Yale Football Coach Tony Reno, Who Won 5 Ivy League Titles, Dies at 52

Tony Reno, the Yale football coach who built the Bulldogs into the dominant program of the Ivy League with five conference championships in 12 seasons, died Tuesday at age 52, the university announced.

Reno compiled a record of 74-46 at Yale, the second-most wins in the program's 150-plus-year history, trailing only the 127 victories of Carmen Cozza, who coached from 1965 to 1996. Yale won Ivy League titles in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023, the most successful run for the Bulldogs since the 1970s.

Yale athletic director Vicky Chun confirmed the death in a statement released by the university. "Today, we are deeply saddened by the loss of an extraordinary member of the Yale Athletics family," Chun said. A cause of death was not immediately released.

Reno arrived in New Haven in 2012 after four seasons as an assistant at Harvard, where he coached running backs and special teams. The Bulldogs went 2-8 in his first year, then improved to 5-5 in 2013 and 8-2 in 2014, the start of a decade-long climb that turned Yale from an Ivy also-ran into the league's most consistent winner.

The 2017 season marked the breakthrough: Yale finished 9-1 and claimed a share of the Ivy title, its first since 2006. The Bulldogs repeated in 2018 at 9-1, then went 9-1 again in 2019. After the Ivy League canceled its 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Reno's teams won back-to-back outright titles in 2022 and 2023, going a combined 15-5.

Reno's players and colleagues pointed to his work off the field as much as his record on it. "While his accomplishments on the football field were remarkable, it is the relationships he built and the lives he changed that defined him," the university said in its statement.

Kevin Cahill, who coached against Reno in the Ivy League, said Reno's priorities were clear. "Tony was a man who valued the important things in life," Cahill said.

Reno played linebacker at Worcester State before beginning his coaching career as a graduate assistant at his alma mater in 1996. He held assistant positions at King's College in Pennsylvania, the University of New Haven, and Harvard before Yale hired him at age 39, making him one of the youngest head coaches in Division I at the time.

Yale went 7-3 in Reno's final season in 2024, finishing tied for second in the Ivy League. He was 52 years old and is survived by his wife and two children, according to the university.