'Every Game Was a Fight': A History of Big Green Football's Greatest Successes

From the team’s first game in 1881 to its Ivy League championship win in 2021, the Dartmouth football program has a rich history.

by Caroline York | 41 minutes ago

Source: Courtesy of Tyler Greene

This article is featured in the Freshman 2022 special issue.

With more than 1,200 games under the team’s belt, Dartmouth football is one of the College’s oldest and most popular sports. The sport is not only steeped in campus tradition, but also carries a legacy of success. In recent years, Dartmouth has secured the Ivy League championship in two consecutive seasons: 2021 and 2019. From its inception to its current performance, the Dartmouth football program has seen moments of great success.

According to the book “Dartmouth College Football: Green Fields of Autumn” by former Dartmouth athletics information director Jack Degange, the first Dartmouth football game was played in 1881, and a few years later the Yale University football team traveled to Hanover to witness Dartmouth’s first major loss. , with a score of 113-0. Degange writes that the tides started to change in the early 1900s, when the 1903 Big Green team had a 9-1-0 record. Most notable was the win against Harvard University in the first-ever game ever played at Harvard Stadium — America’s “first permanent college athletic arena,” he wrote.

The 1925 team was one of the most successful teams in College history, finishing the 1925 season with an 8-0-0 record and, according to Degange, being crowned national champions. Degange also describes how early 20th century sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote, “Football’s foremost banner for the waning year goes to…Dartmouth, the College on the Hill.”

In 1926, Dartmouth had a winning record and was invited to compete in the Rose Bowl against the University of Washington, Degange wrote. However, Dartmouth turned down the offer because the players wanted to spend Christmas with their families and chose the University of Alabama instead.

The Ivy League: Academics First, Athletics Second

In 1946, the “Ivy Group,” made up of Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University, met over their concerns about the growing public interest in collegiate athletics , especially football, as entertainment. Administrators decided that students attending their institutions would primarily be students continuing their education and not recruited athletes. The Ivy League was officially formed in 1954, but the eight universities did not participate in athletic competitions until 1956.

Bridging rigorous academic programs with competitive athletics, the Ivy League began to attract well-rounded individuals who excelled in both the classroom and the field. Tackle Henry Paulson ’68, for example, was named to the first-team All-Ivy and NCAA Scholar-Athlete and became the CEO of Goldman Sachs. President George W. Bush later nominated Paulson as Secretary of the Treasury.

When asked what he believed to be the most successful football team in Dartmouth history, Degange pointed to the 1970 team, which went unbeaten and finished 14th in the AP polls. Nineteen players won “regional and national” awards, and Willie Bogan ’71 was named an Academic All-American, an NCAA Postgraduate Scholar, and a Rhodes Scholar for his academic excellence.

Dartmouth, with the smallest population of all eight Ivy League schools, also holds the most Ivy League championships, with 20 titles since the league’s inception. Also notable are Dartmouth’s five consecutive Ivy League championships from 1969 to 1973.

Some Dartmouth footballers have had successful careers in the sport. After starting three seasons as a quarterback and being named Ivy League Player of the Year in 1992, Jay Fiedler ’94 had a standout career in the NFL. He competed for both the football and track and field teams during his time at College, as a quarterback and a decathlon athlete, respectively.

“[In order to keep up with the game], you have to sacrifice in other areas, whether it’s social or elsewhere,” Fiedler said. “You have to prioritize what is important to you; athletics and academics were the two main things to focus on when I was at Dartmouth.

Fiedler played for the Philadelphia Eagles, Minnesota Vikings and Jacksonville Jaguars and eventually found his foundation as a starting quarterback for the Miami Dolphins from 2000 to 2004. He is the only Miami quarterback to win a playoff game in more than twenty years.

“I think a lot of people underestimate the competitiveness of the Ivy League, but we were a very competitive league and every game was a fight,” said Fiedler. “This helped prepare me to climb the ladder to become the starting quarterback in Miami.”

recent achievements

Dartmouth football has continued its tradition of excellence, winning the most recent 2021 crown. Bruce Wood, founder of Big Green Alert – a Dartmouth Football blog since 2005 – said he believes there are several factors that have made the program so strong in recent years.

“What has made the team so successful over the past ten years is great recruits, solid coaching and a lot of help from football friends in terms of budget,” said Wood.

Wood also cited the players’ dedication to the sport and the team’s ability to be one step ahead of the competition as reasons for its achievements over the years.

“One of the things that’s really impressive is the fact that there’s very little turnover in the program,” he said. “Coachs stay close by. Players don’t give up.”

Another aspect of the football program at Dartmouth that “attracts players” is its emphasis on making the game as safe as possible, Wood said. He added that current head coach Buddy Teevens ’79 was tired of seeing players suffer head injuries, leading to Dartmouth’s decision to ban tackling in practice in 2011, before the Ivy League officially passed a motion in 2016. assumed not to tackle in training. In 2013, Teevens, in collaboration with the Thayer School of Engineering, developed Mobile Virtual Player, a motorized tackling dummy that prevents head contact, according to ESPN.

“Dartmouth is certainly leading the way with the robotic dummy for mobile virtual players, which in practice does not tackle – the only Ivy League team to do so – [so] you will never tackle or be tackled by a teammate,” said Wood.

John Lyons, former defensive coordinator of Dartmouth football from 1987 to 1991 and head coach from 1992 to 2004, attributed the success of the program to the school’s location, the support of alumni and the great tradition on which Dartmouth football rests.

“Dartmouth is a unique school because of its location where it is easy to focus on playing football with few distractions,” Lyons said. “There is also a very strong support from alumni who have done a great job upgrading the facilities; players feel the tradition of alumni.”