Siedlecki and Murphy: old roommates, new rivals

JULIA TIERNAN/YH SCREW YOUR ROOMMATE: Jack Siedlecki hopes to deliver a victory speech following a win over ex-roommate Tim Murphy.

"Let me tell you something," Harvard football coach Tim Murphy insisted. "If you could have gotten the odds 20 years ago of the two of us becoming the coaches at Harvard and Yale, they'd have been 10 million to one."

Twenty years ago, Murphy and Yale head coach Jack Siedlecki shared a scrawny third floor one-bedroom apartment room in tiny Easton, Penn., home of the Lafayette University Leopards. The two were young assistant coaches. Ask them about their apartment, and both will laugh. The lawn was apparently never mowed, and the place was falling apart. "There was a 75-year-old woman that complained that the two of us didn't care enough about the building," Jack Siedlecki recollected. "But we just didn't have the time."

"Yeah, that place was pretty dingy and drab," Murphy remembered. "But we were young, eager, struggling, and happy."

Seventeen years later, the two will be reunited once again for this Saturday's 115th meeting between Harvard and Yale. This time, however, the two will be on opposing sidelines. Siedlecki, the second-year head coach of Yale, brings his Bulldogs to Cambridge to face his old friend's Crimson. This is Murphy's fifth season at Harvard.

Since their time at Lafayette, the two have remained quite close. When Siedlecki was notified that he had been hired as the Yale head coach, the first person he contacted was Murphy. "Through the years," Siedlecki said, "Murph's been a great resource. We've seen each other relatively frequently. In fact, we golfed together just recently."

When asked if his counterpart has changed much since the days of unwashed dishes and unkept beds in the living room, Murphy replied, "Yeah, he weighs less, doesn't smoke cheap cigars, and has less hair." Siedlecki added, "Those days, we were like college roommates with common interests.We did just about everything together."

Kidding aside, when talking to the coaches, it's clear that both have tremendous respect for one another.

"He's a great offensive innovator," Murphy said of Siedlecki. "His kids play hard, and that's definitely a reflection of his coaching. After last year's season, I still knew that they would do just fine this year." Siedlecki's Bulldogs are 5-4 following their 1-9 finish last season.

"He's so driven," Siedlecki said of Murphy. "He's so intense, very hard-nosed. He's certainly a perfectionist." On the morning following Saturday's lopsided 41-10 loss to Pennsylvania, Murphy was back in his Cambridge office by 6 a.m. reviewing the game tapes.

Both coaches are eager to beat up on the old roommie. "Like any other profession," Siedlecki said, "you want to impress your friends when you get the chance. It's the same with coaching. There's an added incentive, so you want to be well-prepared."

Siedlecki and Murphy have both come a long way from the town of Easton. And though their paths went their separate ways when Murphy left the Leopards in 1982 to become the offensive line coach at Boston University, their careers have much in common. "Here we are, both coaching two very storied programs," Siedlecki commented. "Yeah, our lives are really alike in many ways."

Murphy arrived at Harvard in 1993, succeeding probable Hall of Fame coach Joe Restic, the Crimson coach for 23 seasons. Siedlecki was hired to succeed another legend, Carm Cozza, who coached the Bulldogs for 32 seasons. Both arrived in the Ivy League after tenures at small colleges, where they turned around floundering programs. Murphy led the University of Maine Black Bears to their first-ever NCAA Division I-AA playoff berth in 1987. Siedlecki, in his final year at Amherst College, was named the 1996 American Football Coaches Association District I Coach of the Year after going 7-1 and winning the New England Small College Athletic Conference championship. He had taken over the program that had suffered through an 0-8 season in 1992.

"We've both been involved in situations where turnarounds have occurred," Murphy noted. In the two coaches' first year at Lafayette, the Leopards posted the best record in school history, going 9-2 just one season after the team finished 1-10. "It was a great experience," Murphy said of his time at Lafayette. "It was the first and only time I've spent on the defensive side, and it was time well-spent. The turnaround there was huge."

According to both coaches, their time in Easton was an intense period, which probably can explain the unmowed lawn. "The only thing on our mind," Murphy remembered, "was football." Siedlecki agreed. "We were both single at the time. We were both looking to get ahead in the business. Really, for the moment, we were trying to get by."

Well, they got by. And they certainly beat the odds, even if they weren't exactly 10 million to one.

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