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Harvard University
Coach Tim Murphy
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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 2007 as he enters his 14th year as the Thomas Stephenson Family Head Coach for Harvard Football.
One of the game’s finest teachers and motivators, Murphy has led a resurgence of Harvard football since taking charge of the program prior to the 1994 season. He is the first Harvard coach since the legendary Percy Haughton to lead the Crimson to two unbeaten, untied seasons in his tenure.
Just the fourth head coach to man the Harvard sideline in the last 56 years, Murphy enters the 2007 season with an 80-49 record with the Crimson. His overall head coaching record stands at 112-94-1 through 20 years, including five seasons as head coach at Cincinnati and two at Maine. He is an impressive 71-29 in his last 100 games with the Crimson and 40-9 in the last five seasons, marking Harvard’s best five-year run since the 1912-16 seasons.
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 2007 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.
Murphy has guided the Crimson to three outright Ivy League titles in the past 10 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.
The 2006 season saw Murphy’s Harvard squad set 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. Harvard finished the year as the only undefeated school in Division I-AA (10-0) and one of just five unbeatens in all of college football (along with USC, Auburn and Utah from Division I-A and Linfield from Division III).
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.
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.
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.
Since 1994, Harvard has had 40 first team All-Ivy selections, three Ivy Rookies of the Year, three Ivy players of the year, five first team All-Americans and sent nine players on to pro football, including St. Louis Rams quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05 and two-time All-Pro Matt Birk ’98 of the Minnesota Vikings.
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 he led the Black Bears to their first NCAA Division I-AA playoff berth in 1997.
Murphy, who is the first endowed coach at Harvard, also has extensive experience as an assistant coach with stints at Maine, Boston University, Lafayette and Brown.
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 and did additional work at Boston University.
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.
Murphy resides in Wayland with his wife, Martha Kennedy Murphy, and the couple’s three children: Molly Kennedy; Conor Timothy; and Grace Katharine.
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