When Tim Murphy, the new head coach of the Harvard football program, met his players for the first time last Monday, he felt he had to apologize for being late, although one couldn't blame him for his tardiness. After all, such a transfer of power hadn't occurred here in the last 23 years.

"[Being late] will never happen again," Murphy said nonetheless, and after a brief pause he continued, "And that goes for you, too."

Murphy had broken the ice, and a fresh new era of Harvard football had begun.

Ivy League football has always been something special to Murphy, ever since he was about 11 years old.

"I think it got started when I was a kid. A friend of my father's took us to a Dartmouth-Harvard game at Harvard and then took us to another one up at Dartmouth," Murphy says. "The players were like gods to me. That was just the ultimate--Harvard football, Ivy League football."

The Kingston, Mass., native didn't matriculate at Harvard, but rather at Springfield College, where he was named an All-American linebacker.

But the Ivy League did offer him his first college coaching job. He was an offensive line coach at Brown, a position he took in 1979.

"I loved the atmosphere--kids playing there just for the love of football," Murphy says. "They didn't have to play. They just wanted to."

Murphy knew by then that he wanted to be a head football coach somewhere, but he didn't know if or when he would get the opportunity.

"I had wanted to be a head coach so badly, and I set a goal to be a head coach by the time I was 30," Murphy says. Otherwise, "I would go out and finish my MBA."

The clock struck midnight and Murphy's dream of being a head coach by age 30 was all but over. He had to get on with his life--the Kellogg School at Northwestern had already accepted him.

Murphy had already packed his bags, so to speak, when his phone rang. It was the University of Maine, offering him a job as a head coach.

"I was very fortunate--it was either divine intervention or fate," Murphy says.

Two successful years at Maine gave Murphy the chance to land the University of Cincinnati head coaching position, a major step up from the Division 1-AA Black Bears to the Division 1-A Bearcats. The new athletic director at Cincinnati had been Murphy's chief at Boston University, where he had spent three years as an offensive line coach.

"I really wanted the chance to coach major college football," Murphy says. "I was also fortunate to have some success at Maine."