The Demotions: Scott Ward and Hamilton Garner

Scott Ward 

For those of you who are joining this discussion late, I have several reports that Head Coach Pete Mangurian spent much of last year telling several top administrators and donors that the veteran players he inherited when he took the job in 2011 were generally weak. He even told Robert Kraft that the “cupboard was bare.”

I realize Mangurian is getting away with this outrageous lie because our complacent, insular and generally nasty administrators are buying it... or just don't care either way. But that doesn’t make it true. And it doesn’t make it acceptable.

I’ve already written several posts about the very talented players, some of them the best CU has seen in decades at their positions, Mangurian was fortunate to inherit in the junior and senior classes for his first season of 2012.

But no two players were perhaps more maligned and marginalized for no good reason than OL Scott Ward and TE Hamilton Garner.

Ward took the brunt of Mangurian’s unwarranted and borderline insane ire. Despite being the only returning Lions O-lineman in 2012 who made the All Ivy team, Ward was not even allowed to report to training camp in what was a blatant attempt to get him to quit the team.

No one seems to have the foggiest idea why Ward was treated this way, especially when Mangurian seems to have come to his senses by midseason when he decided to use him a bit more in actual games. Perhaps it was some kind of “power” move meant to put the fear of God into the veterans. Perhaps it was his dislike for linemen who aren’t hovering around 250 pounds. Perhaps Ward was just one of the many players Mangurian told before the season that they weren’t going to play and might as well quit. He said that to at least a dozen guys, none of whom actually quit as they proved they were a lot tougher than Mangurian ever was.

Whatever the reason, the results were utter disaster. The 2012 Columbia offensive line was more than awful, only to be outdone by the 2013 offensive line that should be charged for accessory to attempted murder. All of that is a direct result of Mangurian’s insane weight policies and trashing of just about every experienced lineman on the roster as of January, 2012.

Hamilton Garner was another returning All Ivy player also marginalized almost immediately by Mangurian. Unlike Ward, he did get playing time and was even highly praised coming into the 2013 season in Mangurian’s published assessments of each player. But you’d have to be blind to miss the dwindling playing time Garner received. By the end of 2013, he was just a situational player.

It’s hard to look at the Ward and Garner stories and not think that Mangurian has a specific bias especially against the most talented players he didn’t recruit.

The fact that he did not play them enough, or at all, and STILL had the gall to bash their effectiveness and talent is inexcusable.

The only question is: who will Mangurian blame THIS year?