Another Weekend, Another Test

Tonight's proving ground

Every weekend night is a crucial test in Ivy basketball. And tonight, the Lions face just that as they take on Yale at 7pm. Columbia hasn’t beaten the Elis in New Haven since 2008 and last year the Lions were embarrassed in that game.

Again, the goals for this season have been set up by increasing importance as I explained earlier this month. 

Columbia basketball hasn’t had a winning Ivy record since Jack Rohan led them to a 10-4 conference mark in 1993. So, getting to the eight win mark within the Ivies is the first hurdle.

But if the Lions want to keep the positive buzz going about their chances to really content this season, winning tonight’s game is crucial. It won’t be easy, but Yale is the weaker of the two teams CU faces this weekend as Brown has the league’s top scorer in Sean McGonagill.

You know what? Columbia is BETTER than both of these teams. It's time to show it. 

Flush with Cash

Columbia has announced that it far exceeded its own expectations by raising $6.1 billion in its capital campaign.

Can we carve out some of that cash to offer a super salary to a great new head football coach? And what about building a real on-campus field house and gym? No matter how much money Columbia has already raised with this campaign, I guarantee you that many alums would line up to give more cash for those two things alone.

History Time

In honor of the Super Bowl being played here in the NY/NJ area, the Museum of the City of New York is featuring some pictures of football players from 19^th century and naturally Columbia is well represented.

You can see the entire exhibit here, but I’ve posted some of the Columbia pictures below.

Since these above photos predate Baker Field and even Columbia’s games at the 158^th Street Polo Grounds, I believe these pictures were likely taken at the original Polo Grounds at the northern tip of Central Park on 110^th Street. Generally, Columbia played its games right on the Morningside campus. But in the transitional years while Columbia was moving the school from Madison Avenue to its current location, Central Park was quasi home field.

More vintage Columbia football pictures from 1914 were released this week on the Bowery Boys website.l

They include shots of football practice right on campus, like the one below:

  

Late Notice

Bob Shoop

File this under the "I should have posted this earlier" category, but former Columbia Head Coach Bob Shoop has been named defensive coordinator at Penn State.

For now, this makes Shoop the most successful former CU head football coach of all time.

Every other former Lion coach has basically fallen off the map. Norries Wilson is currently a top assistant at Rutgers, but I'd hardly call his two years with the Scarlet Knights a big success yet.

Looking at the last few head coaches:

Ray Tellier retired from coaching. Larry MacElreavy did well at Richmond for awhile as an offensive coordinator and is coaching middle schoolers in Vermont these days. Jim Garrett never coached again after Columbia, same for Bob Naso and even Bill Campbell, who changed careers.

By some crazy miracle, Frank Navarro got a head coaching job at Princeton after he was ousted at CU. But Princeton never succeeded under him and he is almost universally despised by Tiger football alumni.

The roster above should serve as excellent evidence of the fact that Columbia doesn't kill good coaches, it just doesn't hire the right guys in the first place.

Discuss.

San Antonio Linebacker

Logan Waters


6-2 201 pound Linebacker Logan Waters from San Antonio Christian HS has committed to Columbia according to his Twitter feed.

You can see some of Waters' stats here.

You can see his highlight video here.

Waters made his All District 1st Team on defense and offense, (he also player OL).

Waters is the first documented San Antonio Christian HS alum to come play for Columbia.

Here is the updated list of our confirmed incoming class of 2018 players so far:

1) Collin Breckenridge OL 6-2, 270 lbs. W.B. Ray HS, Corpus Christi, TX

2) Leander Cutler RB/LB 5-9 205 lbs. Varina HS, Richmond, VA

3) Pat Denny OL 6-3 270 lbs. Fox Chapel HS, Pittsburgh PA 

4) Charlie Flores OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

5) Connor Heeb OL/DL 6-4 245 lbs. Canandaigua Academy, Canandaigua, NY 

6) Anders Hill QB 6-4 210 lbs. Fairview HS, Boulder, CO

7) Tyler Holmes WR/DB 6-0, 175 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

8) Lord Hyeamang DE 6-4, 235 lbs. Apple Valley HS, Apple Valley, MN

9) Mike McGrath OL 6-6, 294 lbs.  St. Augustine Prep, Richland, NJ

10) Hagen Patterson LB 6-2 230 lbs. Lake Travis HS, Lake Travis, TX

11) Markham Paukune OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

12) Bailey Popeck TE 6-5, 230 lbs. St. Georges School, Germantown, TN and Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH (PG Year)

13) Marc Raye-Redmond RB 5-11, 172 lbs. Trotwood-Madison HS, Trotwood, OH

14) Chris Schroer RB 6-0, 215 lbs. Elder HS, Cincinnati, OH

15) Reid Stables OL 6-3, 293 lbs. Mullen HS, Denver, CO 

16) Nick Surges LB 6-3, 215 lbs. Benet Academy, Lisle, IL

17) Ian Tyler DE 6-4, 205 lbs. Muskegon Catholic Central HS, Muskegon, MI

18) Bewley Wales OL 6-5, 285 lbs. Metro Christian Academy, Tulsa, OK

19) Greg Washington DE 6-3, 215 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

20) Logan Waters LB 6-2 205 lbs. San Antonio Christian HS, San Antonio, TX

21) Dylan Weldon, DB/RB 5-9, 175 lbs. Bishop Gorman HS, Las Vegas, NV

Pittsburgh Lineman

6-3 270 pound OL Pat Denny has committed to Columbia.

Denny comes from Fox Chapel HS in Pittsburgh and had offers from Johns Hopkins and Tufts.

You can see his highlight video here.

Denny will be only the second Fox Chapel alum to play for the Lions, the first being Bruce Kirin '75.

Here is the updated list of our confirmed incoming class of 2018 players so far:

1) Collin Breckenridge OL 6-2, 270 lbs. W.B. Ray HS, Corpus Christi, TX

2) Leander Cutler RB/LB 5-9 205 lbs. Varina HS, Richmond, VA

3) Pat Denny OL 6-3 270 lbs. Fox Chapel HS, Pittsburgh PA 

4) Charlie Flores OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

5) Connor Heeb OL/DL 6-4 245 lbs. Canandaigua Academy, Canandaigua, NY 

6) Anders Hill QB 6-4 210 lbs. Fairview HS, Boulder, CO

7) Tyler Holmes WR/DB 6-0, 175 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

8) Lord Hyeamang DE 6-4, 235 lbs. Apple Valley HS, Apple Valley, MN

9) Mike McGrath OL 6-6, 294 lbs.  St. Augustine Prep, Richland, NJ

10) Hagen Patterson LB 6-2 230 lbs. Lake Travis HS, Lake Travis, TX

11) Markham Paukune OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

12) Bailey Popeck TE 6-5, 230 lbs. St. Georges School, Germantown, TN and Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH (PG Year)

13) Marc Raye-Redmond RB 5-11, 172 lbs. Trotwood-Madison HS, Trotwood, OH

14) Chris Schroer RB 6-0, 215 lbs. Elder HS, Cincinnati, OH

15) Reid Stables OL 6-3, 293 lbs. Mullen HS, Denver, CO 

16) Nick Surges LB 6-3, 215 lbs. Benet Academy, Lisle, IL

17) Ian Tyler DE 6-4, 205 lbs. Muskegon Catholic Central HS, Muskegon, MI

18) Bewley Wales OL 6-5, 285 lbs. Metro Christian Academy, Tulsa, OK

19) Greg Washington DE 6-3, 215 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

20) Dylan Weldon, DB/RB 5-9, 175 lbs. Bishop Gorman HS, Las Vegas, NV

Copy and Improve

Tony Reno

Here’s how you know you have a good recruiting class: you get more than one or two players who had actual scholarship offers from FBS schools.

And so, I give you the Yale football class of 2018 , or what we know of it so far.

In addition to the list of the players in the link above from The New Haven Register, the Yale Daily News today interviews a few of the commits personally.

I don’t mean to puff up Yale unnecessarily. The fact is, I don’t like Tony Reno is as good an overall leader as he is a recruiter. But he IS a very good recruiter and we should learn some lessons from him. While we’re taking multiple players from individual schools like Norfolk Academy, (again, did I mention that I WENT to Norfolk Academy??? That should give you an idea about how good a football factory that place is), Reno doesn’t even have more than one player from any single STATE.

Instead of the “we know better approach” Pete Mangurian is using for everything from eliminating JV football to insisting on immobile/non-running QB’s, we should be employing the “copy and improve” method when it comes to what our Ivy rivals are doing.  

Speaking of Mangurian, he was quoted today in an article in the Altoona Mirror about Penn State’s new QB’s coach, Ricky Rahne.

Rahne spent his first three years as a player under Mangurian at Cornell from 1998-2000.  

Here’s what Mangurian said:

"The biggest thing about him is the moment never gets too big for him," said Pete Mangurian, Cornell's head coach during Rahne's first three years. "He's very calm. He's one of those guys that's an emotional player, kind of wears it on his sleeve a little bit, which is a good thing. But as the pressure mounts and the stakes get higher, he tends to calm down and get much more focused. The thing that's important about Ricky is I believe he'll be able to transfer that calmness and that kind of 'close everything out and focus on the moment' to the player."

Well, I’m sure glad that Mangurian values QB’s who are calm under pressure. Maybe that’s what he was trying to find out about our players over the last two years when he put them behind an offensive line that would Minister Maginot proud. 

Fun Viewing

Check out the old film of the 1968 Dartmouth Indians that Bruce Wood put up on his site the other day.

The film includes highlights of Marty Domres and the Lions coming into Hanover late that season.


Hoops Stat

I just saw this fun stat from the Ivy League Sports offices:

"Princeton & Columbia lead the NATION in lowest % of shots as 2pt jumpers & they both force an above avg % by oppts."

So, we shoot from long range and we don't let opponents do the same to us.

Discuss.

Education Fraud

As much as I’d like to see major changes for Columbia and Ivy League athletics, there are some things about the Ivies and sports that I am proud of and wouldn’t change for anything.

Foremost among those things is the universally accepted value of an Ivy degree. No matter how much any individual athlete gives to his or her Ivy school, there’s no way that student isn’t coming out way ahead financially when they get that degree.

I mention that today because a group of football players at Northwestern is trying to form a union.

Just let that sink in for a second.

This is Northwestern we’re talking about here. For every non-recruited varsity athlete, it’s extremely hard to get into this school and it has been getting more and more selective for the last 40 years. Graduating from Northwestern is a very good bet as a ticket to future success and opportunities.

And yet, the scholarship varsity football players are saying that the degree they receive and the course of studies they’re directed to, is not as valuable as the financial contribution they make to Northwestern’s bottom line.

And I’m inclined to agree.

The days when scholarship football players at major D-I schools could also be serious students are long over. I realize there are probably a few exceptions to this rule out there, but the guys bucking this trend are swimming against a very strong current.

Even at top schools like Northwestern, Duke, Stanford and Michigan it’s obvious that the education the top football and basketball players are getting isn’t very valuable at all.

Northwestern isn’t even a BCS contender ever, (although it’s nice to see the Wildcats playing competitive football the last 18 years or so), and yet these players still have a strong case that they bring in more than they take out.

I don’t think this union movement at NU will come to much, but the message is clear to me about what Ivy sports fans should take away from all of this.

The Ivy way is the 100% right way when it comes to education.

I have problems with the A.I., the postseason football ban, etc. But these are SPORTS complaints. No matter how many “easy” courses our Ivy athletes sign up for, the classes in the Ivies are generally real, challenging, and valuable.

I suppose some employers think about how Ivy grads who played varsity sports got in to their colleges more easily thanks to those sports. But I doubt any of them consider the value of those athletes’ degrees to be any less worthy.

At Columbia and all the other Ivies, too many of the athletes are treated poorly by insecure non-athlete students in and out of classes. That leads to self-segregation all too often, BUT it usually doesn't hold for the entire four year period. It's still a strong area of pride for me that I never feel like I'm talking down to a current Columbia athlete or athlete alum and many of them are clearly smarter and more successful than I will ever be. They were in the same classes as I was and they held their own just fine. 

Meanwhile, I know for a fact that employers who interview “graduates” who played football and basketball at schools like Michigan etc. do not generally believe those “graduates” received a comparable education to their non-athlete peers.

It should be noted that I and all the other Ivy sports fans who call for abolishing the A.I. and other unfair admissions rules NEVER call for a relaxation of academic requirements or the creation of phony majors and classes once those students are admitted.

If the Northwestern football players believe their degrees aren’t worth their efforts on the field, I suggest they transfer to another school where they might get a better deal. But short of transferring to an Ivy school, I suspect their options will be limited. The other option is for them to buck the course track demanded of them by their coaches and “advisers” and pursue the same majors and classes their non-athlete peers are taking.

Any player who does that will have my admiration in addition to a very inside track with lots of employers out there.

And how will a player who tried to unionize rather than take his admission to Northwestern and use it properly do?

I suspect they will be in high demand from the SEIU the next time they need a gang of purple-shirted goons to shout down people at Congressional town hall meetings, but otherwise, not too well.

Keeping 'em at Home

Caraun Reid

I hope many of you got a chance to watch the Senior Bowl this weekend, particularly the strong overall play from Princeton DT Caraun Reid.

I’m starting to think that Reid has a shot to be an early round draft pick, maybe even the earliest pick for an Ivy grad since Columbia’s Marcellus Wiley went in the 2^nd round back in 1997.

While this will be a great credit to the league in general, perhaps Reid’s incredible success is bittersweet for Lions fans considering he is a local NYC product and played his HS ball super close to CU at Mount St. Michael Academy in the Bronx.

Columbia hasn’t had much of a pipeline to Mount  St. Michael’s, with just four documented alums coming to play football for the Lions and no one since John Re ’84.

Of course, we should all be aware that the overall quality of high school football in NYC’s public and Catholic school leagues is not what it once was. There are still many super-talented individual players, but the teams themselves would not challenge the kinds of teams coming out of the Catholic school leagues in New Jersey or the public schools in Pennsylvania.

The question is: how did we lose out on Reid in the recruiting process?

Many readers here already know that I don’t believe that CU’s location in New York City is a hindrance to recruiting, in fact I believe it’s a very strong positive lure. But the one exception may be for football players who are from New York City and played their high school ball here.  Getting a change of scenery, especially for a football player who wants to have the larger and greener athletic facilities you find outside of New York, make sense as a reason to not consider Columbia as seriously as a place like Princeton.

In Reid’s case, there may be some other factors at play. He comes from a religious family, (his father is a Bishop), and he is active in his family’s church. I can speak with strong authority when I say that Columbia is not a very comfortable place for most religious people to be. Religious Jewish students are mostly an exception to that rule because of the many decades of work these students have done to create their own community within Columbia, (although this does not insulate them against the horribly anti-Israel leanings from much of the liberal arts faculty), but devout Catholic and Evangelical students at Columbia have a very tough time of it if in general. If that’s the reason why Reid declined or never even considered Columbia, I don’t know if I or anyone can blame him.

That’s especially because Princeton’s student body remains the most conservative, (I know relative term), of all the Ivies. A devout Christian is going to be more comfortable at Princeton than anywhere else in the Ivies and a lot of places in between. That’s much to the chagrin of Princeton’s mostly radical faculty, but that’s a subject for another time.

So here’s the second question: If Columbia is a double minus for city-based high school football stars coming from a good Catholic school or from a devout religious home, how can we help to reverse this trend?

I recommend a two-pronged approach.

First, the ability to stay comfortably cloistered at Columbia from the usual pace of the city needs to be emphasized to the local players and their parents. While it will be easy to come see their sons play every week, the amount of access family and old friends will have to any student at CU is entirely up to the student. My parents lived in NYC during my first year at Columbia and I saw them in person on campus no more than once other than move in and move out day. I might as well have been a student in California. The same goes for the usual hassles of city life. If an individual student wants to remain on campus for all his or her academic, social, and dining needs, it’s easier than ever before to do just that. Columbia can really be a greener pasture within the city limits. This is a message Columbia recruiters need to do a better job of getting across to our local prospects. I suspect the fact that almost all our coaches in all sports aren’t NYC natives or CU alums, hurts us in this regard. You really need to have lived here to understand how Columbia is of the city, and not of the city in many ways.  The simplest way to get this across to a recruit’s family is to say: “Your son will be close by if you need him or he needs you, but there’s also plenty of space for him to grow on his own.”

Second, as hopeless as the Columbia campus proper is for students of faith, there are many houses of worship and adjoining religious communities very willing and able to offer spiritual support. I don’t want to try to list every place because I’ll definitely leave some out, but every denomination and every religious community you can think is active within a few minutes of campus… some of them on foot. As a private school, our recruiters from all sports should have the freedom to help prospective students of faith contact these churches, community organizations, etc. Obviously this kind of partnership could aid recruiting in all areas of the country.

One constant we’ve seen in CU recruiting for 30 years now is a dearth of players coming from the city limits. Usually, the Lions don’t bring in more than one player per class from the five boroughs.

That needs to change.

Minnesota Motor

Basketball Exhale

It was a tight game in Ithaca this afternoon for a long time, but an incredible run in the final four minutes or so gave Columbia a nice 74-58 win over Cornell this afternoon. Columbia is now 2-0 in the Ivies.

Lord Hyeamang


Fast DE


Lord Hyeamang, a 6-4 235 pound DE from Apple Valley, MN has committed to the Lions.

Once again, Hyeamang presents us with a highlight video that actually looks like a highlight video. He looks sharp, quick, and determined out there.

Hyeamang is also a star wrestler.

He is the first documented Apple Valley HS grad to come to play football at Columbia, but two other recent Lions, Brad Losee '14 and Evan Sanford '10, come from the same town.

Here is the updated list of our confirmed incoming class of 2018 players so far:

1) Collin Breckenridge OL 6-2, 270 lbs. W.B. Ray HS, Corpus Christi, TX

2) Leander Cutler RB/LB 5-9, 205 lbs. Varina HS, Richmond, VA

3) Charlie Flores OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

4) Connor Heeb OL/DL 6-4 245 lbs. Canandaigua Academy, Canandaigua, NY 

5) Anders Hill QB 6-4 210 lbs. Fairview HS, Boulder, CO

6) Tyler Holmes WR/DB 6-0, 175 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

7) Lord Hyeamang DE 6-4, 235 lbs. Apple Valley HS, Apple Valley, MN

8) Mike McGrath OL 6-6, 294 lbs.  St. Augustine Prep, Richland, NJ

9) Hagen Patterson LB 6-2 230 lbs. Lake Travis HS, Lake Travis, TX

10) Markham Paukune OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

11) Bailey Popeck TE 6-5, 230 lbs. St. Georges School, Germantown, TN and Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH (PG Year)

12) Marc Raye-Redmond RB 5-11, 172 lbs. Trotwood-Madison HS, Trotwood, OH

13) Chris Schroer RB 6-0, 215 lbs. Elder HS, Cincinnati, OH

14) Reid Stables OL 6-3, 293 lbs. Mullen HS, Denver, CO 

15) Nick Surges LB 6-3, 215 lbs. Benet Academy, Lisle, IL

16) Ian Tyler DE 6-4, 205 lbs. Muskegon Catholic Central HS, Muskegon, MI

17) Bewley Wales OL 6-5, 285 lbs. Metro Christian Academy, Tulsa, OK

18) Greg Washington DE 6-3, 215 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

19) Dylan Weldon, DB/RB 5-9, 175 lbs. Bishop Gorman HS, Las Vegas, NV

Reform Movement

Robin Harris

Columbia basketball’s first road Ivy test is tomorrow and the Lions certainly should have what it takes to beat Cornell in Ithaca and run their record to 2-0 in the Ivies.

But as The Columbia Spectator’s Myles Simmons points out today, Columbia is beginning the most brutal test any conference can offer in college basketball: a five game road trip comprised of all conference games in the midst of a 14-game conference game stretch.

Believe it or not, this is better than it used to be when Penn and Princeton dominated the league. One of the factors that kept those two teams in command for about 40 years was the fact that every other team had to play them on back-to-back nights. 

I know we love traditions in the Ivy League, but the billed “14 game tournament” which is not a tournament at all is really tough to swallow. Anything but a perfect record over the next five games puts the Lions in a tight spot. Even if Columbia is the best hoops team in the Ivies, a slip up here could easily cost them a title. And that’s true of any team that happens to be the best.

And this is all why we need a postseason Ivy basketball tournament, (a real tournament), to help build excitement and assure the best teams that they will be given every possible chance to prove they’re the best.

Many of us have proposed a six-team tournament, excluding the bottom two finishers in the regular season and giving the top two finishers a bye. So, the third place team would host the sixth place team in one game, while the fourth and fifth place teams would face off at the #4 team’s home court in another. The winners of those two games would play the #1 and #2 teams in the semifinals, and so on.

And if there was a dominant Ivy team that someone lost the tournament in this format, then there would be at least a chance that it would still get a NCAA tournament bid. As it stands now, one team gets to dance and one team only.

I would put this proposal for a postseason Ivy basketball tournament in my list of four simple demands true Ivy sports fans should present to Executive Director Robin Harris and continue to do so until some of the demands are met.

They are:

1)      Lift the postseason ban on football

2)      Institute a postseason tournament for men’s and women’s basketball

3)      A.I.: either eliminate it altogether, or relax the rules for the lowest finishers every season. For example, I would give the 8^th place finishers in football and basketball two additional lowest band recruiting slots, the 7^th place finisher would get one.  

4)      Award each football team an additional week of summer training camp

Just about every one of the above demands are negotiable, but some movement really needs to be seen if we want to have the two major college sports continue to be any kind of draw for the Ivy League.

Until then, best of luck to the basketball team. 

Assistant Coaching Job Posted

There will be at least some football staff turnover after all.

This job posting surfaced just yesterday for an assistant coaching spot.

I'm not sure what vacancy this refers to, but we will find out.

Colorado Arm

Anders Hill

Anders Hill, a 6-4 210 pound QB from Fairview High School in Boulder, CO has committed to Columbia. 

And you can see his actually impressive highlight video here. 

This looks like a very good get for the class of 2018.

Hill was recruited by several other Ivies and got some interest from Vanderbilt as well. His favorite receiver, Sam Martin, has committed to Miami of Ohio.

Hill is the first Fairview alum to come play for the Lions.

Here is the updated list of our confirmed incoming class of 2018 players so far:

1) Collin Breckenridge OL 6-2, 270 lbs. W.B. Ray HS, Corpus Christi, TX

2) Leander Cutler RB/LB 5-9, 205 lbs. Varina HS, Richmond, VA

3) Charlie Flores OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

4) Connor Heeb OL/DL 6-4 245 lbs. Canandaigua Academy, Canandaigua, NY 

5) Anders Hill QB 6-4 210 lbs. Fairview HS, Boulder, CO

6) Tyler Holmes WR/DB 6-0, 175 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

7) Mike McGrath OL 6-6, 294 lbs.  St. Augustine Prep, Richland, NJ

8) Hagen Patterson LB 6-2 230 lbs. Lake Travis HS, Lake Travis, TX

9) Markham Paukune OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

10) Bailey Popeck TE 6-5, 230 lbs. St. Georges School, Germantown, TN and Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH (PG Year)

11) Marc Raye-Redmond RB 5-11, 172 lbs. Trotwood-Madison HS, Trotwood, OH

12) Chris Schroer RB 6-0, 215 lbs. Elder HS, Cincinnati, OH

13) Reid Stables OL 6-3, 293 lbs. Mullen HS, Denver, CO 

14) Nick Surges LB 6-3, 215 lbs. Benet Academy, Lisle, IL

15) Ian Tyler DE 6-4, 205 lbs. Muskegon Catholic Central HS, Muskegon, MI

16) Bewley Wales OL 6-5, 285 lbs. Metro Christian Academy, Tulsa, OK

17) Greg Washington DE 6-3, 215 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

18) Dylan Weldon, DB/RB 5-9, 175 lbs. Bishop Gorman HS, Las Vegas, NV

What We Offer

Dylan Weldon

5-9, 175 pound DB/RB speedster Dylan Weldon has committed to Columbia.

Weldon is the third confirmed recruit from Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas to play football for Columbia, but he’s the first since Mark Fehringer ’90.

You can see his highlight video here. 

Basketball Passes the First Test

It was a good win for the men’s basketball team Saturday night vs. Cornell and a surprising victory for the women over the Big Red too.

And junior Alex Rosenberg was just named Ivy Co-Player of the Week. 

The Lion men are 1-0 in the Ivies now and need seven more wins to clinch their first winning Ivy record since 1993.

I think a little too much is being made of the comeback Cornell made at the end of the game, but it does seem like beating the Big Red in Ithaca this coming Saturday will be a tougher task.

But so far, so good.

  

A Note on Recruiting

When we say that the overwhelming majority of Ivy athletes come to play in this league because of academics first and athletics a distant second… that’s not just lip service. It’s true, and true for more of the athletes than ever before.

So as Columbia’s academic stature continues to soar in every college ranking study, the lure of our school for current high school student-athletes has never been stronger.

And, as too many people older than 50 seem to miss, New York City is a massive POSITIVE draw for the typical Ivy recruit who is already showing a huge commitment to step into a much larger world.

In short, Columbia has never been in a better position to recruit the best athletes. And that includes football despite the horrendous leadership for the program right now.

And yet, we’re seeing a football recruiting class that presents us with many more questions than it does answers.

I’m sorry if these facts hurt some of the incoming players’ feelings. That is not my intention.

But when I see MULTIPLE bids given out to players from schools like Norfolk Academy, (far from a football power or a school with a track record of sending future stars to any Ivy school), and when I see very small players getting low band slots, I’m sounding the alarm. I do that because this is a coaching staff that has already proven that it fundamentally does not know how to succeed.

Just ask yourself why a staff responsible for the absolute worst-ever Ivy football season last year should be trusted to do a halfway decent job in recruiting? At the very least, you have to at least demand proof of recruiting success before you congratulate the recruiters for whatever they’ve done so far.

By all means, congratulate the players who are coming to Columbia. But they should be congratulated because Columbia is a stellar school and playing here is a great opportunity, not because they’re doing us some kind of a favor.

Here is the updated list of our confirmed incoming class of 2018 players so far:

1) Collin Breckenridge OL 6-2, 270 lbs. W.B. Ray HS, Corpus Christi, TX

2) Leander Cutler RB/LB 5-9, 205 lbs. Varina HS, Richmond, VA

3) Charlie Flores OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

4) Connor Heeb, OL/DL 6-4 245 lbs. Canandaigua Academy, Canandaigua, NY 

5) Tyler Holmes WR/DB 6-0, 175 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

6) Mike McGrath OL 6-6, 294 lbs.  St. Augustine Prep, Richland, NJ

7) Hagen Patterson LB 6-2 230 lbs. Lake Travis HS, Lake Travis, TX

8) Markham Paukune OL 6-4, 280 lbs. All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, TX

9) Bailey Popeck TE 6-5, 230 lbs. St. Georges School, Germantown, TN and Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH (PG Year)

10) Marc Raye-Redmond RB 5-11, 172 lbs. Trotwood-Madison HS, Trotwood, OH

11) Chris Schroer RB 6-0, 215 lbs. Elder HS, Cincinnati, OH

12) Reid Stables OL 6-3, 293 lbs. Mullen HS, Denver, CO 

13) Nick Surges LB 6-3, 215 lbs. Benet Academy, Lisle, IL

14) Ian Tyler DE 6-4, 205 lbs. Muskegon Catholic Central HS, Muskegon, MI

15) Bewley Wales OL 6-5, 285 lbs. Metro Christian Academy, Tulsa, OK

16) Greg Washington DE 6-3, 215 lbs. Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, VA

17) Dylan Weldon, DB/RB 5-9, 175 lbs. Bishop Gorman HS, Las Vegas, NV