Teevens back at Dartmouth
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By DON MAHLER Valley News - Published: November 25, 2009
HANOVER, N.H. — It didn't take long for Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim to bring the crowd to its feet Sunday night.
An unabashed supporter of Big Green athletics, Kim was on hand at the football team's season-ending banquet.
When it was his turn to speak, Kim gave many in the room the news they wanted to hear, affirming that Buddy Teevens will continue as football coach.
"It was a telling moment," said acting athletic director Bob Ceplikas, who spoke just before Kim. "You had to see the reaction of the players when the president announced that Buddy was staying on as coach.
"They were just so enthusiastic."
The enthusiasm, in part, comes from the fact that Dartmouth was able to snap an historic 17-game losing streak earlier this year, rebounding from an 0-10 mark in 2008.
When the team started the season 0-5, Teevens' job seemed in jeopardy, especially in light of his 7-33 mark heading into the year. But Ceplikas said that was not the case.
"When a program is struggling, there is going to be speculation about the coach's job security whether he has one year left or 10.
"But we tried not to get bogged down in that."
Another thing Ceplikas wouldn't get bogged down in was particulars. He offered no information on terms of the deal — whether Teevens had any time left on his original Dartmouth contract or how long this latest agreement was for — considering those details, he said, to be a confidential matter.
What was there for everyone to see, however, was that playing a lineup dominated by underclassmen on both sides of the ball the latter portion of the season, the Big Green won two of its last five games, and only the loss to Harvard could be called one-sided.
Despite closing the year with a 23-11 defeat, players, coaches and administrators were positive that better days were coming for the football program.
"He is definitely our coach going forward," said Ceplikas. "He is the guy who can get us where we want to be.
"It's clear we are not going to settle for anything less."
That certainly was true at Princeton, where football coach Roger Hughes was fired on Monday following a 4-6 season, including that 23-11 win over Dartmouth in the season finale.
Hughes went 47-52 in his 10 years at Princeton, winning the 2006 Ivy League title and posting three winning seasons overall.
Princeton Athletic Director Gary Walters said Hughes' tenure had been disappointing recently.
"I was hoping that, at this point, we would see more progress," Walters told the school newspaper, The Daily Princetonian. "But it just didn't come about in the way we would have hoped."
Ceplikas would not comment on the Princeton decision, nor would he draw any comparisons or distinctions in relation to Dartmouth's decision to bring Teevens back.
"I'm not going to try and speculate about the factors that led Princeton to their decision," he said. "We feel that in light of the number of obstacles that were in place that we've made tremendous progress.
"When you look at the on-the-field performance of the freshman and sophomores you can see we are headed in the right direction in terms of talent.
"We feel as though all signs are pointing toward going in the right direction."
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