Pathetic

Just to remind everyone that we’re all still Columbia sports fans first and foremost, I want to congratulate the Men’s Basketball team on its rout over Army last night. I listened to Jerry Recco and Sal Licata calling most of the game and it was a blast. I hope the team proves my fears wrong and keeps this going when the Ivy season starts in January.

Sometimes people ask me if I'd be okay with the Columbia sports teams starting to win more even if it meant never getting rid of Dianne Murphy as A.D. 

The answer is always simple: "in a heartbeat!" 

This is about winning, after all

Well, it’s been a wild 36 hours.

Less than an hour after I emailed a few people Tuesday about how the NY Post wanted to contact them for a story on Columbia athletics, Head Coach Pete Mangurian sent an email to the PLAYERS warning them no to talk to the Post even though my email was not sent to any players.

I was just going to let that go, but a few hours later someone decided to “prove” I had sent it to the players with the obviously doctored photo above and put it out on Twitter.

In the last few hours I’ve learned from my sources that even staffers in the Athletic Department are telling the players this was a doctored email/photo.

So, here are the questions we’re left with right now:

1)      WHO doctored the Email?

Obviously, someone I sent my email to forwarded it to the wrong person and that person tried to use it against me. I have no problem with anyone forwarding my email, because there was nothing wrong with it in any way. But trying to doctor the “sent” and “from” boxes to include a current player’s name is extremely weird and little bit sick.

I really don’t have a long list of suspects, but I would like to ask offensive coordinator Jaime Elizondo why he thinks his name appears as the recipient of the supposedly forwarded email. Did he take the picture of the document and then doctor it? When I openly asked in the comments section of the blog yesterday if Elizondo was commenting here or was responsible for this “Emailgate,” there was no response.

As far as the current player’s name on the email, I’d rather not get him any more involved. I am convinced he never even saw the email, at least not until the Mangurian warning went out later that night.

I realize there are a lot of people who could have pulled this stunt, but if it is anyone on the football coaching or support staff… well, we have a serious problem and a very big clue as to the kind of mania we’re dealing with.

2)      Who showed/forwarded the email to Coach Mangurian?

Whoever got the email to Mangurian’s attention did it very quickly. I didn’t send it to anyone in the Athletic Dept. or on the staff, so where did they get it? That’s an important piece to the puzzle.

3)      Columbia University is led by America’s #1 advocate for Free Speech. Why does Mangurian think that it’s okay to warn/threaten the players not to talk to the press?

I understand that during the season, the Athletic Department is very wise to insist that the sports media go through the dept. before talking to players. But when the season is over, or when the story is essentially a news and not a sports item, (and this case checks off all those boxes), I’m not so sure it’s ethical in any way to tell student-athletes they shouldn’t talk to the media. We know President Lee Bollinger signed off on that statement about athletics no questions asked, but I think he would be very reluctant to rubber stamp this kind of gag order policy from Mangurian. If he does, we’re talking a very high level of hypocrisy that I don’t think even Bollinger is capable of.

4)      If it turns out that someone on the Mangurian staff, or Mangurian himself, is behind the email inbox doctoring, will they be punished?

I’m not holding my breath, but the information I have about at least one A.D. staffer telling the players that she knows the email was doctored is very encouraging. Dianne Murphy has to be very careful here. We know this coaching staff is incapable of putting together a winning program, and Murphy apparently can get away with not doing anything about that. But I don’t think she can ALSO get away without disciplining someone from the department who’s putting out false information to smear an alum, a current player, and possibly a current coach.

5)      Is this what it’s going to be like for the next year?

Are we going to be spending more time and energy on the administrative mess that is Columbia Football, or will we ever just get to focus on recruiting and getting ready for 2014? Even if I shut down this blog tomorrow, I think this email incident proves that CU Football cannot even begin to function normally this offseason as long as Mangurian and his staff are in place. Even if his staff had nothing to do with this email thing, someone very close to them did and there is a culture of antagonism and defensiveness against the fans from Bollinger to Murphy to Mangurian on down. And that culture is so tainted right now, it’s clearly taking priority over more important things like the upcoming recruiting weekends on campus. Doesn’t it make more sense to cut our losses now and jettison this staff instead of looking over their shoulders day and night for the next real or imagined embarrassment?