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Spring Cleaning
I know it seems like the 2011 season just ended, but we’re barely six weeks away from spring practice!
Spring practice will begin on or about April 1st and while I cannot yet report the actual date for the spring game, I can say it will be another Friday night game and it WON’T conflict with Passover or Easter weekend.
All of the changes for the returning players are about to get VERY REAL as the new coaches will finally get to see their new charges in action on the field LIVE.
For the veteran players hoping to become starters this fall, this is crunch time as they will have this one and ONLY chance to impress the new coaches before the freshmen flood onto campus in August.
Top 10
Speaking of returning players, if you had to pick our top 10 returning players, who would you name?
Don’t worry so much about ranking them 1-10, just give me 10 names.
Here’s my top 10, (and bear with me, there IS a point to this):
QB Sean Brackett
TE Hamilton Garner
WR Louis DiNovo
OL Scott Ward
LB Josh Martin
LB Ryan Murphy
LB Zach Olinger
LB Mike Waller
DL Seyi Adebayo
DL Nick Melka
It would make me feel a lot better if we had a RB or a DB on this top 10 list. But with injuries hitting our tailbacks last season and graduation slamming the secondary this year, it’s hard to ignore the weaknesses in those areas.
That is NOT to say we don’t have a lot of talent at these positions. A healthy Marcorus Garrett and Nick Gerst could make a big difference in the running game. The secondary is filled with players who have seen the field in varsity action while they waited behind what was a very talented pool of DB starters the last few years.
Defensive coordinator Kevin Lempa will be working personally with the secondary, and that may take most of his time in the preseason. And while we do have talented players coming back you can see why a couple of our incoming freshmen DB’s have already been quoted as saying they expect to get some playing time right away.
Needless to say, I don’t envy some of the hard decisions Lempa is going to have to make.
At running back, fans need to remember that Garrett and Gerst were never close to 100% last season. Otherwise they might be considered one of the top 10 returning stars for sure. Griffin Lowry was pretty impressive in emergency duty last year but it’s still hard to completely judge him.
On the other side of the coin, the Lions are more than deep at linebacker where Lempa may decide to move some players around to plug holes in other areas. Many fans have already speculated that Josh Martin will move back to the DL and Mike Waller could be pushed into a safety position.
More on Money
I guess I’m surprised more people haven’t responded to my post yesterday that basically laid out the fact that Columbia and most of the other Ivies don’t need or even necessarily use the tuition dollars so many parents struggle very hard to raise. But I’m glad one parent of a player did chime in to confirm just how hard it is for people to put together tuition payments.
Now that the Patriot League has moved to relieve this burden for about half of their incoming freshmen football players each year, the Ivy League should consider responding in a number of ways. The key would be finding a way to put a dent in the tuition bills for middle class families without taking anything away from the bigger aid packages offered to poorer students.
So if Columbia doesn’t really need or isn’t even using that hard-earned and hard-borrowed tuition money, what’s the justification for charging so much anyway?
Here are some possible reasons with my comments:
1) The donation money won’t always be flowing in and the endowment could be seriously eroded by drops in the market. Thus we have to keep charging tuition just in case.
Okay, I can see a lot of the logic in maintaining some form of tuition. But does it have to be $60,000 for tuition room and board for EACH YEAR?!?!? Really? If Columbia needs to build up and emergency fund from tuition, let the school charge $5,000 per year and put the money into treasury bonds or money market accounts and leave it at that.
2) If Columbia eliminates tuition, the application pool will explode to an unmanageable level.
Since academic standards wouldn’t be lowered along with tuition costs, it hardly seems likely that thousands of high school seniors who wouldn’t have the chance to get into the CU anyway would flood the admissions office. But if you’re really worried about too many applications coming in, try jacking up the cost to apply to say $250, a price any parent would gladly pay in return for a shot at free tuition.
3) There’s an important principle that people learn when a real price is attached to something. If Columbia’s education comes for free, then students and parents won’t appreciate its true value.
As I argued yesterday, very few Columbia undergrads can grasp the true value of their education when it’s impossible for them to really contribute anything meaningful to their tuition costs. If you pushed the price down to $5,000 per year or made tuition free, a lot more students would be able to pay their own way or at least cover a lot more of their living expenses. Now THAT’S and education!
There’s a very good chance that big university endowments will soon be taxed by a government desperate to get its hands on more revenue anyway. A good will gesture like eliminating tuition at multi-billion schools, (and getting its tenured professors to actually teach the students), would go a long way toward protecting the richest colleges and universities from the same kind of bashing and new interference Wall Street is facing these days.
Signing Pic of the Day
Above you can see incoming freshman Jacob Ardron from Diamond Ranch HS in Pomona, CA in his Columbia hoodie.
4 comments:
Our recruiting class has two impact ILs, as far as I can tell. That might permit Martin to go back to DE.
Jake, I might add Marquel Carter to your list. He played very well at the end of last season and can play LB or S. He'll be important next year given our lack of DB depth.
As for tuition, I have to disagree with the Old Lion. CU and the Ivies charge $60k because they can, not because that is the price of excellence. The education product is world-class. But tuition is up 4x over 25 years, far above inflation. To me, that reflects a sloppy mentality that costs don't need to be managed. And in the process of gouging the students the school has become more and more hostile to middle class and upper middle class families. I know families with $200k incomes are doing well, but if you've got two or three kids to educate, $60k per year is impossible. And Columbia doesn't care. I don't think CU should waive tuition -- an Ivy education is worth a lot of financial sacrifice and free Ivy education would just lead to kids on the six-year plan in any case. But I do wish they would use some of those billions in the endowment to be more humane toward families who may not be poor but can't really pay $60k per year.
I'm a little older than Jake, but in my day between student loans and summer jobs I could pay one-third of my education bill. My parents were not wealthy and they needed my contribution. I was 30 before I paid the loans off. It hurt to funnel all my summer wages to tuition and to graduate in debt, but it was worth it. I don't think there is any way a regular student could contribute one-third of the tuition bill today. I would never argue CU should be free. But I question whether the school is priced today such that only the very wealthy and the poor can afford it.
All of the returning kickers are critical to the success of the team. By not recruiting any kickers, the coaching staff is giving the guys returning a tremendous vote of confidence.
Just a comment on tuition. I had money stashed away for my son’s tuition. On paper I spent ~1/4 of our life savings. I barely make in a year the 1 year tution at Columbia. On paper our net worth disqualified us with regard to need based aide. We are lucky to be able to do that. Anyone that thinks the cost is justfied becuase of the institution is smoking funny stuff. You come to Columbia and the Ivys because the high level education and reputation to put it bluntly. He went to school that allowed him to pursue an education that he wanted and play football.
Eliminating tution is just silly. No disrespect Jake, but, maintaining excessive tuition so “people learn when a real price is attached to something” is arrogant. That lesson is important, but, you will get the same lesson at 30k a year instead of 60K.
I don't know what happened to the program, but, the income base tuition for underclassman (all) that Harvard experimented to attract more high level athletes I thought was a great concept. It would have been a significant decrease for us. Of course that is all dependent on the endowments. From the reports I have seen Columbia and other Ivy power houses haven’t been having issues with maintaining the endowments.
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