Coach Farley embodies the gruff, square-jawed, no nonsense football coach. A former All American football player and captain of the football and track teams at Boston University (at BU he played the role of rabbit for his British teammete David Hemery, the 1968 Olympic gold medal 400-meter hurdler) Farley played for the San Diego Chargers as a starting safety for two seasons befrore injuries curtailed his career. He is well known for his no nonsense one liners (My favorite was always "The only reason you guys are here is because there is no Division Four") and, of course, for winning. His eye-popping 112-19-3 record gives him the 6th highest winning percentage of all college coaches at any division. indeed, almost every year of his tenure at Williams, the rumors swirled that he was up for much bigger jobs. At one point I heard from some pretty reputable sources that the Harvard football coaching job was his to refuse in the 1990s. Instead he stayed at Williams.
Farley remains active at Williams. He is still an assistant with the track team, which is how I got to know him best, and he heads club sports. His son, Scott, who went to Williams (after transferring from Villanova, where he was a starter) and even as a kid was one of the great athletes I have ever seen, will be starting his second year as a defensive back with the Carolina Panthers after a year with the Patriots practice squad.
Before taking the football head coaching job, Farley was the head track coach and an assistant on the football team. he helped bring the track team back to respectability after several down years, paving the way for the ongoing dominance that began during my time in the Purple Valley, He has continued working with the track athletes, and especially the hurdlers, even as his Williams teams started racking up some of the most impressive results at any level of football in the early and mid-1990s.
I have many great Farley stories, but I will recount one of my favorites. We were at a meet at UMass. I think it was a tri meet with Springfield College. One of farley's pet peeves was that Williams guys tend to overanalyze everything on the track and the field, and he said something to the affect of "You guys in academia always overthink things" to my buddy Sal, an All-American 400 hurdler. Salvi responded, "coach, isn't academia a kind of nut?" Farley just shook his head and walked away. later on that meet, for some reason coach Farley used the word "academia" again, and I piped up: "Coach, but isn't academia a kind of nut?" He just shook his head and walked away again. That was the same meet where Farley used another of his great, but devastating, lines. We were idly watching one of the long distance races -- probably a 5,000 -- and he turned to me and said "Do you really think that any of these guys would be doing this right now if they could run the hundred?"
Congratulations Coach Farley. I never put on the pads for you, but I was lucky and honored to have worked with you even to the small degree that I did back at Williams.
The Williams Sports Information article is here and the North Adams Transcript article is here. (In addition to Rice, Farley's fellow inductees will be Entering the Hall alongside him will be John Gagliardi, of Minnesota's Saint John's University whose 432 wins [and counting] are the most in NCAA history. A third coach, Vernon "Skip" McCain, of historically black Maryland State, will join Farley and Gagliardi. Players being honored include the University of Idaho's John Friesz, Central Arkansas defensive end Ronnie Mallette, Jackson State defensive back Kevin Dent, legendary Notre Dame quarterback John Huarte, Pitt lineman Mark May and Alabama linebacker Cornelius Bennett. It came as a surprise to me that Coach Farley will be Williams' fourth inductee.)
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