Mike Kelleher
It’s particularly fitting that Columbia will be playing
Brown this Saturday as it tries again to reset its football program and get it
on a winning track.
It’s fitting because since 1993, Brown has achieved
everything Columbia has not by turning around a seemingly hopeless program with
myriad historic, administrative and infrastructure disadvantages.
In 1992 Brown went 0-10, hitting bottom in a four year slide
that came after a very strong 12-year stretch that began in 1976.
The next year the Bears went a respectable 4-6 and after
remaining in the top half of the league for the following five seasons, Brown
won a share of the title in 1999.
Since then, Brown has finished in the top half of the league
every year but two and also won two more championships.
And the Bears do it all with terrible facilities, weak alumni
and student support, and probably the worst school name recognition in the Ivy
League.
In short, whenever people tell you about all the impossible
hurdles Columbia faces with its football program or all the reasons why we’ll
never have a championship team here the simple answer to those comments is, “Look
at Brown.”
This year is no exception. With graduation losses equivalent
to a small nuclear bomb going off in the Bears locker room, Brown is a
respectable 4-5 and 2-4 Ivy coming into this last week of the season. That
means the Bears will go 5-5 and 3-4 in the Ivies even though just about all the
key starting positions are manned by newcomers.
Another fitting piece to this weekend’s game is the fact
that Brown Defensive Coordinator Mike Kelleher would make a strong new head
coaching candidate for Columbia.
During this strong era for the Bears, Brown has been best
known for its offensive firepower. But the Bear defense since Kelleher took
over in 2001 has been stellar overall. Kelleher took over a defense that
allowed more than 30 points a game in 2000, and immediately shaved a touchdown
per game off that total the following year. Brown gave up just 19 points per
game in their 2008 championship year, and in 2012 the total was down to 16 a
game.
Kelleher is just one of the many “miracle workers” at Brown
who have made that football program a true model for Columbia to follow. And as a former CU assistant coach, he knows this town and this school.
We can keep sticking our heads in the sand or we can look
across the sidelines on Saturday and at least try to emulate a winning recipe
in the face of serious challenges.
9 comments:
Good post! It should be noted though that as of 2018 Columbia will no longer end the season at Brown. In a weak attempt to make the last weekend "rivalry week" as elsewhere in the country, the league is shifting schedules to be Columbia-Cornell (Empire Bowl), Princeton-Penn (strong basketball hatred) and a lukewarm Dartmouth-Brown (meh?) on the last weekend to go with the granddaddy of all rivalry games, Harvard-Yale.
(Quick aside -- Harvard acted like asses in 1926, so Princeton refused to play them for eight years, so the H-Y-P devolved into just H-Y, a trend that had started when an agreement solidified The Game in 1900. Hilarious reading, see: http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1976/JSH0302/jsh0302i.pdf)
In any case, ending with Cornell every year should provide for years to come a reasonably good chance for a win to salvage pride. Will certainly beat running into the chainsaw of Brown defenses every cold, gloomy November.
Inwood, if we have to schedule Cornell as the last game to provide a chance for one win each year, you are insulting both Columbia and Cornell. If that's what we are down to, then I say just cancel football right now.
This feels like a death watch.
The Firing Lion last night said that Mangurian had turned down KCR's request for the standard weekly interview. Then they played some tape of Mangurian's initial press conference in which he made some over the top statements and promises. The reporter said that he was at that press conference as were the then current players, and that they looked to a man like they were unhappy with their new coach. The same reporter really laced into Murphy for this exercise in cronyism. The bottom line: the broadcasting crew simply could not believe how far Mangurian has allowed this program to falter, since he was supposedly hired to take us over the hump of mediocrity that we had reached with Norries and instead has set us back to the level of current ineptitude. As I have said, if Columbia Athletics were a public company, the plaintiffs' class action bar would be lining up to file derivative suits for breach of fiduciary duty and mismanagement against all of the responsible officers of the university and the entire board of trustees.
I'm not trying to read too much into all this, but the refusal of the interview, along with the likelihood of 0-10, seems to presage his departure. Just a feeling.
Re: oldlion's KCR comment, read Ryan Young in Spec today. He absolutely predicts the firing after the Brown game, and calls for an expert search and study. Besides which provides a lot of heretofore unknown info regarding the team and coach.
If Mangurian declined the interview it probably means that he has already been told he is out, with the announcement to come on Sunday.
Oldlion- Very, very well said!!!
Mediocrity under norries???
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