Dick Harlow

Bio

Dick Harlow was hardly a typical college football coach. A collector of birds' eggs, he was a professor of Ornithology (the study of birds). He was also a masterful coach whose teams were unusually good at the hidden-ball offenses which involved clever faking and precision timing. A gentle man who rarely raised his voice, Harlow would chastise an errant player by simply insisting, "Do it my way, dear boy." His teams at Harvard, Colgate, Penn State and McDaniel were noted for doing things Harlow's way, which usually proved to be the most successful way of winning a football game. Perhaps it was because Harlow was a bit of a psychologist. At Colgate in 1924, he had a druggist make up some harmless sugar pills which he brought to the locker room just before the start of a game. "Men," he whispered, "these tablets are made from an old Indian formula that I found during my wanderings in Pennsylvania. They're compounded from the glands of a buffalo and give you abnormal strength." His gullible charges downed the pills and won the game in smashing fashion. Harlow's players demanded the pills before each game until finally beaten a few weeks later.