On Saturday, Oct. 15, Carleton College will name the football field at Laird Stadium for former head coach Bob Sullivan, the winningest coach in school history.
Bob Sullivan Field, as it will be known, represents the “largest classroom at Carleton” and is dedicated to a beloved coach, husband, father, grandfather, teacher, mentor, and friend by a generation of scholar-athletes who learned the many lessons of life taught there: hard work, perseverance, respect, dedication, and teamwork.
The formal dedication of the field will occur during halftime of the Knights’ 1:00 p.m. homecoming game against the College of St. Scholastica and is in recognition of Sullivan’s success, leadership, and lasting impact on Carleton Football. Many of Sullivan’s former players will be in attendance, including members of the 1992 MIAC Championship team. This year’s Knights team is 5-0 and off to the program’s best start since 2008.
Last week, the City of Northfield City Council declared that Oct. 15, 2022 would also be Bob Sullivan Day within the city.
Sullivan was Carleton’s head football coach for 22 seasons, and he accumulated 102 total wins. Arriving in Northfield in 1979, he took over a struggling Knights football program and led them to the Midwest Conference title game in his first season. When Carleton moved to the more competitive Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) in 1983, Sullivan again re-tooled the program and led the Knights to five consecutive upper-division finishes from 1986 to 1990. Coach Sullivan’s banner season came in 1992, when the Knights captured their first MIAC title of the modern era. That squad also earned Carleton its first NCAA Playoff bid, and Sullivan was named MIAC Coach of the Year.
He retired after the 2000 season, having coached more than 600 student-athletes, including seven All-Americans, 10 Honorable Mention All-Americans, two MIAC Most Valuable Players, 85 all-conference players, as well as two Rhodes Scholars.
A 1959 graduate of Saint John’s University, Sullivan earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. He taught and coached for 11 years at Hill High School in St. Paul, Minn., and for nine seasons at Cooper High School in New Hope, Minn. He posted 95 wins during his 20 years in the high school ranks, leading Hill to a pair of state Catholic League titles and Cooper to consecutive Lake Conference crowns before heading to Carleton.
After retiring from Carleton, Bob Sullivan spent 18 seasons as a volunteer coach at Northfield High School, working alongside his son, Raiders head coach “Bubba” Sullivan.
Bob Sullivan retired fully from coaching after an illustrious 60 seasons having been inducted into both Carleton’s C-Club Hall of Fame and the Minnesota High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
(info and photo courtesy of Carleton Athletics)