Penn aide named Brown head coach

By DICK JERARDI, Daily News Staff Writer
Posted: June 01, 2012

PENN JUST FINISHED a season that exceeded nearly every expectation. The coaching staff got about everything imaginable out of the team. And the timing could not have been better for assistant Mike Martin.

Martin, a 4-year starter at Brown, a 2004 graduate and part of the winningest class in school history (63-45), will be introduced as his alma mater's head coach at a news conference Friday.

Martin came to Penn 6 years ago with Glen Miller, his college coach. Miller's regime did not work out and he was let go in December 2009. Interestingly, his entire staff have become head coaches.

Jerome Allen succeeded Miller at Penn. John Gallagher is the head coach at Hartford. Now Martin.

"I'm extremely happy for Mike and his family," Allen said. "His hiring is well-deserved. Mike has done the University of Pennsylvania a great service for the last 6 years. It is only right that he get the opportunity to run his own program. As I have learned the last 3 years, it is a special opportunity to oversee a program that you once played in.''

Martin is a tireless recruiter who also has a great mind for game situations and opponents' tendencies. Allen let Martin draw up a potential game-tying play in the final seconds of regulation at Princeton in 2011. The misdirection play worked perfectly.

When 63 wins in four seasons is the high-water mark in school history, you know there is not much history at Brown. Moving up in the Ivy League is never easy, but first Cornell and then Harvard proved it is possible to interrupt the Penn-Princeton axis. Martin will now get a chance to see if it can be done at Brown.

Contact Dick Jerardi at jerardd@phillynews.com

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