Saved by the Bell: Lion Coach Out Like a Lamb

Just before all of you sat down for Thanksgiving dinner, Ray Tellier had his Last Supper. Tellier, the Columbia football coach who just completed his sixth consecutive losing season, was fired by the Lions athletic department brass last Tuesday.

Well, “fired” is never the right word in the Ivy League, and this is no exception. Tellier was “relieved” of his head coaching duties, and will remain with the athletic department in a yet-to-be-formulated capacity—the result of an agreement reached after Tellier’s shockingly successful 1996 season. (Columbia went 8-2 that year).

“Relieved” just might be the best word to describe Tellier. I covered three Harvard-Columbia games during my time as a Crimson writer, two in Cambridge and one in Manhattan. All three were Harvard romps. And all I could remember immediately after each game was just how depressing the postgame press conferences were.

Tellier would enter the room and make a brief statement about the game. There was never much to say—the Lions usually got flat-out killed, and there’s only so much you can explain about a thrashing except to say that it happened.

And then, in a display reminiscent of the interrogation scenes in so many movies, the Columbia Daily Spectator writers would grill Tellier on every aspect of the Lions’ failure. The 2000 game was the worst. Tellier seemed a very likeable guy—in a Peter-Falk-as-Columbo kind of way—and the Spec raked him over the coals for some 15 minutes, asking question after question to which there really was no answer.

Tellier looked pained, and I felt bad for him. But he also looked dignified—depressing, yes, but dignified—under the assault, and you almost had to exhale involuntarily on his behalf when he was finally able to leave.

You had to exhale voluntarily when he left for good. Whether or not Tellier was a good coach, drawing up plays for the Light Blue must have been like running the point for the Washington Generals or serving drinks on the Hindenberg. This was a program that hasn’t won a league championship since the 60s, that endured a 44-game losing streak in the late 80s. These things are tough to escape, no matter who your new coach is.

It’s difficult to know where blame truly belongs when a program fails, but it’s also difficult to get any sort of real perspective in a postgame press conference when there’s only one suspect to target.

It was easy to forget while Tellier was getting peppered with questions about how Harvard could rack up over 200 passing yards in the first half that at 42-96-2, he was the Lions’ most successful coach in ages. Columbia’s 5-4-1 season in 1994 was its first winning campaign since the early 70s, and in 1996, Tellier garnered Division I-AA National Coach of the Year honors.

But these bursts of respectability were only bursts, and the Lions just completed their third straight 3-7 season. Now, despite having the respect of the Ivy League (although perhaps not his players), Tellier is out and the search for a new coach is on.

Columbia Athletic Director John Reeves told the Spectator that the ideal candidate would offer the right blend of competence and character “with a slight edge to character.” Some win-starved Lions fans weren’t even happy with that. One fan went to the Spectator’s website forum and wrote that “I’m ready for Mike Ditka, Howard Stern or the soon-to-be-unemployed Saddam Hussein if any of them can scrape together a few victories on the gridiron.”

To these fans I say—hold on. Remember the other major dismissal of a regional coach in November—Mark Morris, coach of Clarkson’s men’s hockey team. Morris was accused of getting into a physical altercation with one of his players during a scrimmage. While the details of the incident remain sketchy at best, the reality is Clarkson saw fit to let go of a coach who had steered the Golden Knights to 10 NCAA appearances in 14 years. There are worse—or at least more embarrassing—problems to have than losing.

Harvard coach Tim Murphy told the New York Times that Tellier’s firing was surprising, and that the Columbia job was “challenging.” He declined to elaborate on what that meant, but the possibilities include the fact that the Lions’ athletic facilities are miles away from the campus.

There may be other problems as well—Murphy has noted in the past that the administration of a school has to commit to a football program in order for it to succeed. Who knows what problems Columbia has had in that department—from recruitment, to scheduling, to the school’s general attitude toward its team. In a league in which coaches are “relieved,” not fired, these details rarely make their way to the press.

If these problems—whatever they are—are resolved, perhaps a man with the right blend of character and competence can resurrect Columbia football.

Of course, who knows? Perhaps that man was Ray Tellier.

—Staff writer Martin S. Bell can be reached at msbell@fas.harvard.edu.