The Silver Lining?

Logan Scott goes down




Scott's Slot

The rumors continue to fly now that QB Logan Scott's defection to Yale is publicly known.

Whether new Yale Head Coach Tony Reno has crossed some kind of recruiting line is up for discussion, but it seems like Scott and his family felt he would have a better chance to compete for a starting slot in New Haven.

There could also be a silver lining here for Columbia as there is a new open slot for an incoming recruited freshman or even a transfer.

Two Things


I know we're all a little sick of all things Yale right now, but Yale Daily News sports columnist Chelsea Janes has another excellent piece today where she explains what needs to be done to improve Eli sports.

What she writes is not only something that applies 100% to Columbia as well, but it should really be a league-wide manifesto.

Let me pick out some of the key points:

"the university must remove the extra, Yale-specific recruiting restrictions that are both demolishing Yale teams' numbers and hindering coaches' abilities to recruit the best of the best." 

Janes is talking specifically about the added burdens Yale is placing on their own recruiters, but the point for every Ivy school is that the Academic Index should be abolished.

The Ivy schools already have strict rules about not allowing failing students to play varsity athletics.  So, if a player is not academically deserving then he or she won't play anyway. 

The A.I. is a debilitating and demeaning tool that makes Ivy recruiting much too hard considering what we pay our assistant coaches.  I suppose I'd be willing to compromise and take a major reduction in A.I. levels, but the best choice is to get rid of it altogether. 

The fact that some schools have thrived under the A.I. while others haven't isn't a fair argument. One reason is because schools with lower A.I.'s like Penn have succeeded more. Another reason is that Harvard succeeds despite its high A.I. because of the recruiting power of the Harvard name PLUS some more creative "tricks" they play with the Index up in Cambridge.

Let's face it, if Ivy schools really worried so much about accepting students with GPA's or SAT's that were too low they would publicly post their SAT and GPA requirements and publicly state that there are "NO EXCEPTIONS!"

But since we all know there are a lot of exceptions for several reasons, I don't see why the athletes are the ONLY Ivy students and applicants who have to comply with an admission standard that truly affords no exceptions. 

"The administration isn't fooling anyone in showing up to a few athletic events a year and singing the school song with the Yale Precision Marching Band in some semblance of empathetic appreciation for what the players on the field or ice do to be there."

99.9% of the faculty and Columbia administration not only doesn't care about sports, but is highly hostile to athletes in general. It speaks volumes that the only Columbia professor you regularly see at Lions football games is William Theodore De Barry, a man who is pushing 90 years old, (but we do really LOVE Prof. De Barry and just wish there were more like him).

I don't know how to fix this faculty problem other than to eliminate tenure, which I admit is a big pipe dream but very necessary for many reasons beyond athletics.

Tenure leads to "group think" and cronyism because it's the already tenured professors who choose which candidates get tenure. That's why there is so little intellectual diversity on Ivy campuses and why none of the worst problems at Columbia ever get fixed. 

Eliminating tenure and putting our faculty on renewable contracts would keep our scholarship more current, control the true source of our ballooning costs, and give us a chance to make athletics-bashing and indifference a thing of the past.

The chances of getting rid of the A.I. and tenure in the Ivies is really nil, unless major donors get together and start demanding it... and I plan to do that right after I make my first $50 billion. 

For now, I'll be satisfied if we can just make the demand for these eliminations a clear message regularly delivered to the Ivy presidents as much as possible. One of the tools the administrations use against us is the argument that not all Ivy fans want the same thing.

That argument has already been proved wrong in regards to allowing the Ivy champs to play in the FCS playoffs. More than 95% of Ivy football fans not only want this, but they have publicly stated that desire on numerous occasions.  

If we want Columbia to start winning, really winning, in the sports that matter we need to get rid of the A.I. and faculty tenure. It's a simple message that I plan to repeat as much as possible until it at least won't be ignored anymore.