Northeastern Scraps Football Program

Today’s announcement—that Northeastern University is discontinuing its intercollegiate football program after 74 years—sent shockwaves throughout the Boston collegiate football community. Boston University terminated its football program in 1997, and now, with Northeastern dropping its program, the city of Boston is left with just two Division I college football teams: Boston College and Harvard.

“The decision was a difficult one,” wrote Northeastern Athletics Director Peter Roby in an open letter to the university community, “made all the more difficult because of the respect and admiration I have for our coaches and players.”

Like Boston University, Northeastern officials cited financial reasons for pulling the plug on the program and stressed that the cut will financially benefit some of its stronger programs.

“I want athletics to serve as a source of pride for our community, while fielding teams that we feel can compete every time they take the field, ice, track, pool, or court,” Roby wrote.

Northeastern has deep ties to Harvard athletics, and today’s move was felt in the Crimson football front office.

“The obvious thing is it’s very sad,” Harvard football coach Tim Murphy said in a phone interview with The Crimson. “You hate to see college football opportunities go out the door…But I realize that these decisions don’t come without a tremendous amount of research and thought.”

According to Murphy, he’s known Roby “for close to 30 years,” beginning when Roby was a student at Dartmouth. Roby went on to coach Harvard men’s basketball from 1985-1991.

And the Harvard and Northeastern football programs have a contentious history of playing each other. The two teams had a four-year clash from 2001-2004, which according to Murphy “[coincided] with the best years [Northeastern] ever had.”

“They were right up there at the top of their league,” Murphy said.

The Huskies last won the Colonial Athletic Association conference in 2002 but fell to Fordham in the first round of the FCS (Division I-AA) playoffs. That year was also the last time they beat Harvard, taking the game 17-14 at Harvard Stadium.