The fall sky had turned the edges of the Yale Bowl pink on a recent afternoon as the members of Team 148, this year’s Yale football team, jogged from their locker room, in the Smilow Field Center, across Jensen Plaza and down the tunnel onto the field. Along the Astroturf hall, they passed a single-file line of bricks that bore words scribbled in black Sharpie, such as “Urgency,” “High-Quality,” and “Consistency.”
Whistles summoned, and the players hustled toward midfield, where Joel E. Smilow Class of 1954 Head Coach Tony Reno, clad in Yale blue athletic pants, jacket, and baseball cap, waited. They had work to do to prepare for that weekend’s showdown with Princeton.
Reno’s record of 52 wins over nine seasons makes him only the sixth Yale coach to pass the half-century mark of victories (there’s still some daylight between his record and that of the late, legendary Carm Cozza, who tallied 179 wins over 32 seasons). His coaching style might best be described as relentless positivity, and he began by urging his players to stay focused on the details. “Do your job on that play better than you’ve done before, and that’s it,” he told them. Then, “let that play go, go to the next play.”
An encircling wall of muscle closed around Reno, as 126 varsity athletes clasped each other around the waist. A rumble of voices recited the team creed, a pledge written by players on Team 142 (the 2014 squad), as they do at the start of every practice:
“I vow to believe in the process, I am mentally and physically tough, I compete with passion and overcome any challenges. I stand tall alongside my family at all times, I challenge my brother, believe in him, hold him accountable. As I create my own path I always put team before myself, I strive for excellence on and off the field, I hold myself to a higher standard. I am a Yale football player.”
“We have the opportunity to have a great Tuesday,” Reno exhorted his squad. “Let’s take advantage of it.” Whistles blew, players whooped, practice was on.
Reno, 47, believes in creating a culture of responsibility and has drawn on Yale’s deep bench of experts to do so. He recruited retired four-star general Stanley McChrystal, a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, to serve as a kind of team guru, accompanying the senior players on a preseason trip to the Gettysburg battlefield to share lessons in leadership and legacy. Reno’s goal is to encourage accountability, foster humility, and inculcate a value system that prizes integrity over performance.
“We try to evaluate every class not by wins and losses, but by how they leave the football family better,” Reno said later. “And this senior class has done an amazing job of doing that through really adverse conditions.”
They’ve played some pretty good football, too, defeating Cornell, Columbia, Penn, and Brown. Their 63 points against Brown earlier this month was the team’s single-highest point total in a game since 1930. (They also beat Lehigh in a non-league game.)
And soon the players would be facing Harvard for the 137th playing of The Game, to be held in the Yale Bowl on Nov. 20. It’ll be the first time the rivals have met since 2019, when the Bulldogs clinched the Ivy League championship on their home field in double overtime, earning their second championship in three years. Given a pandemic-imposed hiatus from competition last year, nearly half of this year’s team will be experiencing The Game for the first time.
But as the team ran through their plays during this practice in early November, no one was thinking about Harvard; they had to get through Princeton first. And, sitting in a three-way tie for first place, a win would move Yale one step closer to yet another Ivy League title. (In the end, Princeton pulled away for the win, narrowing the Bulldogs’ chances for a championship.)
Players had divided into small groups: quarterbacks by one goalpost; linebackers toward the 50-yard line; kickers on the sidelines. Reno jogged between them, shouting triplets of encouragement:
“Better, better, better!”
“Do it, do it, do it!”
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
At one point, he dragged a thick gray mat onto the field. Demonstrating what he wanted to see from his athletes — getting past a shield to block a punt — he shouldered forcefully past two players gripping blocking pads and dove onto the mat.
“I feel good, do you?” he called out.
The sky had long since gone to black, and Reno brought the team in for a last huddle. The players thundered once more to the center of the field. They formed a tight semicircle. Seun Omonije ’22, helmet off and hair pulled back with a green bandana, stepped forward holding a brick in his hands.
Like those already lining the tunnel, Omonije’s brick was covered with a series of meaningful words: a hardship he’d overcome, an inspiration for the season, an impact he hoped to make. At each practice, one player presents his brick, then adds it to the others in the tunnel — a visual reminder of the team’s solidarity. Reno instituted the tradition to build camaraderie through candid reflection.
Omonije’s words, which broke through the ambient drone of the generator-powered lights illuminating the field, reflected adversity (“injuries”), his faith (“Jesus”), and his motivation (“others”). He talked about his family — his father, a Nigerian immigrant, and his mother, who grew up in foster care in New Orleans. He introduced his mindset, “dream big.” (Omonije, a computer science major, is set to join Google’s Quantum AI team after graduation.)
And then he got to his word for the season: “Grateful.”
“A big part of who I’ve become is because of Yale football,” he said, stepping closer to his comrades. “I’ve seen how I’ve progressed as a man. I really like who I am, and a big part of who I am now is because of this program and my teammates.” The team broke into raucous cheers.
Then, Reno offered a final pep talk.
“I know you guys have a lot of academic stuff going on, so take care of that work and take care of yourselves.” And practice was over. As the players trickled off the field and into the tunnel, Omonije placed his brick at the end of the line.
