April 2022

By Jeff Lilley, Williams College, Class of 1986.

“Why I Never Left Williams College: A Coach’s Legacy Beyond the Wins and the Hardware” by Dick Farley with Williams Sports Information Director Dick Quinn tells a rich story. Farley may be the most successful coach in the history of Williams College, a man who built a winning football program in harmony with its surroundings. His record as a head coach of for 17 years speaks for itself: 114-19-3, five perfect undefeated seasons and induction into the College Football Hall of Fame.

The book oozes purple — produced by two men with nearly eight decades of service to the college; published at The Print Shop on Spring Street; and bathed in purple and gold. But as I was reading, I couldn’t help wondering about the years before the wins and hardware when Coach Farley chafed as an assistant coach in a stagnant football program.

I wondered because I was a member of stagnant teams from 1982-1985, and yet I consider Coach Farley on a par with my Russian professor Darra Goldstein as being the most influential people for me at Williams. The book, which focuses understandably on Farley’s head coaching years from 1987 to 2003, reminded me of how much I loved playing for him during the mediocre years. Practice under Coach Farley’s critical eye was filled with sweat and curses, but not much praise. He made you hungry each day to elicit even a backhanded compliment.

Truth be told, Farley was a mysterious character to us players. Sarcastic, caustic, but always prepared and never focused on himself. I wondered sometimes if his acerbic nature stemmed from an early end to a promising NFL career. A culmination of his frustration is described in the book when he left a Williams football game in 1982 while it was still in process because he was disgusted by the team’s poor play. I was a first-year defensive back on the sidelines that day and remember wondering what to think about my coach.

The book is at its best when recounting historic football games played during Farley’s tenure, interspliced with details that only a coach or a sports information director could know. There’s safety Rich Williams’ ‘90 and defensive end Ted Rogers’ ’91 heroics to save Williams’ first-ever perfect season in 1989. There’s Mike McAdam, a prized recruit, who quit football on the first day of pre-season camp only to ask Farley after the season if he could return to the program. Farley tersely agreed: “Mike, you will be the dead last on the depth chart, lower than whale shit.” McAdam earned his spot and more, scoring the game-clinching touchdown against Amherst in 1996. Or the remarkable story of first-year player Collin Vataha, spotted by Farley booming field goals on a practice field in the week before the start of Little Three competition and then becoming the hero – having never kicked in a football game in his life — in a thrilling 48-46 win over Amherst in 1997.

And there are Farley’s reservoir visits to sit in solitude before each home game and his curiously fruitful friendship with fellow coach Renzie Lamb. Read the book to find out about these secrets to his success.

The book is a paean to hard work and understatement and to a bygone era when multisport athletes were common at Division III schools. Farley was a champion of the multisport approach, even ambushing himself in interviews for Ivy League head coaching positions by insisting he supported athletes playing multiple sports.  “I don’t want our players to just play football,” Farley says. “There are far too many great opportunities on this campus and in life to restrict their interests.”

I do wish the book could have had a chapter on X’s and O’s and how Farley thinks the game of football changed during his decades of coaching. We know Farley was a great motivator, but what about his football mind? What distinguished him? On a different note, the book could have used a copyedit to get rid of unnecessary repetition.

Coach Farley in 1985 with senior defensive backs, clockwise from top, Jeff Lilley, Dick Hollington and Frank Morandi.

I’d love to reminisce about Coach Farley with my defensive back buddies. Unfortunately, two, Frank Morandi, ’86, and Jerry Rizzo, ’87, passed away in recent years. The remaining member besides me is Dick Hollington, ’86. Dick was the brains of our four-man defensive backfield, the free safety who directed traffic on the field, becoming Farley’s eyes and ears on the field. For those reasons, I thought Dick, an amiable, soft-spoken multi-sport athlete from Cleveland, might be immune from Coach Farley’s acerbity.

Boy, was I wrong. One day our senior year, Dick and I were catching punts before the start of practice. Dick had a high school classmate who was helping to lead Amherst to football heights. Out of the blue, as Dick and I tracked down punted footballs, Coach Farley said, “Hey, Hollington, your buddy Anderson down there at Amherst is going to the Hall of Fame, and you’re nothing but a shitbird.” By that time, amid loss after loss to rival Amherst, all we could do was nod our heads. Farley’s comment was a statement about the state of Williams football at that time more than anything else

Indeed, those were years of stagnancy for Williams football. With the benefit of time spent living in the Soviet Union, I can confidently say that Williams College football in the mid-1980s — mired with aging leadership struggling to adjust to new times — was the Soviet Union of NESCAC football. And Farley was Gorbachev, a younger man from the inside who had suffered the slide into stagnancy and yet knew the way out. Fortunately for Williams football, Farley REALLY knew the way out, unlike Gorbachev, who failed to successfully reform the USSR and had to concede its collapse in 1991.

And yet in the midst of mediocrity, Dick, Frank, Jerry and I had esprit de corps. We took pride in playing under Coach Farley. With time, we even came to rib him. At the team banquet in 1985, we put on a skit. You could call it a parting shot, but it was really a tribute to Coach Farley, done in a Farley-esque way. I played Coach Farley, wearing heavy-rimmed glasses with a piece of tape on the bridge and a blue rain jacket. Dick and Frank played defensive backs in a film session. From Danvers High School we had procured film of Coach Farley playing high school football. In true Farley fashion, we dissected the young Farley’s imperfect play, noting his failure to tackle well. The room roared, and Dick Farley, on the cusp of – or in the midst of – a Hall of Fame coaching career, laughed.

Jeff Lilley is the author of Have the Mountains Fallen (Indiana University Press, 2018) and China Hands (Public Affairs, 2004).