Mangurian in his Cornell Days
One of the key differences about new Head Coach Pete Mangurian is that he's been here before.
Not Columbia exactly, but the Ivy League.
I know I've written about how unique this makes him before, but I have rarely focused on the highlights of Mangurian's three year tenure at Cornell.
I've already talked about the stats: 16-14 overall record, impressive 2-1 record vs. Harvard, and the simple fact that he made the Big Red win games they had no business winning. I always thought Columbia should have swept all three games against Mangurian's teams, (remember that 1998-2000 were Johnathan Reese years), but the Lions only got one win against him.
But if we want to get an idea of what it's going to be like to follow Columbia under Mangurian, here are some more hints:
1) Straight Talk
Mangurian has already set a standard of candor with the fans in his social media and blog posts.
Speaking of that his latest blog post is a good attempt at naming all the administrators who are so far cooperating with his plan to overhaul the whole football program. It's essential that those administrators stay on the same page and it's just as essential that the list grows.
In the "olden times" of 12-14 years ago, he was candid too.
Comments like the ones he made after a 38-15 loss to Bucknell in the 2000 season opener, (a season that would turn out to be Mangurian's best at Cornell), tell the story.
And check out this online chat Mangurian conducted with Big Red fans back in 2000!
2) No Banging Heads Against the Wall
At Cornell, Mangurian rarely kept trying to make something work if it was obviously failing. His QB Ricky Rahne often ended up throwing the ball an ungodly amount of the time because Mangurian never ran the ball just for the sake of running it.
3) Character Counts
Mangurian almost always chalked up wins and losses to the individual character on his Big Red players on game day. His recent blog posts about recruiting players with a specific kind of character tell me he hasn't changed. He's going to be pleasantly surprised, if he hasn't already, by the special character that just about every Columbia football player exudes. It takes a very special kind of person to persevere on Morningside Heights; I think someone with even more character than they typical young man in Ithaca.
6 comments:
Jim Garrett gave a lot of candid straight talk, too. Just saying.
Did he have early morning practice sessions at Cornell?
Another fantastic blog from Pete. Forgot the past, and guys like Garrett. This man knows what he's doing and he's doing it well!
Jim Garrett would have won big at CU. Mangurian seems a little more even keeled than Garrett...
It would be interesting to hear from somebody who actually played for Garrett that one year. I seem to recall that things got so out of hand that our AD started attending all practices at some point during the season. In any event, I see nothing of Garrett it Mangurian.
I played for him that year. We had a team vote after the last game regarding if we wanted him to stay or not. I recall the final vote was something like 50-7 in favor of him staying.
The 5-10 against him really hated him but most of us realized we were going to be on a winning team in short time and he was going to get it done. He said some crazy things and did some crazy things and the admin definitely did not want him there but he knew how to coach football.
I spoke with one of the asst AD's a few years later and I was told that he essentially was done after the Harvard game. He then proceeded sneer at the admin every chance he got, went way over budget, and lost every game that year so it was a fait acompli.
He was intense and a natural leader with an NFL pedigree who had won elsewhere, so all of that is similar to Mangurian. He was an unbelievable motivational speaker, too. On the other hand, Garrett was extremely defiant and did not get along with the admin and rather than try to work with them he bunkered in and created an us against them mentality. I see Mangurian as being entirely different in that regard.
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