Dick Friedman, a contributing editor of Harvard Magazine, is one of the foremost experts on the history of Crimson football. In 2023 he spearheaded the magazine’s naming of Harvard’s 150th Anniversary all-time team.
Friedman is a 1973 graduate of Harvard College with a degree cum laude in U.S. history. A career-long journalist, he spent 18 years as an editor and writer at Sports Illustrated. Since 2014 he has written for Harvard Magazine mainly about Harvard football but also about other topics—sports and non-sports.
Friedman is the author of “The Coach Who Strangled the Bulldog: How Harvard’s Percy Haughton Beat Yale and Reinvented Football” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). He has been awarded the magazine’s Smith-Weld and McCord prizes for writing, and has received honorable mention in the Game Story category from the Football Writers Association of America. Friedman’s most talked-about article is his cover profile of coach Tim Murphy for the November-December 2015 issue of Harvard Magazine—unless it is his April Fool’s online spoof in 2024 in which he “broke the news” that the Ivy League and the Big Ten were merging.
In Friedman’s game stories, profiles and season wrap-ups, he strives to report “without fear or favor,” presenting accurate accounts of the action, celebrating exemplary performances by opponents and not downplaying miscues by Crimson players and coaches.
