Lost in all our legitmate doom and gloom about our football team is
the fact that the Ivy League in general is finally giving the fans what looks
like a serious race for the title from four pretty good teams.
Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth haven’t all looked as
sharp as people expected going into the season, but they’ve each passed
critical early tests and still control their own paths.
The wildcard has been Yale, which is firing on all cylinders
and is certainly playing the best offensive football in the league right now.
At the other end of the spectrum. Penn has been weaker than
usual and Brown is iffy. Cornell and Columbia are playing their expected roles
of bottom dwellers.
But it speaks volumes about where the league has been for
the last 14 years or so that we’re already in a rare spot with four legitimate
contenders for the title still standing even after week 3. In most years since 2000, the serious race has
been only between two teams even at this early stage.
It figures that just as the league is getting into a new and
exciting competitive period, Columbia isn’t really even on the register. The
Lions don’t really deserve to be playing at this level right now. That’s a sad
fact, but it is a fact just the same.
Ivy Power Rankings
1.
Harvard
Yale is making the most noise, but Harvard is cruising so
far. Cornell will offer no real threat to the Crimson this coming Saturday, so
their undefeated record is safe.
2.
Yale
The Bulldog defense is still a big question, but it’s
starting not to matter all that much. The run and the pass for Yale is looking
so strong that only Harvard looks like it can snuff it.
3.
Dartmouth
The Big Green win over Penn, however weakened the Quakers
are this year, was still a huge psychological deal for this team. Now we have a
legitimate super game of the week with the Elis hosting Dartmouth this coming
Saturday. We could get 90 total points scored in that game easily. The winner will have a good track to the
championship.
4.
Princeton
The Tigers are flat out underperforming so far, but they
have a long way to go before they face a crucial Ivy test. After this coming
week’s game at Colgate, Princeton hosts a weaker Brown team. It won’t be until the
25th, when Harvard comes to Tiger Town that we’ll really know what
this team is all about.
5.
Brown
The Bears should have thrashed URI Saturday, but escaped
with only a seven point win. But Brown is still showing more signs of life than
the teams below them on this list.
6.
Penn
The Quakers look lost defensively and only somewhat stronger
on offense. Now here’s the really bad news: Penn has to go to Fordham to play
the Rams this Saturday.
7.
Cornell
Against Yale, the Big Red should have at least put up some
decent rushing numbers. They didn’t. Harvard will pile on the pain this
Saturday.
8.
Columbia
This year’s Lions, and last year’s Lions, are a good example
of why the last place finishers in English Premier League soccer get kicked out
of the league. There is no semblance of a competitive program here despite a
deceptively close 1st half vs. Princeton. Monmouth will embarrass
Columbia again this coming week.
Let's break this down for anyone who still doesn't see just how bad this is:
Columbia has now lost 14 straight. This is now the longest losing streak since the then-record-setting streak of 44-straight losses from 1983-88.
The average game score in this current 14 game losing streak is 39-7.
The average game score in the 44 game losing streak was 33-10.
The most Columbia has scored in any game during this 14 game streak is 14 points.
Columbia scored 20 or more points in the 44 game streak seven times.
The 44 game streak spanned parts of six seasons under three head coaches. Bob Naso was fired after loss #11. Jim Garrett was fired after loss #21. Larry McElreavy lost his first 23 games before he broke the streak with the 16-13 win over Princeton on Oct. 8, 1988.
McElreavy is now back in coaching. He's the head coach at Newport High School in New Hampshire and the team has a 3-1 record so far this season.
This 14 game streak all belongs to Pete Mangurian.
It's funny. After a great Columbia win over Princeton in 2009, representatives from the athletic department asked me to try not to refer anymore to the 44-game losing streak in the live broadcasts of the games.
If only they made the same effort.
Now it's impossible not to refer to the old streak, because we're in the midst of a new one with a team that looks worse.
If you don't want to look bad, then don't do bad things.
Let's break this down for anyone who still doesn't see just how bad this is:
Columbia has now lost 14 straight. This is now the longest losing streak since the then-record-setting streak of 44-straight losses from 1983-88.
The average game score in this current 14 game losing streak is 39-7.
The average game score in the 44 game losing streak was 33-10.
The most Columbia has scored in any game during this 14 game streak is 14 points.
Columbia scored 20 or more points in the 44 game streak seven times.
The 44 game streak spanned parts of six seasons under three head coaches. Bob Naso was fired after loss #11. Jim Garrett was fired after loss #21. Larry McElreavy lost his first 23 games before he broke the streak with the 16-13 win over Princeton on Oct. 8, 1988.
McElreavy is now back in coaching. He's the head coach at Newport High School in New Hampshire and the team has a 3-1 record so far this season.
This 14 game streak all belongs to Pete Mangurian.
It's funny. After a great Columbia win over Princeton in 2009, representatives from the athletic department asked me to try not to refer anymore to the 44-game losing streak in the live broadcasts of the games.
If only they made the same effort.
Now it's impossible not to refer to the old streak, because we're in the midst of a new one with a team that looks worse.
If you don't want to look bad, then don't do bad things.
35 comments:
Jake
As a sad commentary on and validation of your rankings, RPI has now agreed with you. Last time I checked, we were ranked slightly ahead of Cornell and Penn. Now we are dead last in the League by a significant margin, while the above are also still winless. It appears more and more likely we will go 0 - 10.
Why is it that our out of league games are against such tough competition that have scholarship players. We are trying to build a program. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have the firepower to schedule these scholarship schools- we do not.
Just to prove I don't bash the administration for everything they do... I CAN'T blame the scheduling on them. The fact is that most of our out of conference scheduling is done years in advance and most of the teams we schedule are not that strong when we schedule them. Our luck is terrible in this regard. If you're a struggling college FCS team, I suggest you put Columbia on your future schedule list as soon as possible.
We are dropping Monmouth and Albany, but adding Georgetown and Wagner.
Better than the dummies at Cornell that pick up Sacred Heart and Delaware -
A real smart AD with a football background buys his way out of the three tough non league games and schedules three wins. That's nine wins guaranteed his first three years -grab a few Ivy wins and now the program is back.
Scheduling was traditionally against schools that also were non-scholarship, but when the Patriot League went scholarship that plan went down the tubes, screwing up decades of contented scheduling. It was so simple -- you played one local rivalry nonconference game and two Patriots (or three, if like Princeton you had dropped the local rivalry as noncompetitive). All of the schools were in the region, highly selective, had similar stadia and team infrastructure. It was a good setup and over the years a lot of great history developed.
Now you're left with trying to stay with the Patriots or move some games over to the only remaining non-scholarship FCS league, the Pioneer. This is what many Ivies have been doing of late, but's it not exactly great for attendance and interest. Would you rather play Lehigh, Lafayette and Holy Cross or Jacksonville (FL), Drake (IA) and Campbell (NC)?
The only one that works well is San Diego, which allowed Princeton and Harvard in recent years to visit the west coast and put on a good game for the alumni. CU should consider it. The Lions did play Marist in 2012 (and won), so right there is two games.
Switch the annual local rivalry game from Fordham to Wagner and call it a day. Not perfect, but better than the current schedule.
Regarding the league this year, it's a heck of a setup for the end of the season. Just look at these games happening in the final two weeks:
Princeton-Yale
Harvard-Penn (at Penn)
Yale-Harvard
Dartmouth-Princeton
Marist, Wagner, Georgetown are all teams on the upswing. Even Davidson would beat CU easily right niow. They are moving the ball and putting up points (almost 17 in 2 weeks vs Princeton and Dayton). There are no more pushovers.
The next coach needs to come in with a plan to recruit a different kind of athlete. Bob Surace took his lumps the first 2 seasons but that strategy is now paying off. Same with Reno and Yale. The difference in skill and athleticism is showing itself.
Hard to fathom how the depth at receiver has gone all wrong for the Lions. Nelligan and Connors are missed badly. The rest of the guys are mediocre or below. I had high hopes or Flannery but 1 catch a game is not helping.
Excellent summation - in a perfect world, we should play a game in California for recruiting- but the three non league games must be winners for Columbia
Should read Davidson put up almost 70 in 2 weeks. 17 vs Princeton.
What is the right kind of athlete? What Columbia coach has done it right in the last 50 years? Columbia is at the bottom of the Ivy League food chain. Columbia is not going to out recruit Harvard,Yale or Princeton. Getting better athletes means giving a better financial aid package and pushing down the Academic Index for Columbia football players.
Is that Honus Wagner or Reekhard Vahgner we're scheduling?
Either one will kill us.
Imagine a school that won the Rose Bowl over Stanford, that played Ohio State, Penn State, Georgia, Syracuse and similar teams and won about half those games, being slaughtered by Albany and Monmouth and having to schedule Marist and Sacred Heart.
You can win all the phony games you want, but you don't WIN by shopping for cripples. You win by improving your team.
Who in California would CU play? San Diego? Cal Poly SLO? 3000+ miles for a beat down. Not good for recruiting.
If they dropped down to DII or DIII then there are suitable opponents. Every other program that is DI and thanks to a deep pool of California football, strong teams.
Does anybody know if Nelligan and Connors are being held out until the Penn game?
I don't understand the logic, schedule 3 bad high school teams and that will build confidence to beat other ivy teams that play scholarship schools and win?
How about spending a nota load of money on a big name coach who kids want to play for?
Once done, the program will get better
There is a structural problem with the way that it's being done now. The Patriot schools w/scholarships play their first three games to work the kinks out and then play us in our opener. Not a good formula. Are any other Patriot League schools besides Georgetown non-scholarship schools? And for that matter, I thought that we were going to play Georgetown this Fall because I remember thinking when I heard it that a local kid I know at Georgetown would play Columbia either this year or next year. The Univ of San Diego is a good opponent and I would bet money that the parents of the USD kids would travel to see their kids play at Columbia and spend a weekend in NY which would double attendance for us!
Seeunt, don't underestimate the prestige teenagers would feel when their HS football team beats Columbia.
Feel free to write the big check for a big time college coach. No Ivy League school has ever written that check for a football coach. While we wait for that check, let's schedule some teams, out of conference, that we can compete with.
Doesn't have to be a big name coach. For $250K there are a lot of qualified candidates eager for an opportunity. I don't know what other Ivies are paying their coaches but presumably it is a nice package that Columbia should be able to compete with. If they are not then add that to the list of things they are doing wrong and keep yammering on the internet until they fix it.
What big time college coach in their right mind would want to come to Columbia , which is fast becoming a graveyard for college football coaching careers ?
What good is a check as long as the whole culture of losing is maintained( while the administration in denial,looks the other way) until another miserable season is over?
First things first- Lets hire an AD that has run a successful football program.
We seem to be incapable of doing this.
"Let's schedule some teams we can compete with." Does that mean teams we can beat? Good luck.
Is there some secret motherlode of incredibly inept football teams that CU can defeat and do chest bumps about? If not, I have trouble envisioning what kind of revolutionary change would be needed to turn this program around. In fact, that kind of change may not be possible, or at least there's no evidence that it is. Yes, Penn did it. Princeton did it. So what?
Is it time to think about getting out of football? If not, what has to happen before it is that time? Putting aside the issues of Ivy membership, would dropping football radically change the identity of the school? Or is the identity of the school already so incongruent with a football team that the change wouldn't even be noticed? Or would be welcomed?
I've followed CU football for a long time and this is the lowest I've seen it. That recognition has nothing to do with supporting the players. It's just a fact. What now?
ALS wingman-funny stuff
I disagree that it is the graveyard and would suggest the coaches we have hired are already in the graveyard and then we hire them. Pete's trajectory was below sea level yet we hired him.
I agree the administration is the toughest opponent.
Look we have supposedly tried everything except for what would actually work, ie. facilities and a good coach
Columbia is hardly at the bottom of the Ivy food chain. All,of the metrics say that it is one of the most desirable schools in the country., and we have become competitive or better in any number of sports. Football was on the upswing as recently as five years ago. Wilson was fired because he couldn't bring us to the next level. ,it is now apparent that cronyism led to Wilson's replacement of a buddy of Murphy's. So,while she is doing a victory lap the question is not whether we drop,football but whether we can get a new AD in place who knows something about winning programs in major sports and have him run the search in time so,that we do not lose another recruiting cycle.
My son was recruited by CU, he liked the school but just couldnt see himself playing for a team that had 60yrs of a losing resume. Putting all that effort in all yr only to get killed every Sat. For a kid that means something. PM tried to sell "your class will be the class to turn it around" angle. But we thought, will this coaching staff even be here after this yr? Alot of stuff going on with CU. Just my 2cents
The more I look at the total picture, and speak with alums and current athletes, the more I am convinced that there is truly an institutional bias at CU against athletics, which does not exist to the same degree at other schools. This is historic.
There is a current of intellectual elitist arrogance flowing thru the faculty and the administration which relegates athletes, especially footballers, to the level of neanderthal. This is then conveyed to the general student body.
I personally believe this took a significant turn back in the '70s, and has persisted to this day. It isn't congruent with the facts of life, which clearly indicate the high level of professional achievement attained by so many "jocks".
Perhaps it is the geek's revenge. Who knows. But it's real and it hurts us.
To clarify- Columbia football is at the bottom of the Ivy League football chain.
How is it that some of the great academic institutions including Cal, Northwestern,Vanderbilt, Baylor are able to compete in their respective conferences, while Columbia cannot??
So here is the question in response to Big Dawg's thoughtful observation: how is it that we can compete successfully in some sports but not in football? Is there an institutional bias which is shared by Bollinger, who would like to turn us into one big open admissions GS? If that is his objective, he should come clean. If it isn't he should say that Columbia College is a highly selective institution which aims to excel at everything we do, including all sports in which we choose to compete. That means bringing in outside consultants and making a commitment to find the right staff from AD to HC, making an ivestment and not tolerating failure. I and others who,have for many years put our money where our mouths are have become good and fed up.
Coach, every one of those programs you mention recruits a different kind of athlete. You already know that. Ask yourself what percentage of each of those rosters would qualify for admissions without football? Very few.
Also, DI schools have much more active booster clubs which the AD is specifically chosen for their hobnobbing prowess. You don't make it very far as a head coach or AD in DI without being a diplomat for fundraising and the like.
The exception was Chip Kelly at Oregon. I guess if you are a DI top 5 head coach you can dial it in. He wouldn't show up to alumni events. They would broadcast him to the room as a talking head.
Al- my point is that teams that have been at the bottom for years can turn it around.
Chip Kelly, as you know, coached at Columbia.
Chip Kelly would not have evolved into a great coach had he stayed at Columbia. He did that at New Hampshire and then at Oregon.
Of course, any program can turn it around. It takes more than a good coach.
Big Dawg is not wrong, but the same attitude exists on nearly every Ivy campus. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, etc. have similar issues with football player stereotypes. Columbia is not unique in this regard.
if you were around Chip or played for him you knew he was a different animal. his personality likely would not have fit at Columbia, do not look for a congruent to the current coach, as he certainly was a players coach and wanted to coach. the coach he went to coach under at New Hampshire was also a CU coach and he lasted 2 years, again, not the coach that wanted to deal with crap just winning.
one of the problems is that the powers that be have their heads so far up their own asses that they cannot see that inorder to improve they need to get out of the way rather than think the world focuses on them. it doesnt, but CU has allowed them to think this.
Seeunt, great comments, and the admin has been doing this for 70 + years!
Sadly, I agree that a Chip Kelly type coach probably would not have been given the support, commitment and freedom to succeed here.
Garrett was at odds with the admin even before the NYT article. The vast majority of the players, even though they thought he was crazy, also thought it was just a matter of time before he turned us into a very successful program. Very very few players wanted him to be fired, even the ones who didn't like him knew he was going to succeed and it wasn't just about his sons. You could feel the momentum changing even during that winless season. Nothing like what we have witnessed the past three nightmare years...
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