The next day, Murphy got a call. Kacyvenski wanted to visit.

Sitting on a couch in Murphy’s office after seeing the campus and meeting the players, Kacyvenski admitted that the people were more “normal” than he expected.

“The rest,” Murphy said, “is history.”

Murphy said he has also enjoyed the people he’s worked with off the field. He has from the very beginning.

Two of the first Harvard people Murphy met were Harry Lewis ’68, who would become Dean of Harvard College, and Lewis’ wife.

The two dropped in on him in Ohio on what Murphy described as a scouting mission.

“They were people who clearly loved Harvard,” Murphy said. “Very principled, impressive people.”

At the time, Murphy’s colleagues at the University of Cincinnati thought he was insane to leave a program on the rise for an Ivy League job, and to take a paycut in the process.

“They thought I was crazy,” Murphy said. “They thought it was the end of my coaching career.”

In a way, it was.

“It was...looking back, a great decision,” Murphy said in 2010. “Somehow, some things are meant to be.”

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacob.feldman@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @JacobFeldman4.