Longtime Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens has died

HANOVER, N.H. (WCAX) - Longtime Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens has died, roughly six months after a pickup truck on bike collision near his offseason home in Florida. Dartmouth College made the announcement Tuesday night.

His family released a statement saying “Our family is heartbroken to inform you that our beloved ‘coach’ has peacefully passed away surrounded by family. Unfortunately, the injuries he sustained proved too challenging for even him to overcome, throughout this journey, we consistently relayed the thoughts, memories, and love sent his way. Your kindness and letters of encouragement did not go unnoticed and were greatly appreciated by both Buddy and our family.”

Back in March, Teevens was riding his bike back from dinner, when he was hit by a pickup truck in Florida.

Dartmouth published periodic updates from Teeven’s wife, Kirsten, since then, first announcing that he had a leg amputated after the collision and that they had moved to Boston to be closer to his family during his recovery. The last update just 12 days ago stated that Teevens would not return to the Dartmouth sidelines this season.

Teevens played quarterback at Dartmouth, graduating in 1979. He served two stints as head coach of the Big Green, first from 1987 to ‘91 and then from 2005 on. His 117 career wins with the Big Green are the most in program history. Teevens was part of six Ivy League Championship teams, first as a player in 1978 as the senior quarterback, then five as head coach in 1990, 1991, 2015, 2019, and 2021.

More than all the wins though, Teevens will be remembered as an innovator: he took the then-unheard-of approach of dramatically scaling back full-speed contact in practices in 2010 to combat injuries, most notably concussions and CTE. In 2015, with the help of Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering, Teevens and the Big Green staff introduced the “Mobile Virtual Player,” a robotic tackling dummy that allowed his team to practice tackling and blocking techniques against an inanimate object.

Teevens worked at the Manning Passing Academy for a quarter century, and there he met Callie Brownson, whom he later hired as the first full-time female football coach at the Divison I level in 2018.

After input from Teevens’ family, Dartmouth has decided to play Saturday’s contest against Lehigh as scheduled. Dartmouth will hold a moment of silence before the 1:30 p.m. kickoff and a remembrance gathering after the game.

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