine and had decided he would move out of the profession if he wasn’t a head coach by 30. He was accepted into Northwestern’s graduate school of business and was leaning toward enrolling when Teevens left Maine to take over at Dartmouth and Murphy – at 30 – was named the Black Bears’ head coach.

After his first team earned a share of the Yankee Conference title and qualified for the national playoffs, Murphy never stopped being a head coach until his retirement.

Following two seasons at Maine, Murphy spent the next five at Cincinnati. He guided an 8-3 season in 1993, then surprised many by taking a pay cut at the FBS level to become Harvard’s head coach, although those people probably didn’t realize that Murphy considered it a dream job to take over in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It also helped that his first coaching job before Lafayette was on the Brown staff, and Murphy found the Ivy League experience to be rewarding.

He prepared his teams vigorously. The Crimson went 9-1 overall and 7-0 in the Ivies in 1997 as Murphy claimed his first of 10 league championships, but it wasn’t until 2001 that they began to string together consecutive winning seasons. And, oh, did they, with the ’01 squad going 9-0 for the program’s first unbeaten and untied season since 1913 and embarking on 16 straight winning records – all 7-3 or better – with eight more Ivy titles. The Crimson followed Penn’s first back-to-back unbeaten Ivy teams with a 10-0/7-0 squad in 2004, a team led by Bushnell Cup-winning quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, who went on to pass for nearly 35,000 yards in a 17-year NFL career.

“I told him (Murphy) in-person a thousand times: What he’s accomplished, the consistency of that program is probably unparalleled in the history of our league,” Bagnoli said. “That’s a reflection on Tim, that’s a reflection on his staff.”

“When I think of Coach Murphy, the first thing I think of is his innate ability to develop young men,” said Kyle Juszczyk, who was part of Harvard’s solid NFL pipeline under Murphy, and now a Pro Bowl fullback in each of the last eight seasons. “His demeanor commands respect wherever he is, on or off the field. Players work their tails off because they want to earn his approval. Even now in my 30s, I have teammates who are intimidated by Coach when we go to alumni events.” 

Juszczyk uses a handful of descriptions when he thinks of his former coach – leader, authoritarian, teacher, motivator. One word stands out to Murphy.

“As a coach, I felt like I was always going to be a leader and they were always going to know that I was the head coach,” he said. “Your job as a head coach, coaching 110 young men, is not to be one of the boys, one of the kids. I was one going to be someone that they could look up to, someone that they could believe in, someone they knew was going to work his butt off to help them as individuals and as a team to reach all of their goals. I hope and believe my players believe I was that person.

“But they also knew after a game, I was going to trust those guys, whether it was (to) run off a stage and have them catch me, and then sing the Harvard fight song. They know I cared.” 

Murphy passed Cozza in 2022 for the most wins by an Ivy League coach. In 2023, Murphy then overtook the legendary Yale coach for the most wins against league opponents. By the time his final season ended, the totals were 200 (200-89) and 138 (138-65), respectively. Just as big, the Crimson’s share of the league title was Murphy’s 10th, moving him into a tie with Cozza for the league record. 

It wasn’t long after the season Murphy’s wife Martha wrote four numbers that ended in zero on a board – 200, 150, 30, 10. Initially, her 67-year-old husband didn’t put it all together, but as they talked it through, she pointed out that Murphy had reached 200 wins in Harvard’s 150th season of football across 30 years at the school with 10 Ivy championships.

“She said, ‘I think someone’s trying to tell us something,’” Murphy remembered.

On Jan. 17, Murphy announced his retirement. He and Teevens had always talked about doing that at the same time. Technically they didn’t due to Teevens’ passing, but he was probably there spiritually, especially with Harvard sharing the 2023 Ivy title with Dartmouth (under Teevens’ coaching disciple McCorkle) as well as Yale (coached by Murphy’s former assistant Tony Reno).

Passing of the Torch

Do you see them? 

Right there on the sideline.

Al Bagnoli. Tim Murphy. Buddy Teevens.

It’s an everlasting image – three icons of Ivy League history.

Gentlemen off the field, they were fierce competitors on it, each trying to add to the league’s terrific total of football championships – Dartmouth leads with 21, but Harvard, Penn and Yale are close behind with 18 each. It all played out with mutual respect on game day, then with camaraderie and friendship throughout the year as they aligned over what was best for the league.

Over the longevity of the trio’s careers, football changed in many ways, from fullback- and tight end-heavy schemes with a quarterback under center to a wide-open style of shotgun formations and three-wide receiver sets. From conference realignment to NCAA transfer portal to NIL.

But unlike other conferences, the Ivy League didn’t change too much during the Bagnoli, Murphy and Teevens era – it was the same eight schools committed to a balance of academic and athletic excellence. And the three were drawn to the philosophy.

“Taken together,” Harris said, “the impact the three of them had on the Ivy League is unbelievable, and so rich.”

“All three of these men carried the torch for a long time in the Ivy League,” said former Cornell offensive tackle Kevin Boothe, who played in the NFL and now directs its management council, “and they upheld the proud tradition and raised the bar for the next generation of coaches.”  

This fall, for the first time since 1986, the Ivy League won’t have either Bagnoli, Murphy or Teevens on a sideline. But the three always surrounded themselves with excellent assistant coaches – some of whom have succeeded them – so a new era has dawned. 

Even as the torch passes, the Ivy League will embrace what it’s gained from having the three iconic coaches competing together at the same time.