Bruce Wood’s Big Green Alert blog today reveals that the Lindy’s Magazine preseason Ivy
preview has the Lions picked for dead last in 2013.
As I have written many times before, we have to be prepared
for no respect from the pundits this year, (or any year, for that matter).
Columbia has a tough schedule, faces the two Ivy teams it
defeated in 2012 on the road this time, and the guys following the league have
no way to quantify the impact Brett Nottingham will have on the team, (heck… a
lot of them probably don’t even know Nottingham is coming here at all).
I think most readers of this blog are made of skin thick
enough to handle these kinds of predictions. We know Columbia will never get
the benefit of the doubt and/or preseason respect until the Lions put together
2-3 winning seasons in a row.
To date, CU hasn’t had a winning season in 17 years now.
As for the rest of the predictions, I certainly agree with
the 1-3 choice. Penn and Harvard are always a safe bet as 1-2 in the league,
and I also think Dartmouth is poised to continue its 2012 momentum with its
talented QB’s, running back, and linebackers.
My only real quibble is with Brown at 5th. With a
very talented returning 5th year QB in Patrick Donnelly, and Phil
Estes still breathing, I would still consider the Bears to be a contender.
16 comments:
If you want to flip Brown and Princeton, fine. Probably a coin flip between them (and Dartmouth) anyway. But somebody has to be third and somebody has to be fifth. As for Columbia, maybe Lindy's is expecting the Twitter guys to be suspended. If a lot of guys are sitting out 2013, then yeah- Columbia could be in for a long season. But if everyone returns, Columbia should be competitive. Impossible to tell until decisions regarding any suspensions are made.
I expect us to be competitive. I expect us to be in every game. I am surprised to see us picked behind the two teams we beat. And in all fairness we gave away the games last year to the teams picked 1 and 3. For the record, I am really puzzled by the Dartmouth pick.
Why puzzled by the Dartmouth pick? They've got almost their entire defense coming back. And they have arguably the best offensive backfield and receiving corps returning. Agree. Disagree. Be puzzled? No.
Well I will argue! Penn has an All-Ivy QB, 2 All-Ivy RBs and an All-Ivy WR returning this season. I believe that trumps Dartmouth's returnees any day of the week and twice on Saturday. We shall see when they match up in week 3, but my money is on Penn.
Let me put it this way-would you rather have Tim Tebow or RGIII quarterbacking your team? That's pretty much the inquiry with Ragone v. Williams. Pierre, for my money, is the best runner in the league (other than maybe Varga) when healthy. And Dartmouth has an All-Ivy WR returning as well, plus plenty of depth. Week three should be interesting indeed.
Regrettably these preseason polls are often right, because they base their predictions on reality not emotion. Having sad this, they are course wrong many times as well. The only way to really get a sense of their accuracy is to perhaps look at the last ten years and compare the preseason poll with the actual final results
Any conversation about running backs has to include Garrett.
Congrats to Alex Black on the bball team ... looks like KC drafted him as a reliever ???
... I've been thinking about it and I think my guess was wrong ... I think they drafted him for his hitting ... not the first time I've been wrong ...
I think Black was drafted as a reliever. The guy from NM who he struck out to close out the big win in the regionals was DJ Peterson, who was the 12th player taken in the first round.
very good "old lion"
you must be reading the Times
Black is listed in the draft summaries as "RHP", but only the Royals know for sure.
As for football, I have a feeling the magazines don't look too closely at the lower end of the Ivies. Probably don't know about emerging underclass men, transfers and, in particular, the tweeting problem. As Jake said, no respect until the Lions perform consistently. Too much water under that bridge.
A parallel situation to the Lions is Yale .. they have an ex-Cal recruit Egu who looks like a monster LB (better than Davison before his concusion) and a transfer QB from Clemson (who doesn't look as good as The Sheriff) .. their big issue is QB.. they have the best RB tandem in the league .. unknowns have them ranked at 6th ...
Yale doesn't have that tandem anymore. Cargill graduated. This is the very annoying time of the year when some rosters are updates and others are not.
I love that they picked us last! It will that much sweeter when we surprise everyone!!!
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