Consistency is the most valuable resource in college football. Consistency — from the head coach to his assistants, from the team captains down to the redshirt freshmen on the roster — is how dynasties are formed.
Harvard coach Tim Murphy is the epitome of stability and success. Murphy, in his 23rd year at the helm in Cambridge, has built a football culture that constantly replenishes and never seems to rebuild. Since 2001 Murphy has compiled a 121-25 record with three undefeated seasons and seven Ivy League titles. His Crimson haven’t had a losing season since 1998, and they haven’t won fewer than seven games in a season since 2000. His 154 wins are the most in Harvard history and and second in Ivy League history.
The Crimson are currently riding a 21-game winning streak and are 43-4 since the start of the 2011 season.
“When people ask me what do you base your success on, your long consistent success, I always say it’s simple but it’s complex,” Murphy said. “I say it’s simple because we are the ultimate human resources industry, and, in a nutshell, there are a lot of variables that go into being any successful organization, any successful team, but the biggest one is you got to have great people in your organization. I think what we’ve done is we’ve managed to evaluate and develop our student-athletes and evaluate and develop our potential assistant coaches. There’s a lot of other things, but to me that’s by far the most important.”
Harvard’s roster of assistant coaches is exceptional for its continuity. Of the 12 coaches on staff, eight have been with the program for at least four years. His defensive coordinator, Scott Larkee, has been at Harvard for nine years, and offensive coordinator Joel Lamb has been with the team for 10 seasons.
That consistency is important in the Ivy League because of how different football is, compared to the rest of the country. The Ivy League’s stringent academic requirements mean Harvard can only recruit a specific type of athlete, and the league doesn’t award traditional scholarships like other Division 1 programs. Despite the restrictions, being able to sell the international, centuries-old brand of Harvard — and everything that comes with it — gives Murphy and the Crimson a leg up in recruiting.
“You have to continue to evolve and adapt,” Murphy said. “Recruiting has changed in the last 22 years, where kids 20 years ago were making decisions in the springtime of their season to now making decisions in the springtime of their junior year. You had to change your recruiting process. It’s been extremely difficult on Ivy League admissions.
“Football’s important at Harvard. It has a great, long tradition, and we set the bar high. On one hand that puts a lot of pressure on everyone, but the flip side is we embrace that we’re a successful program with a long tradition. If you’re going to have a challenge you might as well embrace it.”
The success Murphy has built on Saturday has translated to success on Sunday. Of the 34 Harvard graduates to play in the NFL, 11 of them played on a Murphy-coached team. The two most prominent are Matt Birk, who played 15 seasons and won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens, and current New York Jets starting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was on two Ivy League title teams.
“Most of the kids that come here don’t come here as a ticket to the NFL, but I think it shows that if you work hard enough and you’re an outstanding student-athlete it doesn’t matter where you come from,” Murphy said. “It doesn’t matter whether you go to Stanford, Alabama, Ohio State, or Harvard, and I think it’s great for our kids to realize that if you’re good enough, and you develop enough, you’re going to get a shot.”
For Murphy, a local guy who grew up in the southern suburbs of Boston, being able to pay forward the lessons he was taught by coaches in his youth makes the job truly satisfying.
“I got into coaching because coaches had such a big impact on my life from little league baseball on up through high school and college football,” Murphy said. “I got into this industry for the right reasons. It’s something I really wanted to do. I really wanted to work with young people. On all thoughts I consider myself extremely fortunate. I was the first in my family to go to college. Now I have three kids, three college graduates. To be associated with a great institution like Harvard is really something that’s been a wonderful part of our life.”
