By any measure, Tim Murphy has led Harvard's storied football program to its most prosperous and successful era since the early 20th century - a trend he hopes to continue into 2010 as he enters his 17th year as the Thomas Stephenson Family Head Coach for Harvard Football.
One of the game's finest teachers and motivators, Murphy took charge of the Harvard program prior to the 1994 season and has since led the program to a dominant state within the Football Championship Subdivision.
He is the first Harvard coach since the legendary Percy Haughton to lead the Crimson to two unbeaten, untied seasons in his tenure. The 2008 season culminated in Harvard's fifth Ivy League championship under Murphy (13th overall), its second consecutive Ivy crown, and the third in five seasons. The 2008 Crimson finished the year ranked 14th in the FCS Coaches Poll and continued a tradition of winning never before seen in the storied Ivy League.
In accumulating a 9-1 overall record in 2008 and a 7-3 record in 2009, Harvard continued its streak as the first and only team in Ivy League history to record nine consecutive seasons with at least seven victories. Harvard's current stretch is the program's best nine-year run since a 28-year stretch of seven-plus win seasons came to an end in 1911. The team's nine-year win total of 70 (70-19) is one shy of its program-record output from 1908-1916.
Just the fourth head coach to man the Harvard sideline in the last 56 years, Murphy enters the 2010 season with a 104-55 record with the Crimson. His overall head coaching record stands at 136-100-1 through 23 years, including five seasons as head coach at Cincinnati and two at Maine.
Equally as impressive, every four-year player recruited by Murphy to Harvard has both graduated from the university and been part of at least one Ivy League championship team.
Murphy enters the 2010 season ranked second in school history in total wins, trailing only the legendary Joe Restic (who won 117 games with the Crimson) on the all-time chart. The two coaches are closely linked and remain close. In the spring of 2008, Murphy joined Restic as Harvard coaches to be honored with the National Football Foundation Eastern Chapter's Ron Burton Distinguished America Award, given to a former football player who has carried the lessons learned on the field to his larger community.
Murphy has guided the Crimson to four outright, and five overall, Ivy League titles in the past 13 years. The 2001 Harvard squad posted its first undefeated, untied campaign since 1913, while the 2004 team went a step further by going 10-0 to mark the first perfect season with at least 10 wins since 1901. Murphy's 1997 Crimson also won the Ivy title, which was Harvard's first in 10 years. In a game that will go down in history as one of equal importance and dominance, the 2007 championship season was capped by a 37-6 victory at Yale against a previously undefeated Bulldog team that was highly ranked in both total offense and defense.
The 2006 season saw Murphy's Harvard squad log another program first as the Crimson registered wins against the Ivy League and Patriot League champions for the first time in the same season in school history.
The 2004 season, meanwhile, stands as arguably the Crimson's finest in more than 100 years. The Crimson went 10-0 on the year and had an average margin of victory of 20.5 points. Harvard scored at least 31 points in nine of the 10 games, had a double-digit winning margin in eight games, held its last six opponents to 14 points or less, dealt two shutouts and allowed just one touchdown in the last three games.
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Tim Murphy with his family (from left) Grace, Martha, Conor and Molly. |
Harvard finished the year as the only undefeated school in the FCS and one of just five unbeatens in all of college football (along with Southern California, Auburn and Utah from the FBS and Linfield from Division III). The Crimson finished the season ranked No. 13 in the final Sports Network Division I-AA national poll and the ESPN/USA Today poll, marking Harvard's highest finish in the national rankings since the formation of the Division I-AA polls. Harvard's final Sagarin Rating stood 37th among the 239 Division I football schools, ahead of Minnesota, Brigham Young, Clemson, Stanford, Maryland, Alabama, Nebraska, Syracuse, Michigan State and Penn State, among others.
Murphy saw two Harvard players achieve All-America status and one earn Academic All-America recognition in 2004, while the Crimson had 15 players, the most in school history, named All-Ivy League. Harvard's starting quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05, was tabbed as the league's player of the year and went on to play in the East-West Shrine Game and the Hula Bowl.
Murphy himself was named the American Football Monthly Division I-AA national coach of the year and was a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award. He was named the New England Division I-AA coach of the year for the fourth time in his career.
Murphy's 2001 Harvard squad finished 9-0 overall and 7-0 in the Ivies, and was ranked No. 19 in the final Sports Network poll. Harvard committed just nine turnovers, averaged 445.0 yards in offense and scored at least four touchdowns in every game. Murphy was both New England Division I-AA coach of the year and Grid Iron Club of Boston I-AA coach of the year, and received AFCA District I coach-of-the-year honors. He was also a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award.
Previously, Murphy led Harvard to the 1997 Ivy championship, when his squad finished 9-1 overall and 7-0 in League play. It marked the first time in school history that the Crimson had posted a perfect Ivy record. Murphy was named the Scotty Whitelaw ECAC Division I-AA coach of the year and New England coach of the year.
Since 1994, Harvard has had 69 first team All-Ivy selections, five Ivy rookies of the year, four Ivy players of the year, six first team All-Americans and sent 21 players on to pro football, including five-time All-Pro Matt Birk ’98 of the Baltimore Ravens. In addition, 10 of his players have received national academic recognition (either CoSIDA Academic All-America or the FCS All-Academic Team). Before sending two players to the 2008 CoSIDA Academic All-American team in 2008, Harvard had a national-best six players recognized on the All-District 1 team.
Murphy, past president of the FCS (Division I-AA) Coaches Association and a member of the Division I-AA Football board of trustees, is Harvard's first endowed coach. In October 1994, Thomas F. Stephenson ’64 M.B.A. ’66 established a $2 million endowment fund that supports the head football coach in much the same way that an endowed chair supports a professor. Stephenson chose to name the fund for members of his family, who have been active participants in the Harvard community for four generations.
Murphy was named head football coach at Harvard Dec. 6, 1993. He came from the University of Cincinnati, where that fall he had directed the Division I-A Bearcats to their finest record in 17 years. Murphy's first head coaching position was at the University of Maine, where, in 1987, he led the Black Bears to their first NCAA Division I-AA playoff berth.
At Cincinnati, Murphy led the Bearcats to an 8-3 record in 1993, their first winning campaign since 1982 and the school's best overall mark since 1976 (9-2). Cincinnati was the fourth-most improved team in Division I-A (an increase of five wins over 1992), and finished the regular season ranked 27th in the country in the USA Today/CNN poll and 28th in the AP poll. It was the program's highest ranking in school history at the time.
This success came after Murphy inherited a program that had a condemned stadium, no practice facilities, and the loss of 19 scholarships after being placed on probation for infractions incurred by the previous coaching staff. He attained all of his short-term goals, including: NCAA compliance, an improved graduation rate, reconstructing the strength and conditioning program and development of a successful major college team. When Murphy took over at Cincinnati in 1989, he was only 32 years old and was the youngest Division I head coach in the nation (along with Dave Rader at Tulsa).
While improvement was consistent throughout his tenure, it all came together in 1993. In that summer, Cincinnati was recognized by the College Football Association for being one of only 20 Division I schools to graduate a minimum of 70 percent of its most recent recruiting class. On the field, the Bearcats had their third-highest point total in school history (302), and set school marks for offensive plays, first downs and fewest turnovers. In addition, Cincinnati won that year's Independent Football Alliance championship (which included then-independents Memphis, East Carolina, Tulsa and Southern Mississippi).
Murphy started his head coaching career at Maine, in 1987 and 1988, when he became the youngest head coach in the country (at age 30) upon succeeding current Dartmouth head coach Buddy Teevens. His first team finished with an 8-4 record (the Black Bears' finest record in 23 years), shared the Yankee Conference title, and advanced to the NCAA Division I-AA tournament for the first time in school history. For those accomplishments, Murphy was named Division I-AA New England coach of the year and was the AFCA Northeast Region coach of the year.
Murphy also has extensive experience as an assistant coach. He was the offensive coordinator at Maine in 1985 and 1986, when the Black Bears both rushed and passed for more than 2,000 yards in the same season for the first time in school history. He was the offensive line coach at Boston University for three seasons, from 1982 through 1984, and helped the Terriers to Yankee Conference titles and NCAA Division I-AA playoff berths each year. Murphy was also the defensive line coach at Lafayette in 1981, working under Bill Russo when the Leopards posted their best record in school history (9-2), just one season after the squad went 1-10.
Murphy began his coaching career as a part-time assistant at Brown in 1979, and was promoted to assistant varsity offensive line coach the following season. A native of Kingston, Mass., Murphy graduated from Silver Lake High School in 1974. He then attended Springfield College, where he became a four-year starter and was a small college All-New England linebacker as a senior, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1978. Murphy earned his M.Ed. from Springfield the following year, did additional postgraduate work at Boston University and was accepted to the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Business at Northwestern and the Colgate Darden School of Business at Virginia.
Murphy was chosen to sit on the board of trustees of the American Football Coaches Association in January 2005 and was named to Springfield's All-Decade Team in 2006. In October, 2007, the night following Harvard's 27-10 victory over Princeton, Murphy was inducted into the Springfield College Athletic Hall of Fame.
Murphy resides in Wayland with his wife, Martha Kennedy Murphy, and the couple's three children: Molly Kennedy; Conor Timothy; and Grace Katharine.