Every Monday at 11 a.m., head football coach Jay Civetti makes the walk from his office in the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions in Bendetson Hall. There, Civetti sits down with Lee Coffin, dean of undergraduate admissions. For about an hour, they talk - mostly about the future.
At the start of the fall, Civetti shows Coffin his team's current depth chart, pointing out players' class years and positions and noting areas of weakness. Then, on Mondays, Civetti presents Coffin with names of high school players on his radar. Coffin reviews each of their academic qualifications before giving Civetti one of three signals: Green means keep recruiting him. Yellow means more information is needed. Red means he won't be a Jumbo.
Last year, Civetti asked Coffin to vet over 200 high school students. It was the most that Coffin, the team's admissions liaison for the past eight years, had ever seen.
This is the class I really need to put the pieces in place, Civetti told him.
We'll look at as many guys as you need me to look at, Coffin replied.
Among prospective players, Coffin started noticing a trend. On the supplemental admissions application, one question asks, "Why Tufts?" Most football players were answering the question the same way: I want to go to Tufts, they wrote, because of coach Civetti and his staff.
In three years as head coach, Civetti has lost 24 games. He's won zero.
Trouble
Prior to the start of the 2011 season, the football program was in disarray. Civetti had been named interim head coach in January, a few weeks after Bill Samko's departure following 17 years at the helm, and problems abounded on and off the field.
During the preseason, about 20 players were scrambling for housing after the Delta Upsilon (DU) fraternity had been placed on probation in May. A handful of players were sleeping on common room floors. At the same time, staph infection was spreading throughout a cramped locker room.
"We had terrible facilities, terrible uniforms," fifth-year receiver Nick Kenyon said. "Honestly, it was kind of like a joke."
By the start of the regular season, the staph problem had diminished. The housing situation was resolved after the first game. But there were other ongoing issues. For one, drug and alcohol culture was rampant, becoming particularly excessive on Saturday nights after games.
"The reckless behavior is what really hurt us off the field," Kenyon said.
Before Civetti took over, commitment was lacking at practice and in the weight room. Weekly offseason lifting sessions were optional, the training regimen was lax and motivation was scarce.
"Guys would be complaining in the locker room, saying, 'Oh man, we've got practice again,'" senior tri-captain linebacker Sean Harrington said. "There were some problems."
The culture began to change as Civetti, who had previously been the offensive coordinator, began to implement a more regimented system. In late October 2011, Civetti was promoted to full-time head coach. Meanwhile, Anthony Monaco embarked on his first year as university president and became a staunch supporter of the team.
But fixing a troubled program would not happen overnight. Bad influences lingered. Resources remained scarce. The junior and senior classes lacked depth.
"I don't think I was even clear on how far it had fallen," Director of Athletics Bill Gehling said. "After I hired Jay, I think it started to become clear that things were worse off than maybe we realized."
In 2011, for the first time since 1886, the Jumbos lost every game.
Change
This isn't for everyone.
That's the first thing Civetti tells recruits when they sit down in his office. Playing football at Tufts, he says, is hard. Snapping the longest losing streak in college football - now at 31 games - will be hard.
As a recruiter, Civetti sells Tufts. The former Boston College and North Carolina State assistant sells the people, the academics and the location. He works with the admissions office to find players who will fit in on the Hill. He is energetic, well spoken and charismatic.
Civetti's recruiting efforts have centered on finding not only talented football players, but also driven, disciplined kids.
"You find that the type of kids that we need right now are the guys that want that challenge, the guys that are hungry for that challenge," he said.
As Coffin's "Why Tufts?" testimonials suggest, Civetti's first two recruiting classes - the current freshmen and sophomores - have bought into his system.
"I think it's been a tribute to Jay, his staff and the kids that remain in the program that they've been very successful recruiting, even while losing," Gehling said.
While underclassmen were becoming Civetti disciples, however, some upperclassmen that had been recruited by Samko were leaving the team. They left for various reasons, but one thing was clear: Samko's style was distinctly different than Civetti's.
"Coach Samko was very interesting, fun, different," senior running back Jon Sobo said. "There were certain things about him that made coach Samko coach Samko - little quips, little idiosyncrasies that all coaches have. But coach Samko's were more distinguished, I'd say, because it was just his personality and who he was."
As a recruiter, Samko was less vigilant and systematic than Civetti is now.
"When I decided to come up on campus, I just enjoyed what Tufts had to offer, seeing the place and checking it out and being with the guys," Sobo said. "I wasn't so much sold on the place; Tufts could kind of sell itself, and that was enough for me.
"I'm sure there's actually more recruiting going on [now]," Sobo added. "I was kind of hosted and shown the place. I wasn't really recruited, so to speak."
Of the 23 freshmen on the roster in 2008, 12 remained for their senior year in 2011. Of the 27 freshmen in 2009, 17 remained in 2012. And of the 21 freshmen in 2010, seven remained in 2013.
On the one hand, the Jumbos lost some excellent athletes. On the other hand, the ones who stayed were devoted to the program, even after several losing seasons.
"A lot of their friends either aren't here at school or are somewhere on campus, but they're not out here with us," Civetti said after a late-season practice, reflecting on his current senior class.
"The kids who weren't able to make the commitment are the ones you don't see with us today," Kenyon said.
Off the field, the culture change has taken time. According to a source inside the program who wished to remain anonymous, the drug and alcohol culture peaked in the spring of 2012 as players who had recently left the program, or who would leave shortly thereafter, continued to exert their influence. By that fall, the source said, the situation had vastly improved.
The DU house was renovated during the summer of 2012, and the fraternity moved off probation last September. As the season began, the Class of 2015, headlined by then-sophomore linebacker Tommy Meade, began to take ownership of the team and promoted a strong work ethic. By the start of the 2013 season, the off-the-field issues felt like more of an afterthought.
"On a football team, there always will be incidents," Kenyon said. "But the large-scale, rampant disregard doesn't exist anymore."
There are also no longer questions about motivation. This past offseason, weight-lifting sessions were twice a week, and meetings were three times a week at 7:30 a.m. Meade and Harrington, two of the three captains, organized weekly 7-on-7s at Bello Field.
The commitment was there. The resources, more so than in the past, were there. The desire and the effort were there. And yet, for a third straight season, the Jumbos went 0-8.
"In the past, there's been something about the team that wasn't quite right," Sobo said. "Now, the only thing that isn't quite right is that we're not winning."
Alumni
John Bello (LA '68) understands the importance of athletics, and football in particular. The co-founder of SoBe beverages played football for two years on the Hill and was a member of DU. From 1986 to 1993, he was the president of National Football League Properties. In 2004, he and his wife Nancy Bello (J '69) provided a $1 million naming gift for the university's first artificial turf field. Earlier this month, he was elected to the Board of Trustees.
John Bello feels that a strong football program is vital for any school striving for excellence across the board. He knows that whether it's the NFL or the NESCAC, winning makes fans happy, and happy fans spend money. For the Jumbos, those fans are alumni. When alumni are not happy, they stop writing checks.
"We have an unbelievably passionate alumni base for football," Bello said. "Everybody understands that if you don't start performing and excelling, some of these people will slip into apathy, and that's not what we need as an institution."
Some of the most generous football alumni serve on the university's Board of Athletic Advisors, formed in the mid-1980s. John Calnan (E '87) is a member of the board and the CEO of a construction management firm in Quincy, Mass. He played defensive back at Tufts and captained its last NESCAC championship team in 1986. Calnan continues to stand behind the football program, hoping the situation will improve, but he believes Tufts has not done enough to support it. A lack of support leads to losing, and losing, Calnan knows, has consequences.
"If the sport doesn't get that support and it doesn't win - not on occasion, but doesn't win at all - those kids don't have a positive experience," Calnan said. "By the time they graduate ... and they become very successful individuals, the amount of support they give back to the school later on becomes negligible."
Calnan, Bello and other alumni have urged university administrators to examine the disparities that exist between Tufts football and other programs in the NESCAC. According to Bello, a comparative resource allocation conducted within the past 18 months shows that Tufts football is outspent and out-resourced by its competition. The most glaring discrepancy was in staffing: While some peer institutions had four or more full-time football staff, the Jumbos had three.
"One of the things our board pushed hard for was to bring some more university resources to bear in the way of coaches' salaries," Ted Tye (LA '79), chair of the Board of Advisors, said.
In the spring of 2012, Monaco agreed to fund a fourth full-time coach. That July, Civetti added 18-year Wesleyan head coach Frank Hauser to his staff as the offensive coordinator. Then, last August, the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center opened thanks to $13 million in gifts from its namesake, Tisch (LA '71). Suddenly, the Jumbos' facilities were on par with - if not a step ahead of - those of their rivals. There were state-of-the-art locker rooms. There was a film room with stadium seating. There was a spacious training room. The athletes used the same weight room as before, but now they had it all to themselves.
These were steps in the right direction. But there was still work to be done.
"[It's important] for Tufts to put that support in there - short money, not a lot of money - to make us equal with other schools," Calnan said.
An annual study on spending in college athletics conducted by the U.S. Department of Education showed that in each year from 2004 to 2010, Tufts' reported football expenses were lower than those of their nine NESCAC football opponents. In 2011, the last year for which data is available, Tufts' football expenses ($264,372) were only higher than Bates'.
Gehling declined to discuss whether more money has been spent on the football program in the past two years and warned that studies like that one can be misleading. For example, he said, the Department of Education study does not differentiate between fundraising dollars and institutional dollars.
"While those studies are not without value, I think you have to be really careful with what kinds of conclusions you draw," Gehling said. "I am much more inclined to focus on figuring out how to fix the problem, rather than assuming money is the answer."
Bates is a case in point. The Bobcats, the lone NESCAC squad the Jumbos are purported to have outspent in 2011, just pulled off consecutive non-losing seasons for the first time since 1981-82.
Still, for an ailing program, more money never hurt.
"A lot of people are putting their money where their mouth is," Bello said.
Then he added: "We're gonna win. Period."
Winning
There have been heartbreakers. Colby in 2010, 42-41. Middlebury in 2011, 19-17. Colby in 2012, 21-14. Bowdoin in 2013, 13-10. One more break in any one of those games, and "The Streak" would be a thing of the past.
Although Civetti and his players make no excuses for their poor performance, the explanations go beyond a lack of execution. Tufts has been short on talent in its junior and senior classes, a problem that can be traced to past recruiting efforts, off-the-field issues and natural attrition.
A recent study conducted by the university showed that approximately 55 percent of the Jumbos' starters this season were freshmen and sophomores. On other NESCAC teams, that number was typically between 15 and 25 percent.
There were some encouraging signs from freshmen this season, particularly at the skill positions. Running back Chance Brady averaged 5.7 yards on 40 carries before suffering a high ankle sprain in Week 6. Quarterback Alex Snyder filled in for injured junior Jack Doll in Week 5 and threw for 302 yards and four touchdowns at Williams. Ben Berey and Mike Rando each found a home in the slot, combining for 50 catches. Defensive back Mike Stearns led the secondary with 63 tackles and four pass breakups.
But as Bello and others were quick to point out, the Jumbos were overmatched at the line of scrimmage, recording just seven sacks and surrendering 26. They averaged 11.8 points per game and surrendered 35.4.
The young team will get better in time. Next season, the Jumbos expect to return with 10 of 11 starters on both offense and defense. There is nowhere to go but up.
"As these players gain more experience and new classes of student-athletes are recruited, Tufts football will continue to improve every season," Monaco told the Daily in an email.
Monaco and Gehling seem committed to Civetti and his plan. While no official decision has been made regarding Civetti's job status, he will almost certainly be given another year to turn things around.
"I believe we are fortunate to have strong leadership in coach Civetti," Monaco said. "[The football program has] my support, and I look forward to celebrating many wins with them in the future."
Now, Civetti's job is to make his third recruiting class his best one yet. The administration is committed to achieving that goal the right way.
"There have been some schools in the conference that I think have gone this route at times - an approach that says, 'We're gonna try to fix our football program by admitting a whole lot of people who are significantly below the academic standards of the institution,'" Gehling said. "That may work competitively, but to me it's a short-term fix. It will end up blowing up in your face in time."
Due to NESCAC rules, Coffin explained, there's not much room to maneuver anyway.
"I think we give leeway as we can, but there's leeway and there is a conference guideline that we have to follow," he said. "Our conference administrator is watching the data."
Without lowering academic standards and without pouring an excessive amount of money into one team, rebuilding a battered football program can take years.
"It takes a while to turn the aircraft carrier around, and if there's an aircraft carrier in the sports arena, it's the football team," Bello said, referring to the team's size and cost. "But I do think we'll see a significant change of fortune next year relative to wins and losses."
"There's no doubt in my mind that we are going to turn the corner," Gehling said. "And when we turn the corner, I believe we'll turn it in a big way."
The question is, when will it happen? The Jumbos believe it will be next year on Sept. 20, when they host Hamilton for the first time since Sept. 25, 2010 - the last time Tufts won a football game, 1,151 days ago.
They have 305 days to prepare.
"It's a long time between now and then," Civetti said. "It can't get here fast enough."
