A college football coach on an unusual mission, after-the-jump …..
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Recently, I noted a campaign to promote no-tackle football for all kids until high school — with a recent proponent being former NFL quarterback Brett Favre — when (it is believed) that kids brains are developed to a certain extent by age fourteen.
And while all medical people agree that there is no way to make American football a safe sport to play — no matter what — there is a college coach who loves the sport so much, he wants it to endure … and is willing to go one-step-beyond to help protect his players, even if he is ridiculed by (some of) his peers. And this would be Buddy Teevens, the head coach of the Dartmouth College football program — his story needs wider attention.
The Massachusetts native was the starting quarterback when Dartmouth won the Ivy League title in 1978. After graduation, he went to assistant coaching positions at Boston University and the University of Maine before returning as the head coach of his alma mater in 1987. He won back-to-back Ivy League titles in 1990 and 1991, leading to an offer to coach Tulane University in New Orleans.
While he had an overall record of only 11–45 in five years at Tulane (1992-1996) he recruited many of the players on the 1998 team that went 11-0. After assistant coaching jobs at the University of Florida, he was hired as the head coach at Stanford University from 2002-2004, where his teams only posted a 10–23 record before he was fired in November.
He was re-hired at his alma mater in 2005, yet found that the football program had been in decline. The reasons? Academic standards had improved so much it affected recruiting, yet the budget for recruiting had declined (as had financial aid) in relative terms. And the admissions department was less than enthusiastic about sports recruiting — not a wrong idea, yet not appropriate for a department to do unless under the university leadership’s direction.
Those problems were fixed upon his arrival, yet from 2005-2009 the team’s record was dismal: 2-8, 2-8, 3-7, 0-10, 2-8 …. which should have led to yet another firing, but for his legacy as a player/coach. Still, he was on thin ice: until fate intervened.
For it was in 2010 that the issue of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) began to become an issue: former players having suffered so many body blows and (especially) concussions that they have often degenerated mentally. The first player to be diagnosed was Pittsburgh Steeler Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, who in the 1990’s deteriorated so much that (before his family’s watch) he peed into their oven and often slept at the city’s Amtrak station, before his death in 2002 … and where his brain was examined for signs of CTE.
Then the cases began to mount, with Boston University (where Teevens had a connection to) instituting a CTE Center at its medical school, considered the nation’s leading authority on the subject. From 2007-2017, participation in boys football dropped 6.5%. And while parts of the country (western Pennsylvania and Texas, just for starters) consider football a religion … not as much in other regions.
Teevens took the issue so much to heart, he studied film on player contact and came to realize that 60% of his team’s injuries the past five years came not in games … but instead, in practice: where hitting hard has long been a way to impress coaches. One drill (instituted by legendary Oklahoma University coach Bud Wilkinson) was considered the epitome of violent hitting that now the NFL has banned it.
Buddy Teevens decided in 2010 that something needed to be done. So he announced at a spring meeting … that henceforth, no tackling would take place at practice — at least, not human-to-human. Instead, only with tackling dummies and extra film, breaking down game tackling.
Jaws dropped.
Yet if such a stand were to take place, it stood-to-reason that it might be there:
1) Coming off a 9-43 cumulative five years … how could it get worse?
2) Teevens had the full support of university management
3) As most Ivy players were not NFL-bound: CTE was a real issue for them, thus:
4) Teevens sold recruits on having a career post-football (with a healthy brain)
Dartmouth finished the 2010 season with a 6-4 record — its first winning season since 1997 — and with far fewer injuries and concussions. An added bonus: in actual games, missed tackles dropped … by ½ that year.
Another advantage Teevens had: was help from the college’s Thayer School of Engineering (with both undergraduate and graduate programs). A professor there (a classmate of Teevens’ from 1979) developed what they called the Mobile Virtual Player (MVP, or course) — a mobile tackling dummy that is remote controlled by coaches, can get to 18 MPH quickly … and is heavily padded. Placed in service in 2013, players learn to tackle an entirely unpredictable moving target … safely. As of 2018, nearly thirty-three college teams (and ½ the NFL teams) use it.
In addition, a virtual reality program called STRIVR began to be used — Teevens called early versions from a decade earlier mere “animation” — now the technology had improved to the point that players could see quite clearly what they had missed in games earlier, rather than by trial-and-error. He went on to say, “I’d venture to say we tackle more than anybody in the country. We just don’t tackle each other.”
By 2011, injuries had now been reduced by 80% since 2009 and concussions by 58% — the lowest in the Ivy League. The league adopted the no-tackle during practices … but only during the season (excluding spring practice and pre-season) so Teevens is still something of a pioneer. When the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on oversight and investigations convened a hearing on concussions in youth sports in 2016, Teevens testified:
“If we don’t change the way we coach the game, we won’t have a game to coach. I’m just of the mindset we all have got to do this eventually. So when do you embrace it? You can be the last guy on the bus, or you can be the guy who’s leading the charge.”
The team’s fortunes have risen: since 2014, their record is 47-13, with two Ivy League titles (compared to their horrible record in the Aughts). Early on, recruiting — despite the safety appeal to many players — was a hard sell. Now it is a recruiting advantage. Defensive coach Don Dobes said the team took some criticism … yet in the 2015 season, ten of the eleven starters in the season’s first game … started the final game, one reason they tied for the league title.
Each year, Teevens returns to Tulane University for its Manning Passing Academy (begun by Archie Manning: a former NFL quarterback (and the father of Peyton and Eli Manning) each June to help coach. In 2018, it held its first women’s camp — and Teevens was impressed by an assistant named Callie Brownson: her preparation, interaction with others, her tabulations and such. Buddy Teevens offered her a two-week internship at Dartmouth for its pre-season.
She worked with the wide receivers on preparation and soon they were telling Teevens how much she had helped them, with one senior saying, “Coach, I really think we need her” … and Teevens agreed, making her the first full-time Division 1 college football assistant coach. Before that season’s first game, she stayed outside the locker room pre-game … and then, out on the field:
"Why weren't you in there?" Teevens asked. "I hired a coach. So be like every other coach."
Callie Brownson is now on the staff of the NFL Cleveland Browns.
Of course, not everything he imagines goes over well: he proposed that the Ivy League adopt another safety measure (which a now defunct league had adopted) — no kick-offs, where the injury rate is higher. The Ivies wouldn’t even vote on it.
An ESPN essay concludes by noting his desire to make sure the sport survives:
"I've got all kinds of ideas," he says. Then he laughs. "Most of them are probably bad."
Let’s close — with all of the rain in many parts of the country — with a song by the British jazz-rock band If from 1972:
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From FindingMyVoice:
In the diary by Onomasticon the same subject— here's another succinct, direct message (from urbanite425) I think many of us will agree with.
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Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful (and now eternal) *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment featuring that photo.
TOP PHOTOSSeptember 1st, 2021
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And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
6) I read a tweet earlier today: … by theKgirls +1268) They are dying because they are wrong. by DaisyDo +11710) ... by Denise Oliver Velez +10618) Thanks for this concise diary. … by radv005 +8922) [embed] by Greg Dworkin +81