“This is what happens when you put a woman in charge of a historic football team,” wrote an X user in response to Harvard Athletic Director (AD) Erin McDermott’s announcement of the new Harvard football coach on February 12th. All eyes were on McDermott, the first-ever woman AD at Harvard, following the news of the beloved Tim Murphy’s retirement from head coach of the Crimson’s football team in January. She would have to make a difficult decision. Should she hire someone already on the Harvard coaching staff? Or a head coach from another school? The answer she chose shocked everyone: neither.
Instead, she tapped Andrew Aurich, who is leaving the Big 10 behind after working for six seasons as assistant coach at Rutgers University. Though it is his first time taking on the role of head coach, he has experience with nearly every level of football, including high school, NCAA Division I and III, and the NFL.
With what McDermott described at the Harvard Football Head Coach Announcement on February 15th as an “Ivy core and compass,” the Ivy League is nothing new to Aurich. Having played as an offensive lineman at Princeton and then returning to coach for eight seasons (2011, 2013-2019), Aurich is stepping back into familiar territory, this time with even more experience under his belt.
Despite the criticism McDermott has received, Aurich is confident in his abilities. “I have no trepidation,” he said at the press conference. “I love the challenge. I’m excited about the challenge.”
However, from angry tweets to threats from alumni to withdraw their donations, Harvard football fans have been quick to direct their dissatisfaction with the new hire towards McDermott, who was faced with the impossible task of meeting a wide range of demands for the next coach. Yet, McDermott was prepared to face the challenge.
McDermott began her career at Columbia, where she spent three years as Assistant Director of Compliance, after which she joined Princeton for thirteen years to eventually serve as Deputy Director of Athletics, already amassing a total of 16 years of experience in the Ivy League. McDermott served as the AD for the University of Chicago and led the school to its highest finish in school history in the Learfield rankings, thus completing a successful seven-year tenure.
After joining Harvard in 2020, McDermott’s leadership earned the athletic department its best effort in the Learfield Directors Cup standings since 1993 and their third-best performance in school history in the Division 1 rankings in her second year.
Despite her many other successes, including earning the NACDA Under Armour Athletic Director of the Year Award in 2019, fans continue to denounce McDermott’s capabilities as an AD—and, consequently, Aurich’s capabilities as a coach. Yet, current players hold a different sentiment and are looking forward to the season to come.
Owen Johnson ’27, a first-year linebacker on the team, is excited to play under Coach Aurich.“He seems like a really good coach who’s really dedicated to his players,” he said. “So far, I have a really good feeling about him.” He also placed trust in Aurich’s abilities to lead the program. “I do believe he will be [good for the team’s success] because I believe he truly has the team’s best interest in mind,” he added. “He made it very clear that he’s going to work with us. He understands that we’re a good program and he’s going to try and elevate it to the next level.”
His brother Kyle Johnson ’27, a first-year running back, feels similarly. “He’s going to be a great person to help move our program forward in the future,” he said. Both brothers agreed that, based on what they have seen, Aurich will have a positive impact on the team.
When asked about whether Aurich’s lack of experience as a head coach matters to the team’s future success, K. Johnson was confident that it would not. “Personally, I don’t think that matters,” he said. “Meeting him, I think he’s gonna do a great job and…he has a lot of experience, so the fact that he hasn’t been a head coach, honestly, I don’t think that matters at all.”
With extensive background, support from his future players, and the will to win, Aurich is set up to bring Harvard’s football team success. Yet, some fans are still not convinced, raising the question: Is their anger really a product of the man that was chosen, or is it instead a product of the woman who hired him? Time and time again, women who attempt to enter the realm of football are disproportionately criticized compared to their male counterparts.
Multiple Harvard football alumni, including general manager of the Cleveland Browns Andrew Berry ’09, retired NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick ’05, and Eion Hu ’97 worked alongside McDermott in the search for a new coach. The three played a major role in the final decision, interviewing the four final candidates and providing their feedback to McDermott, yet received none of the backlash that McDermott has faced.
Discrimination against women in sports goes far beyond just football. In 2016, the Harvard Men’s Soccer team made national news for a team document that was leaked to the public. The “scouting report” from 2012 included graphic sexual descriptions of the women’s soccer team and lewdly ranked their freshmen recruits using objectifying terms.
When some of the women named in the report published an op-ed titled “Stronger Together” in the Harvard Crimson, they expressed how the comments hurt them. Sadly, however, they claimed to not be very surprised. The women explained they had “come to expect this kind of behavior from so many men,” but that “Harvard Women’s Soccer succeeds because despite any atmosphere of competition, [they] know how to be a team.”
The resentment expressed by men towards women, including Erin McDermott and the Harvard Women’s Soccer Team, illustrates a form of subtle misogyny throughout collegiate sports. The desire to exclude women from male-dominated sports like football ultimately implies that women can not contribute to sports what men do and will only spoil a cherished Sunday afternoon activity. In the face of challenges and criticism, Harvard Athletics must remember that experience and talent are what create an athlete, not gender.
Natalie Frank ’27 (nfrank@college.harvard.edu) and Sophia Ghafouri ’27 (sghafouri@college.harvard.edu) are accepting recruiting offers from D1 football schools.