Go Big or Go Home

Tim Pernetti 

Forgive me everyone, I’m still basking in the glow of what looks to me like the best chance in my lifetime to change the culture of Columbia football for the better.

The destructive coach is gone. The football-clueless, public relations-clueless, and defensively combative  destructive-coach-hiring Athletic Director is out.

A true non-politically correct football expert is currently assessing the Columbia program and will produce a no-holds-barred review in three days.

If Columbia didn’t already have a long track record of screwing up chances to do things right, I’d be a lot more optimistic to be sure.

But I am still optimistic, because so many of the usual administrative road blocks are gone. And the few alumni types who usually do nothing but serve as yes-men for the bad decision-makers have truly been shamed over the past year. They are unusually silent and withdrawn right now. That’s a good thing.

This is the time to be bold, because we’ve silenced the usual suspects who like to try to sound superior when they poo-poo the desires of true fans and alums.

Thanks to their silence, we can and should make a bold play for Joe Moglia as our next head coach. As great as he is, I don’t think he’ll ever get an honest offer from a big time FBS program like Michigan. Nebraska already passed on him, and that was very telling. Money is not an issue for him, he’s worth $150 million. What he wants and deserves is notoriety and he’ll get that here in NYC even if it is while helming an Ivy League team. And as one reader reminded me this morning, Moglia is a New Yorker through and through. Since money is not the issue with him, Columbia should be bold by offering him as much free reign as he wants to run this program.

Columbia should be similarly bold with the other excellent coaching choices out there. I’d hire Tom Gilmore away from Holy Cross in a moment, despite his recent contract extension. And there are many other great coaching names out there that could come to the Lions if given the right, bold offer.

The same goes for the Athletic Director search. I’d be bold and offer the job to Tim Pernetti in a second. Pernetti is the real deal and also worth giving a big salary and free reign to do his job the way he sees fit. I believe Pernetti was made into an unfortunate fall guy in the Rutgers men’s basketball coaching abuse situation a few years ago. He did make some mistakes there but his response was definitely more appropriate than the president of the university,  who I think did nothing until the media caught wind of the story. I also think that given that history, Pernetti may be the best guy to insure nothing like that ever happens at Columbia. He wants redemption on that score and I’d trust him to get it. More importantly, he’s a rain maker who knows how to win.

Moglia, Gilmore and Pernetti aren’t the only bold choices out there for our open jobs. But if we go out and just hire another pair of candidates who no one has ever really heard of with no real gravitas, it will again be evidence that President Lee Bollinger sees athletics as nothing more than an annoyance that needs to be kept out of sight. Losing too much is bad for someone like Bollinger, but bold and exciting winning would be too. However, if we get two nobody people to fill these slots I think the losing will continue and get worse. With that in mind, we might as well win!