Murphy Named Finalist for National Coaching Award

Things just keep getting better for Harvard football coach Tim Murphy.

Just weeks after setting the program’s all-time wins record with his 118th victory at the helm of the Crimson against Columbia Nov. 5, and just days after leading Harvard to a dominant 9-1 season in which it finished three games ahead of any of its competitors for the Ivy League title, Murphy was named on Monday one of 20 finalists for the 25th Eddie Robinson Award, which honors the national coach of the year.

The honor was established by The Sports Network in 1987, and is voted on by a panel of over 150 Football Championship Subdivision sports information directors, broadcasters, and selected sports writers. It was named for College Football Hall of Famer Eddie Robinson, who led Grambling State University for 56 years and is the second-winningest coach in Division I history, behind only Joe Paterno.

“When you are nominated for an award like this it generally means you had a great team and it is a reflection of what your team (players and coaches) accomplished,” Murphy wrote in an e-mail.

Though the coach has a long way to go before matching Robinson’s length of tenure, Murphy has achieved unparalleled success during his 18-year run at the helm of the Crimson.

Including this year’s championship team—which scored the most points in Harvard history and ranked third in the nation in points per game—Murphy has won a total of six Ivy titles. In 2009, the coach capped a decade that saw the Crimson post the second-highest winning percentage in the FCS (.768) and seventh-highest in all of Division I, ahead of schools like LSU and USC. Every four-year player the coach has recruited has won at least one Ancient Eight championship.

2011 marked Murphy’s 25th year overall as a head coach, after having previously served in that position at the Universities of Maine and Cincinnati. His name has recently been linked to the Penn State coaching job that opened up after Paterno’s firing—rumors Murphy has denied—but he recently told The Boston Globe he plans to retire in the next decade.

The Robinson award will be presented at the national awards banquet in Frisco, Texas on Friday, Jan. 6—the night before the FCS national championship game. Murphy had previously been named a finalist for the honor in 2001 and 2004, his two perfect seasons.

Southeast Missouri State coach Tony Samuel garnered last year’s award, which no Ivy coach has ever won.