Tuesday, January 10, 2012

HHHold Everything!!!





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                                                Don Brown


Brown Out!!!

Now we have learned that UConn DC Don Brown is NOT going to be Yale's next head coach after all!

It's not clear why Brown's supposed acceptance of the job was misreported yesterday, but there goes all I was going to write about Yale righting its ship with a very solid hire.

Now, almost any hire will still make Yale look very disorganized and very late to the 2012 recruiting party.

What a mess in New Haven folks! I can't think of a more embarrassing situation for the program to be dealing with right now short of a real scandal.

Four New, Four Old

In any case,  2012 will be the years where the Ivy League features four coaches with very long tenures at their schools in Penn's Al Bagnoli, Harvard's Tim Murphy, Brown's Phil Estes, and Dartmouth's Buddy Teevens, (long tenured if you add his first term with the team from '87 to '91 to his current stint now going into its eighth year), and four coaches who weren't even at the helm as recently as 2009.

This is a much faster changing coaching landscape than the Ivies are used to seeing.

But with Bagnoli, Murphy, and Estes staying put for so long, does anyone expect a real power shift in the league anytime soon?

The answer to succeeding in the Ivies if you're not one of those three teams seems to not only be changing your coaching leadership, but praying that something with change with theirs!


BCS Blues

Alabama shut out LSU, 21-0, for the BCS championship last night.


Every year after BCS Championship game, I marvel at just how different the world of “big-time” college football is compared to Ivy League ball.

There’s a lot to be said about the Ivory Tower world of the Ivies, in fact I’d say I’d agree that the political mindset of most Ivy professors and students is sadly too sheltered and unrealistic.

But consider the life of your average Ivy football player. I think you’d be hard pressed to find too many college students who experience the very important realistic life lessons they learn every day even in
the cloistered enclave of Ivy.

Ivy footballers have to keep very long hours, deal with little or no recognition for their efforts, and still need to do well in their classes even as many of their classmates sneer at them.

Kind of sounds like my average week at work.

By contrast, BCS players are pampered from day one, get massive recognition for the smallest successes, and basically don’t have to go to class.

Is it any wonder these guys aren’t prepared for real life?

So, I hope you enjoyed the LSU-Alabama game last night if you could. But for me, it gets harder and harder to appreciate these games when I spend so much of my time watching and reading about real students who are acting as real responsible adults all the time.




                                       Sean lets one fly


The 60% Solution

Offensive coordinator/QB coach Ben McDaniels should have the luxury of a more healthy QB Sean Brackett to work with in the fall.

Brackett’s shoulders were injured much of last season and it seriously affected his ability to throw accurately.
There were some bad drops, but Brackett’s 49.5% completion rate was shockingly low.

Getting a significant improvement over the 2011 completion rate won’t be enough, Brackett actually needs to improve over his best-ever season completion rate of 57.8%, (set in 2010), as well.

The key to that will be drawing up more high percentage short and screen pass plays that will help Brackett get into a better groove throwing the ball.

But whatever the plan, the goal has to be to get Brackett’s completion percentage up to at least 60% like the other elite QB’s in the Ivies over the years.

And the coaches will have to do this all while working to groom the senior Brackett’s replacement, a key priority this season for the new staff.

Fellow senior Andrew Weiss impressed in limited varsity play and with the JV, but as a senior he can’t replace Brackett in 2013.

The two sophomores coming back for 2013 at QB are Kal Prince, who took a lot of reps in the JV games, and Percee Goings. Prince is the more pro-style QB while Goings is the running threat with good speed.
Incoming frosh Logan Scott should get a decent chance to challenge for the QB job in the future as well.

Hopefully, Columbia will be able to schedule a full slate of JV games this year to give everyone vying for the QB job a chance to learn and the coaches a chance to observe. But even better would be a slew of
big-margin Lion varsity wins this year that will give Brackett plenty of time to rest while the backups take valuable reps in mop up duty.

8 comments:

Old Lion said...

Jonathan Cole is on the warpath again. As if he hasn't already done enough to hurt Columbia athletics, now he wants the Ivies to cut back football admissions to 15 a year.

RedTiger61 said...

the Dartmouth football blog noted that Dartmouth grad John Engleman '68 pointed out that the admission policy at Dartmouth (and other Ivies) can admit anyone it wants who is not a student-athlete, regardless of GPA or test scores. But if the candidate happens to be a student-athlete, the college cannot admit him/her without certain GPA/test scores per the Academic Index established by the Ivy League.

http://biggreenalertblog.blogspot.com/

WOF said...

I was with a columbia coach last year who said the same thing about the index being harder for student athletes. I don't get Cole, he was once a jock himself.

lionrock said...

Jonathan has been making the same type of rants for years. Back in the McEl era, I went to a Columbia Football game at Baker Field with a young man and his father. The young man was an outstanding football player at Don Bosco Prep in Northern New Jersey and had already applied to Columbia. At the time, the young man was also thinking seriously about applying early admission to Columbia. He was also a great student. We were up in the Lounge overlooking the field when Cole came over and made all kinds of ill-advised and insenitive statements including one about Columbia "admitting more freshman football players than Notre Dame." I remember what Cole said very well because the young man and his father just looked at me in shock. Needless to say, that very fine student-athlete decided not to apply early admission to Columbia and, in fact ended up at Yale.

Pantone278 said...

There's no doubt that injuries held Sean back last season. And I agree that a 60% competition rate is well within his capabilities. But as he heads into his senior year, I would also like to see him locating his second and third options on pass plays. If he manages all of that, I see him returning to his rightful place as All Ivy.

Old Lion said...

Sean was injured because he was unprotected. He was also injured because he is fearless. Witness his play near the goal line at the end of the first half of the Fordham game, a sequence which led to his shoulder injury. That was followed by Vinny making the most incredible play call I think I had ever seen up to that point , with first and goal at the three he called for a pass which Sean did not check off, leading to a 97 yard pick 6 and an eventual loss.

Old Lion said...

One other observation about Sean. He was short arming the ball on flare passes last year.

Pantone278 said...

I'm writing off last year to injury and not trying to analyze any of it. We've all seen Sean healthy and know he can get it done. If anything, I'd like to see the type of creative passing attack that Cornell showed. I think he'd flourish in that style of offense.