Where We Are Now

Let’s get back to just football, on the field matters for now… or at least until some kind of Twittergate news or news on Chad Washington’s case breaks.

What else can we do at this point?

I expect silence from the athletic department for the most part over the next three months. That’s partly because it is summer break and partly because some of the people responsible for publicizing the team’s news are getting more directly ensconced in this story.

Following the herd

Recruiting Trends

More Ivy schools are releasing their lists on incoming freshmen football players.

Based on what I’m seeing from the other Ivy schools’ lists of incoming recruits, it appears Head Coach Pete Mangurian and Columbia may not be on such a lonely island after all when it comes to targeting some lighter players.

That might change, especially since we’ve now been promised by Mangurian that the veteran offensive linemen will be bigger by the time the season starts in the fall.

One of the things that annoys me about the Ivies is that the teams tend to fall into general recruiting trends. 10 years ago it seemed like every team was going after bigger players. 5 years ago, I noticed an focus on speed across the league. Now, there seems to be an emphasis on somewhat leaner players with better than average speed.

The herd mentality gives an advantage to any school that intelligently tries to counter what everyone else is doing.

And the school  that most routinely ignores what everyone else is doing and goes after players that fit its system is Brown.

For almost 20 years now, Brown has featured pass-happy offenses and has recruited accordingly. To Head Coach Phil Estes’ credit, he briefly hit pause on that strategy when he saw the potential RB Nick Hartigan ’06 had and went with a run offense for two years. That helped net the Bears the 2005 league crown.

Mangurian has made statements over the last 17 months that lead me to believe he wants to pursue an iconoclastic recruiting strategy as well. And he should… because if Columbia gets into recruiting battles for the same players with Harvard and Penn too often, the Lions won’t be able to field a team.

Post Spring Pole Position

With spring practice at all eight schools wrapped up, here’s a very quick take on where the seven other teams are right now:

Penn:  Still feels like the team to beat right now. QB Billy Ragone is a winner. He doesn’t do it in a pretty way, and he is injury prone because of the way he lays it all out there, but he gets the job done.

Harvard: Hard to believe the Crimson won’t be strong this fall as usual. But Harvard doesn’t look as scary right now. And that, actually scares me. What am I missing?

Dartmouth: For the first time since Buddy Teevens came back to Hanover, I think he has a winning proposition at the crucial QB position. He has talent and depth there and a star RB too. I also like the Green linebackers and secondary, but I’m not so sure about the D-line. A lot of stars are starting to align at Memorial Field.

Brown: Patrick Donnelly is back at QB and he’s a dark horse candidate to lead the league in a lot of categories this fall. The Bears will never fall too far for too long as long as Estes is there. These guys look and feel like a 6-4, 4-3 in the league kind of team.

Princeton:  I don’t expect the Tigers to have as good a year overall as they did in 2012. But they have the best overall player coming back in DT Caraun Reid and a deeper running attack than they’ve had in a long time. This is a solid 5-5 team.

Yale: The Elis will now have had a full offseason to adjust their attack to cater to Tyler Varga’s strengths. But there’s still no strength at QB and the defense has some serious graduation losses.

Cornell: Jeff Mathews is back and has a lot riding on how good his season is as he attempts to enter the NFL draft. Unfortunately for Big Red fans, that doesn’t necessarily mean the team will win. Cornell’s extremely young new head coach is probably going to face a rough start this year.