Day-to-Day work and updates on the Ivy football season will continue on this blog. But to make sure the emergency situation Columbia football and Columbia athletics are under remains on the forefront, the following extremely common sense demands will be posted on top of every new post on this blog until changes are made:
FIRST: If you are a former player, please consider signing the letter in the post below: (click here to see it), which has now morphed into a living petition.
Here's what we need to do as well:
1) Replace Dianne Murphy as Athletic Director right away
2) Replace Pete Mangurian as Head Football Coach the moment the season ends
3) Bring in an outside consulting/expert group to make the replacement hires and evaluate the positions and effectiveness of everyone in the athletic department.
4) Do NOT allow anyone who has had a leadership position or position of influence in any past hiring process to participate or interfere in any way with the overhaul process.
Please call President Bollinger at 212-854-1754 as soon as possible and asked to be connected to his office. Please respectfully ask that Murphy and Mangurian be let go as soon as possible.
You can also email: officeofthepresident@columbia.edu
MY EMAIL FOR ANY AND ALL QUESTIONS AND CONFIDENTIAL CORRESPONDENCE IS:
roarlions2012@gmail.com
Final Week Picks
Six games on this final docket:
Princeton -10 1/2 at Dartmouth
The Tigers offensive steamroller will keep rolling on to an undisputed Ivy title.
Yale +8 vs. Harvard
I like the Elis to make a close game of The Game... but then lose... again.
Cornell +18 1/2 at Penn
The Big Red have been bad this year, but they haven't embarrassed themselves. If Jeff Mathews plays they could even make a game of it. The Quakers will win, but by 17 or less.
Colgate +16 vs. Fordham
The Rams are losing steam and I don't think they'll rout Colgate on the road. Fordham to win, but Colgate to cover.
Lafayette + 5 1/2 at Lehigh
This game feels like a Lehigh win by a FG or less. Take the points but Lehigh wins.
Monmouth -9 1/2 vs. Duquesne
The Hawks will finish strong at home and cover.
16 comments:
Jake, going back thru your blog I see lots of players who would be upperclassman now who are not on the team. QB Percy Goins, DT Daren Napier, OL Austin Stock, OL Joe Kopp, etc. Where are these recruits you heralded? If they were on the team, maybe we wouldn't have to play so many frosh.
No kidding. No seniors = no wins.
Jake, good job,don't let me get on your bad side.
Jon Harris GO BULLDOGS
teacher mike 196
1958 Green Bay Packers
Coach - Ray McLean
Record - 1-10-1 6th Place West Div
QB's
Bart Starr - 8 Starts 0-6-1 3 TD
Babe Parilli- 3 Starts 1-3 10 TD
FB and HB
Jim Taylor - 1 Rush TD 0 Rec TD
Paul Hornung- 2 Rush TD's 0 Rec TD
1959 Green Bay Packers
Coach - Vince Lombardi
Record - 7-5 3rd place West Div.
QB's
Bart Starr - 5 Starts 4-1 6 TD's
Lamar McHan - 7 Starts 3-4 8 TD's
FB and HB
Jim Taylor - 6 Rush TD 9 Rec TD
Paul Hornung 7 Rush TD 15 Rev TD
Lombardi in his first year used basically the same backfield giving the players more on field reps. and won. He didn't bench the guys who had played the year before , he played them.
In a war situation, would you bench the combat veterans and let the newbies go to war on their own, of course not. Once again I give the example of General Douglas Mac Arthur whose command staff was full of former West Point football players, Duty, Honor, Country. Their leadership earned "on the fields of friendly strife" would not let MacArthur ,their fellow soldiers (teammates) or their country down. When you let your seniors down PM, you lost the whole season.
Mac Arthur and Lombardi played their seniors with pretty good results. Lombardi cried when he told the veteran Paul Hornung near the end of his career that he had traded him. Hornung told the supposedly hard core coach that he made the right decision because his knees were shot. I wonder if PM shed any tears for the players who sat in the stands.
Lombardi is always interesting. He coached high school, where he taught physics and Latin, college, and pro, but he was never a head coach in college. He was not a big X and O man. He thoroughly and absolutely understood his limited offense and knew how to make it work against anybody. He was a terrible coach on the sideline and his players laughed about this. His great mastery was in understanding his players and how to make the most of them. He liked to find the weakness of a player and work so hard on it that it became a strength, as with Starr's long passing ability. Along the same lines, he liked to attack the strength of an opposing team, not its weakness. This guy was really great.
Unfortunately, he became so saddled by the simplistic media version of himself that he eventually began turning into that version. All in all, a very interesting story. Just skip the end.
The main thing was, he could see what had to be done with almost any player in order for that player to be good. He took what was already there and made it better. That's why it was so perplexing that he was the one who opened the door to inflated rookie contracts by signing Jim Grabowski and Donny Anderson out of college. He wasn't very old but maybe tired, maybe already sick.
What we have now at CU is the furthest thing from Lombardi. Nor do I think we've ever had anybody in CU football who could penetrate so deeply into the nature of players in order to bring out the best in them, as Lombardi could at his start in Green Bay. I don't think you could even begin to communicate with CU coaches about anything like that. What a bunch of clowns this has been. (As always, I except Wilson, who perhaps lacked the genius but was at least trying to start the car by putting the key in ignition and not by letting the air out of the tires.)
Mitch,
As a parent of an upperclassman, I really appreciate the "air out of the tires" reference. It's hard to see my son so deflated when he has worked so hard. Fortunately, he is a much stronger man than I and continues to bust his butt, refusing to become a victim. Pres Bollinger really disappointed me. One poster for the opposing views stated that when you carefully investigate allegations, you find that most are quite different than first reported. This is true. The Pres did not do his due diligence despite his graduate degree. It's best to keep your mouth shut until you get both sides. Would current players and former players trash their current and former identities if there weren't serious problems way outside the norm? The Pres needs to hear from everyone before weighing in.
The ability to treat players differently is the common thread among all great coaches. Some guys are harder on them selves and need encouragement. Other guys need driven. Understanding the player and knowing the buttons to push is what makes success and rewarding for all. Mangurian doesn't get it. They are all supposed to be "tough" and look like he wants. He wants his players to be as superficial as he is.
Mangurian = Marino. Treat these fine young men like animals to be trained.
A former Giant great and a friend told me that what made Parcells so great as a coach is that he knew how to treat his players. He knew who needed to be encouraged, he knew who needed to be goaded, and he always had their backs.
Mangurian would have their backs, with a knife to put in it. There are many verifiable accounts where he down graded, humiliated and talked horrible about players to others and in front of them, very disturbing. This will all come out in the wash.
OldLion, good call; especially the way parcells treated Bavaro. He knew he could only go so far, yet made him great!
Spec is calling for a moratorium this weekend to support our teams. I think the seniors have earned our support and truly hope that they rise to the occasion. Mangurian claims in Spec that all seniors will get into the game.
Princeton has not had an undefeated Ivy season since 1964.
The weather for the game in Hanover will be close to freezing.
I'm very, very nervous about this game.
At least either way Princeton gets a bonfire (for beating H and Y) and a share of the title.
Inwood Tiger, what Princeton cannot play in cold weather? maybe we should get them some blankets and hot cocoa? i am just kidding.
i dont think they will lose.
Two responses -- I was in Hanover for the last snow bowl between Princeton and Dartmouth, it didn't go so well. But more realistically, the Tigers rely on a lot of throws, a lot of accuracy, a lot of complex screwing around in the backfield. Not sure how easy that will be to pull off when hands are frozen. We'll see! Go Tigers.
As an aside, there is no better author/contributor for pure written poetry than Mitch. The graphics you get when reading his stuff is just phenomenal. It really provides levity and clarity.
Coach Spoo
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