The Ivy League has set Tuesday August 7th as the date for the annual preseason football coaches teleconference.
The event will begin at 11am and I will be on the call hoping to pepper the coaches will as many questions as I can.
There are a lot of burning questions that really NEED to be asked of each coach. Here are my top questions for each coach, (other than our own Head Coach Pete Mangurian):
Brown Head Coach Phil Estes: Why should we believe that your completely untested new QB will be as good as your last three great QB's.
Cornell Head Coach Kent Austin: Defense wins championships. How have you upgraded you defense to make all those points Jeff Mathews produces stand up?
Dartmouth Head Coach Buddy Teevens: Why haven't you been able to bring in even one All Ivy level QB in all the years since you returned to Hanover in 2005?
Harvard Head Coach Tim Murphy: What are you doing to end the recent trend of not being able to beat top opponents like Brown and Penn on the road?
Penn Head Coach Al Bagnoli: This is the 6th or 7th straight year that it's been painfully obvious that you need to upgrade your passing game. What's different this year that leads you to believe that you're finally getting there?
Princeton Head Coach Bob Surace: How many wins do you think you need to get this year to keep your job?
Yale Head Coach Tony Reno: How wounded is this team and this program after losing their coach the way it lost him last winter?
Penn State Transfers?
Speaking of burning up the phones, the harsh penalties handed down to Penn State early yesterday included a suspension of all the transfer rules.
That means any Ivy school can grab a scholarship BCS athlete who is academically eligible and essentially have Penn State pay for his education.
If Coach Mangurian and his staff aren't on the phones right now trying to contact a few of these guys these guys, I would be surprised and disappointed.
We might want to try for this young man, Brad Bars, a very solid student recruited by Harvard, Princeton and Brown and one of the best players to come out of the talent-rich state of Tennessee in his graduation year.
Why would a BCS-level player want to come to the Ivy League?
Because maybe after this ordeal, one or two Penn state players have learned to put the "football is the only thing" mentality behind them. Perhaps they might see that the best way to get this scandal behind them is to grab a rare diploma from an Ivy League school on another school's dime and then no one will doubt their priorities.
And this has happened before.
When SMU got the death penalty in 1987,Columbia snagged Columbia snagged a good player in senior John Robinson.
Robinson played well that year and has gone on to some good success as collegiate sports administrator.
I don't mean to be crass. Obviously, I'd rather do something good for the victims in this Jerry Sandusky case and not just be an opportunist.
But I have to believe there are some smart and motivated young men on the Penn State roster who deserve a chance to emerge from this atrocity.
10 comments:
I will bet that Bags is pulling out all stops to recruit a few Penn State players. Ditto Reno and Murphy, but Bags is going to find it easier because of his legendary influence with admissions at Wharton.
Teevens would probably respond that Mike Fritz got HM All Ivy in 2006 as a QB. He'd probably also say that Josh Cohen and Alex Jenny would have gotten All-Ivy honors if they hadn't flunked out and gotten injured, respectively. I think Alex Park has the tools to be an All-Ivy QB. Whether or not he makes it happen remains to be seen...
I'm betting that Reno will be dumped by Yale after the Harvard game. After getting back stabbed by Reno, Murphy has to be motivated to run up the score against him.
With Mathews, Brackett, Chapple and Ragone returning, I think All-Ivy is out of reach for Alex Park. No offense to Dartmouth but that is a very strong group.
Reno and Surace are likely to be gone by the end of the season.
True enough re: QBs this year. But Park has three years of eligiblity remaining. I should have clarified my earlier statement to say that I believe that Park will eventually get All-Ivy honors before he's done.
Many of the potential Penn State transfers have large, prominent Nittany Lion tattoos, painful and expensive to remove. The Nittany Lion can't look much different from the Columbia Lion. It seems serendipitous.
My question for our own Pete Mangurian will directed to our OL. Last year, with one potential NFL player and an average weight of almost 300 pounds we could never establish a running game. What are you going to do to improve what was the worst OL in the league last year? How are you going to keep Brackett healthy, something we haven't been able to do for our QBs for at least the last four years?
The Nittany Lion is a female; Roar-ee is a male. However, it shouldn't be difficult to tattoo a mane on the Nittany Lion.
Link for College Sports Madness All-Ivy team is:
http://www.collegesportsmadness.com/article/4431
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