Coach Dick Biddle, who led Colgate to seven Patriot League football championships, dies
HAMILTON - Dick Biddle, the longtime football coach who guided Colgate University to seven Patriot League titles and was honored five times as the league's coach of the year in 18 seasons, died Aug. 11 in North Carolina. He was 75 years old.
"This was a tough day for everyone at Colgate Football," Stan Dakosty, Colgate's current head coach, said in a release from the school. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to Mrs. Biddle, Brendan and the entire Biddle family.
"Very few people can impact a football program, at any level, the way Coach did over his tenure here. He was unapologetic about his desire to win, and to win championships. He led with a sense of toughness and grit. He was Colgate football personified. I don't think Coach ever truly appreciated the impact he had on his players or this program. Personally, I owe so much to him, and I know many others do as well."
NEXT LEVEL: College football: Where are the next level standouts from the region playing now?
"GO 'GATE!" Colgate basketball's most famous alum, Adonal Foyle, answers 11 questions
Biddle was Colgate's winningest coach with a record of 137-73 over 18 seasons. The 137 wins are the most for a Patriot League coach and his 81-27 record in league play gives him the highest winning percentage for any of the conference's coaches (.750).
The 2003 Raiders went unbeaten through the regular season and marched to the NCAA's Division I-AA championship game where they were beaten by the University of Delaware and finished the season 15-1.
Biddle earned national coach of the year honors for the 2003 season and the Raiders, seeded fourth in the national tournament, were ranked second in the final poll.
Born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in 1947, Biddle was a football lifer who starred at Duke University as a two-time all-ACC linebacker in the late 1960s. After graduating in 1971, he signed for a Canadian Football League tryout in Montreal and played the 1972 season with the Youngstown Hardhats of the Midwest Football League. In between, he served one season as a graduate assistant at West Virginia University.
Biddle turned to coaching full-time in 1973, making the first of six assistant coaching stops with a four-year stint at Division III Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. A six-year stay at Colgate followed with Division I stops at Virginia Tech, the University of Minnesota and the Naval Academy before returning to Colgate for his second stay.
Biddle served one year under Michael Foley and three under Edward Sweeney. The Raiders were 10-33-1 in that stretch before Biddle was named head coach prior to the 1996 season and guided the team to a 6-5 finish, its second winning season since Fred Dunlap's final year in 1987. Biddle was named Patriot League Coach of the Year for his debut season, the year after Colgate went 0-11, the school's only complete winless season.
He added coach of the year awards in 2003, '05, '08 and '12.
The Patriot League named its coach of the year award after Biddle in 2018. Biddle was inducted into Colgate's athletics Hall of Honor in 2015, and was listed on the 2021 ballot for the Football Championship Subdivision Hall of Fame.
"There is no doubt his name and legacy will live on," Dakosty said. "I take great solace knowing the fact that as long as we play football here at Colgate, his impact on the program will never be forgotten."
Biddle was a third-team all-America selection as a senior at Duke and was selected for the Blue Devils' All-Century Team.
This article originally appeared on Times Telegram: Longtime Colgate football coach Dick Biddle dies at 75
