The Cullen Legacy: Essay by Gregory Morris

Heat. For all the infamously fierce Ithaca winters, one of the most powerful memories for many 50s alumni who played for Bob and Terry Cullen over their many decades of leadership is the heat.

Two-a-days started before most students had arrived on campus. We stretched in the shimmering heat of the Schoellkopf turf. We ran the stadium, up and down the sun-blasted concrete steps of the Crescent. And we ran sweathogs, hoggers, around campus as the other kids moving into their dorms stared at us and shook their heads. We broke for lunch, then did it all again. And the heat was always worse for the second session.

Even when the autumn chill and early winter wind howled over Lower Alumni Fields, now gone, there was still heat for the many players sweating to make weight. The oppressive heat of the steam room and the bleariness of the stationary bike. For everyone there was the damp, faintly fetid heat of the weight room, and the dry, soft heat of your pin bag as the equipment staff tossed it to you fresh out of the drier.

It is fitting that the Cullen Legacy is as much about heat as it is about the fall and winter cold, because for [][] years father and son have been the twin suns around which all of lightweight football have revolved.

They both ran hot and cold themselves, of course. Bob could be intensely gruff. In his scoldings and exhortations you could feel decades of experience, thousands of players, innumerable practice sessions and plays. Strictly old school: hit, wrap, and roll. But then did anyone have a more resonant and genuine laugh that Bob Cullen? He laughed loud and often, with an ever-youthful and mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Terry could scold, too. “Hit the receiver. HIT the receiver! Ten other guys did their jobs, and you missed the open man?”

“Catch the football. CATCH the football! Ten other guys did their jobs, and you drop the ball?” Mutual respect and mutual responsibility.

At one point Terry saw a player glance at the cheerleaders. “Hey! Head in the game! You don’t think about football when you’re [with a girl], so don’t you dare think about [girls] when you’re playing football.”

And that captured two essential elements of the Cullen Legacy: fairness and focus. By its nature 150 Football is an equitable sport. Participants have always played multiple positions. There are numerous stories of kids who have excelled for the 50s who would not have gotten to play otherwise.

In return Bob and Terry demanded focus, and led by example. Terry did some of his best coaching in the film room, breaking down Cornell and the opposition at the same time. Fairness and focus: We’re good at this, they’re good at that. We didn’t always win, but was a team ever better prepared?

Bob and Terry were very much in charge, and as such, they encouraged the assistant coaches, captains, and seniors to lead the team. That established and sustained team cohesiveness, mutual respect and mutual responsibility.

The Cullen Legacy has sustained 150 Football on campus for [][] years, and will continue to do so indefinitely through the Cullen Fund and the endowments now being built.

The legacy was built from the first team meeting those hot late-summer days. “I want you in the weight room regularly,” Terry told incoming freshmen. “The coaches and captains will be checking your cards. If you’re not lifting at least two or three times a week you’re off the team. I don’t want to hear any excuses. There’s always a reason not to. I don’t want to hear about the weather, it’s upstate New York. I don’t want to hear about your heavy course load. It’s an Ivy League school, and this team has a higher GPA than the university as a whole. I don’t want to hear about your job or your frat or your girlfriend. There’s always a reason not to. So just go lift.”

Focus and fairness, mutual respect and mutual responsibility: The Cullen Legacy.