Leading Off
-Josh Martin ’13 had six tackles and got the start in the K.C. Chiefs 27-24 OT loss at San Diego
yesterday. The Chiefs put up a huge
fight despite resting all their starters. Hopefully, Josh will get some on the
field action in the AFC Wildcard Playoff game at Indianapolis this coming Saturday
afternoon.
-The men’s basketball team put up a good fight against St. John’s in Saturday before losing 65-59 at Brooklyn’s
Barclay Center. But remember, Columbia BEAT Villanova at Villanova last season
and still finished dead last in the Ivies. I think there will be a better
finish for men’s hoops this year, but PLEASE let’s not heap too much praise on
the team unless it actually wins games… especially the games that count. The games that count start on Jan. 18th at Levien
Gym against the 0-12 Cornell Big Red. Needless to say, the Lions need to win
that game.
-It certainly looks like Columbia
has made a good hire good hire for head women’s soccer coach. Tracey Bartholomew comes from LIU, where she’s taken that
team to three NCAA tournament appearances over 14 years. She was NEC Coach of
the Year in 2008.
These two song titles say a lot about the hiring of Pete Mangurian
Second Chance: Tell Us What’s Good about Pete!
-About a month ago I asked the readers to make a case for
Head Coach Pete Mangurian. In response all we heard were personal attacks
against his detractors, and some obscure historical parallels to other coaches
who failed early in their careers and then turned it around.
Note this past week here in New York, when several strong
cases were made for keeping Rex Ryan and Tom Coughlin in their jobs. Hundreds
of fans, players, and NFL analysts came forward BY NAME to support Ryan and
Coughlin on sports radio, etc.
No one has done so for Mangurian other than Bollinger,
Murphy and Campbell and all they’ve collectively said is that Mangurian
deserves more time. Notice that not even they could or would list one good
thing Mangurian has actually done so far.
This time, let me be more specific: we want to know what
GOOD things Mangurian has already done here at Columbia that warrant him
another year in the job. Again, saying he deserves more time is not an
argument. We want to know WHY he deserves more time based on what he has
ALREADY done.
Has he improved any aspect of this team and this program in
a tangible way? If so, let’s hear it. And if you can come up with something, is
it really significant enough to warrant keeping this job?
As usual, every argument will be heard.
61 comments:
OK, strictly as devil's advocate: Nottingham and Adebayo injuries in Fordham game were devastating, and we had been playing Fordham tough until then; Lempa shafted us by quitting; other key injuries including Nelligan, Childress, Garrett, possible lack of senior class leadership. In addition, his resume looked good, he beat Harvard two out of three at Cornell, he is articulate and presentable ( or at least appeared so,at the interviews), relatively limited attrition up to now, good start to recruiting for '14, potential talent in last year's recruits, Nottingham wants to play two more years. Finally perhaps the old Marine Corps, Bear Bryant mentality that a bandage is not a cure and that you have to start from scratch with a program which hasn't won in years...Jake and others, that's the best I can do here. So have at it.
Again, those are good excuses but the request here is for tangible POSITIVES achieved by Mangurian at Columbia so far.
Achievements at Cornell do not count.
Jake asked what Mangurian has DONE at COLUMBIA to justify his continued employment. Injuries (Nottingham, Adebayo, etc.) are excuses; they are not things DONE by Mangurian. His record at Cornell is his record at Cornell, not COLUMBIA. As far as being articulate, he appears to have disappeared into a bunker as far as the alumni are concerned.
In any case, Jake's challenge is consistent with what little Mangurian said before entering the bunker. Mangurian said that there was "empirical data" showing improvement in the team since he took over. All Jake has asked is for someone to specify this "empirical data". I'm glad that Mangurian is "presentable" (i.e., owns a tie), but that's not "empirical data".
Looks like he is a heck of a recruiter. Despite CU woes he still seems to get some pretty good talent coming to CU. Only time will tell, I say give him time with HIS recruits and then we shall see. Hard to run a scheme when you dont have the players to run it! Like when Rich Rod went to Michigan and ran the spread when he didnt have spread players. Relax fellows, CU has been losing for YEARS, whats one more :)
His recruits have resulted in a grand total of just one All Ivy Honorable Mention so far. That's if Niko Padilla was truly his recruit and not a holdover from Norries Wilson. I am actually not sure. And while I like Padilla a lot, one All Ivy HM does not prove that Mangurian can recruit well. If this were a question on a test, it's at best an "incomplete."
He's only had 2 recruiting years so far right? How many accolades should his recruits be getting this early considering he played most of NW holdovers?
Nico was a PM recruit.
Again, those are good excuses for non-success but they are not examples of actual success. We can't say PM is a good recruiter and then say his players haven't had a chance to play yet. It only makes sense to say that we'll see if he's a good recruiter. So again, the recruiting argument is not an argument for something PM has actually accomplished.
On behalf of my blood pressure
In other words, "PM does have a talent for........, as displayed in the xxxxx game", or maybe "his players all say .........about him", or perhaps, "he improved ........over the course of the season".
Something someone could realistically put forward that makes any kind of a case.
I think that's whatJake is asking for.
On behalf of my blood pressure, I'll ignore the crack about "What's one more year of losing?" As for PM, with Nottingham returning and hopefully the development of an adequate backup/replacement should he be injured again, plus the third group of PM's recruits, if there is not a notable improvement in 2014, this coach should be terminated, preferably before the end of the season to give the Nathan's Hot Dog Committee more time to creak into action for its national search from Cape May to North Tarrytown.
Murphy took the subway to Brooklyn and got a new
soccer coach for the Columbia women's soccer team who appears to be very qualified. Can Bartolommeo coach football too by any chance?
Why can't we just let the baseball guy coach football too? He could lend us Joey Falcone, who looks like he could kill it as a WR.
Did someone actually post that PM is a "heck of a recruiter"? As evidenced on the JV team?
Let's forget all this subjective stuff (presentability, eloquence, etc.) and look at the team statistics on the Columbia football website for 2011 (Norries' last year) and 2013. If anyone can find anything other than a catastrophic decline in the performance of the team in such statistical comparison, let's hear about it.
Shouldn't have fired NW
Did someone erase my comment about why we fired NW?
PM has done a great job of teaching the players that it's wrong to post racist and anti-semitic comments on Twiitter.
What he has done very well is not let on that the criticism bothers him. He is smart enough to know that won't go over well with his employers. Pete's intelligence and ability to smooth talk when he feels works in his favor. What intrigues me is what kind of adjustments he will make in year 3 to save his job. He has to know whatever made him partially successful at Cornell is clearly ineffective at Columbia. So there are no more excuses, he has to know it and he has to know he is on borrowed time despite whatever support the Prez says in a form letter.
I think he is making a valid attempt to get things going on the recruiting front so now he has to prove everyone wrong and demonstrate he knows how to put that athletic talent to good use and elevate his tactical approach to game planning.
Agreed, AW.
I am confident of 2 things at this point; He'll be here next year, and either he will turn things around next year or he will be gone.
We just need to keep that front and center of the administration.
The greater issue is how their deep-seated general incompetence is handled. Because if that isn't addressed, we will wind up with the same old, same old. Once again.
Hey look, another male fired and replaced by a single woman. Shocker. This is who we fired Coach McCarthy for? Nice success at LIU but what does this woman know about recruiting to the Ivy League?? We're talking a completely different profile of recruit here, one she no experience with. But, she fits Dianne's primary requirement for the job.
Totally different dynamic with women's soccer. Nothing at all wrong with hiring a female to run that program.
The sexism here is appalling, not only on its own, but for what it says about the football as antithetical to Columbia subculture.
Nice road Winn for men's basketball on the road tonight against a good Colgate team, without CO and in double OT.
All I heard are excuses about injuries. Excuses, excuses, excuses... Pete never coached these kids, it's that simple. They were boys playing with men. Can we please bring back the JV team so that kids like Pace can develop.
Al's Wingman: My feeling is that his comments in Spec and his bunkering in approach since then is evidence that the criticism bothers him, too...
Did not PM close the deal bringing Nottingham to Columbia. That should count for something.
Sure, but that's all we've really got. That one thing (not to mention the season ending injury game 1) does not give me alot of hope the program is on the rebound.
And again, the team was as bad and lackluster at season's end as they were in the beginning.
The fact that he got Nottingham to come here and then did nothing to protect him properly puts the whole Nottingham affair in the "net negative" category right now. It could go positive if he can keep him upright this year, but if I were the Columbia volunteer ambulance crew, I'd keep extra pints of Nottingham's blood type on hand.
Big win for men's hoops indeed. I know many have criticized Tellier for the Pete debacle but Ray actually ran the Basketball search and got this one right.
Good post, Jake, and funny too. I'm waiting for the AD trolls and complacent enablers of Bollinger's "noblesse
NO oblige" to begin howling about your insensitivity to pain and suffering, blah, blah, but I want to thank you for
being very sensitive to mine.
I wouldn't be surprised if Nottingham transferred to
a higher level program where they include a strategy called blocking.....maybe CW Post or Iona. But perhaps he'll stay put because he aspires to be a medical doctor.
If so, he'll have to rely on the adage "Physician, heal thyself."
I can see the NYTimes finally deciding to cover a CU football story, but only if it's about Nottingham resetting his own broken leg at halftime.
That somebody here would complain about hiring a woman to coach a women's sport suggests that some people like to complain just to complain.
So you are saying there is no chance the OL will be better next year. The starters are returning. They are experienced and they will be a lot stonger. The strength coach is excellent. So these kids are hopeless? Nottingham will need an ambulance. You are now so invested in failure for next year that you have lost all perspective. I guess you are right these kids suck.
You should have been more into satire when you went to school. You wouldn't be wasting your time getting excited about well-deserved jabs not at our players but at Lee and Di and what they have wrought.
to the li,
Maybe you should have learned how to discern the implications of the words that you are reading. If that fairly lame attempt at satire is aimed at others, it missed by a mile. He will only need an ambulance, if the if the kids on the OL suck.
The point is Pete can't coach the OL . We were told all last year that the OL would surely improve, all the starters were coming back. Well, the OL was worse. The team was worse. That's not on the players, that's on Pete.
So I repeat: You are saying there is no chance the OL will be better next year. These kids are hopeless? The OL is still going to suck next year. Its not you guys, its the coach. If I was player, I would take that personally.
If the players are really good, the coach can be mediocre and the OL can still be good. I know that from personal experience.
First off, stop trying to make it sound like I'm insulting the players. This is really like the Palestinian terrorists who hide out in schools.
Of course there's a chance the OL will improve. What I object to is the assumption that for sure it WILL be better next year. There is nothing remotely close to a guarantee of that, especially since the best OL's are senior dominated and we still have few if any seniors.
Maybe if we had a JV team, I'd buy the argument that our returning players would surely be getting better. But we don't.
I made no assumption that the OL will improve. I just pointed out that you were strongly implying that there is no way that they will improve.
The guys coming back played in multiple varsity games. Nothing helps more than playing time in actual games, especially on OL.
It is not my fault that you keep insulting the kids in your misguided attempts to take shots at the coaches. As as said, you now seem fully invested in and rooting for failure.
By the way, I think PM should have been let go but he wasn't.
"Palestinian terrorists." Do you actually read the crap you write before you publish it? God what a crybaby. Somebody disagrees with you and you have a cow. Man up.
Yes, Palestinian terrorists. You keep using the kids' supposed hurt feelings as a human shield.
Jake, what your doing is called deflection. You don't seem to understand the logical implications of you own words. Then you hide from the logical points I made about actual playing time in VARSITY games.
Then you change to the subject to some ridiculous point about human shields.
Most of your comments on this blog reflect the fact that you never played football and know nothing about what it takes to play.
Okay, I'll address the varsity games issue.
Sorry, but I have to disagree. Yes, in many cases, logging more time with the varsity is a great way to improve. But this OL has been so outmanned, outsized, and outcoached that their experience on the field has been a net negative. Frosh linemen need JV and the time to develop against players a little more their own size and with similar experience. That's why you so rarely see underclassmen on the O-lines.
Let me say this as clearly as I can: the coaches are making these kids inferior players. None of our players are so great that they can overcome the malpractice we're seeing here.
I cannot speak for Jake but there's a reason most offensive linemen are redshirted - because they are physically and mentally not strong enough to play as freshmen. The JV program served that role for CU. Unfortunately, Pete would rather just throw the kids to the fire.
If said young Oline person is practicing daily against varsity lineman like Seyi, Chad and Padilia and handling them then what is JV going to do for them? Look around! There are true freshman lineman at every position in the NCAA. If your youngest is the best then he's the best. Most college programs don't even have jv's.
The proof is in the results. And the results were drastically awful. They were drastically awful in 2012. So, I just don't get why we're supposed to believe this year's drastically awful will lead to better things in 2014.
Jake, we will have a senior, 3 juniors and a sophomore on the line. All battle tested. All a year bigger and stronger. That spells improvement in itself. Hopefully we will have some depth to go along with them. I can't be negative about the line this early. I'm more worried about the safety position and Dline depth. Actually over all defensive depth. And QB.
Jake
You comments about varsity playing time reveals once again you have no clue what you are talking about, only someone who has never played football, let alone OL, would say such uniformed nonsense. Every game you play, you learn something. Every game you play makes you better. You really should stop making a fool of yourself.
By the way, there was only one freshman starting on the OL and he was playing because the guy in front of him got hurt. You talk as if there was five freshman on the O Line.
The truth is there no one inside the program that talks to you: not the players, not the coaches, not the Athletic department staff. You aren't allowed to attend practices and you never see game or practice film. You simply have no clue about the true relative talent level of the players on this team and neither does anybody else on this blog, including me. How could we? We don't have the information. I know that, why don't you?
Most of what you traffic in is gossip from disgruntled parents of players who probably were never going to see the field under any coach. Each class has 30 guys. A very large percentage of the guys in every class will never see the field, or even make the two deep, because they are not as talented as the top players on the team. Young guys beat out older guys all the time. 100 guys, 22 starters.
By the way, the JV "program" was four or five throw away games each year. A lot of seniors and juniors who were never going to play varsity played in those games. It was not really about developing the young guys.
Above,
It is you who know absolutely nothing about this team. You speak with authority that you don't have. This team is an anomaly. The coach and his decisions are not SOP. He is an arrogant sociopath who has ruined football for a cadre of players who deserve better. I know. You don't.
Your comment is nonsense. You must be one of those disgruntled parents. How do you like my Jake's blog type logic?
"Most of what you traffic in is gossip from disgruntled parents of players who probably were never going to see the field under any coach."
Your contempt for the young men whom you are paid to coach is repulsive. Nobody believes that "We don't have the information" pretense. You are obviously hostile towards the players, parents and alumni. How was the football program allowed to fall into the hands of such people?
Now I am coach. You guys are amazing. You are simply impervious to logic. On every team there step dozens of guys who will never see the field. That is just a fact. It is also a fact that Jake has no access to information from inside the program, attends no practices and sees no film. Disgruntled parents are all he has got to go on. Just the facts, partner.
Jake does not need to have played football to have little to feel confident about.
If you are relatively new to CU football I could see how you might have hope and optimism the line will improve because they are all coming back. I've been associated with CU football for nearly 30 years and I have seen this chapter play out repeatedly.
There is virtually NOTHING to feel confident about and PM and the admin's silence unfortunately speaks volumes.
I am frankly insulted that no one is proactively addressing any of us yet.
Why would they?
Positives about Mangurian:
1.honest
2.upfront
3.great offensive mind
4.respected in the football coaches community.
5.great family guy
6.GREAT recruiter!!
7.knows football
8.knows how to get most from players
9.reads people very well
10.great motivator
11.holds people accountable
12.trying to build something that has not ever worked at Columbia ever in the last umpteen years.
13.has MADE a commitment to the program when he could make more money and less stress working for an another team.
14. Treats his staff well
15. treats his players well ( food ,clothing, uniforms,) all of the things that matter to college kids.
16. Fights for the players and their privacy.
17. won't give out information to you jerks like you want him too. THat is a Big plus in my book.
18. was clever enough to get his underlings to spend the holidays sniping at alumni on the internet in stead of being with their families.
"8.knows how to get most from players"
If 0-10 is the "most" we're going to get, God help us if Coach Pete lets them slack off.
"3.great offensive mind"
Translation : Fielded worst offense in the history of the Ivy League.
Thank you for posting this list of "positives". It's hilarious.
Mangurian could bring the next Jerry Rice and Dick Butkus to Columbia and they will still suck. He's a horrendous coach and has lost the locker room. The record will be the same.
Mangurian could bring the next Jerry Rice and Dick Butkus to Columbia and they will still suck. He's a horrendous coach and has lost the locker room. The record will be the same.
1. honest-really?
2. Upfront-like his review of the year and detail about the players not playing
3. Great Offensive mine- it should just read offensive
4. respected-by whom exactly? like saying Nixon was respected
5. great family guy-ok, cant comment
6. GREAT recruiter-really, where is that proof? at cornell it was another guys recruits, here the jury is certainly out
7. knows football-more like knows a football, made by wilson or nike, maybe rawlings if yu are older
8. knows how to get the most from players- Holy crud-we are in some deep du du now
9. reads people very well-yeah, like a bad book
10. great motivator-see 2013 columbia performance for proof
11. holds people accountable-yes, everybody but himself, plenty of evidence on this one
12. trying to blah blah-many are called few are chosen-he will be selling pharmaceuticals at this rate, no offense to pharamceutical salesman
13. come on-this is just a joke-he was out of work, had no offerings and took a job. he could not make any amount similar unless he were a snake oil salesman.
14. treats his staff well-obviously because of the great job they are doing
15. since when is the coach paying for the uniforms, food and clothing? ok, he treats every kid that isnt his recruit like a second class citizen and treats his recruits like gold.
16. fights for the player and their privacy-no interviews arent approved by his office first and nobody is allowed to speak freely..funny how that changes the way his fighting looks
17. wont give out information to us jerks...i believe he has nothing to give. he is the equivalent of a blank piece of paper..nothing on it and worth a few cents.
what a farse this was, but fun given we covered about everything that is possible for him.
I just don't understand why he has never reached out to former players. We would have embraced the guy if he had made an attempt.
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