20 More Days?

Outgoing Athletic Director Dianne Murphy sent and email to many football alumni yesterday afternoon announcing the date and time for the meeting I wrote about a few days ago that will feature President Lee Bollinger and consultant Rick Taylor.

The meeting will be on February 18th from 9:30am to 10:30am in the Presidential Ballroom at Faculty House. You can email Murphy's office to RSVP.

I am encouraged by a number of things here, and discouraged by others.

I am encouraged that Bollinger himself will be speaking directly to what could and should be a large number of football-supporting alumni. And I'm even more encouraged to see that Taylor is still involved enough in the process to be at this event. I believe the more Taylor handles, the better the results will be.

But I am highly discouraged by the date of the event itself. February 18th is 20 days from now. I suppose it's possible Columbia will have hired a new athletic director by then, and if so I hope he or she will also be in attendance. Yet it seems like there's a very good chance the new AD will not be on board even by then, despite some reports that the hiring was coming any day now.

It also seems almost impossible that a new head coach will be hired by then as well. That would further stretch our already unprecedented late date for being without an HC.

So let's HOLD UP a second here and think a bit more. Is Bollinger that much of a glutton for punishment that he would want to face a group of already impatient alumni after 20 more days of no solid developments?

I don't think so.

Thus, the optimistic-yet-realistic side of me thinks this date has been set because by then the administration believes it will indeed have an AD and a head coach already hired. Depending on the personnel, this event could become a victory lap of sorts.

I just can't believe that Bollinger and Taylor would risk the brickbats of the angry crowd without something to show for their efforts by then.

Moving on...

Murphy's email also thanks interim Coach Chris Rippon for his recruiting efforts and points out that Columbia now has 20 verbal commitments from incoming freshmen. (Only about 13 are known to the general public, but that number sounds about right).

I too thank Rippon for his efforts, but by this time last year we had more than 20 commits, (though not all had been named on this blog or elsewhere), and there is once again something of a positive spin being put onto things that are rudimentary in Ivy football.

This is nothing new. Columbia continues to think that just showing up is something to cheer. Yes, we will be able to field a team of human players next season. Yes, that's not the easiest thing to accomplish. But no, that's not something to actually be proud of when every other school in the Ivies is doing it and doing it better. This is similar to the congratulatory hosannas that keep rolling in for the erecting of the Campbell Center, a facility that was built literally decades after the need became clear and every other Ivy school had already met their similar needs well before us.

That's why my sources telling me that Columbia is now ready to offer an unprecedented high salary for a new head coach is so encouraging in comparison. Instead of promising to pay as much as some of the other Ivies, the numbers we're hearing now would blow every other school out of the water. That's what you need to do when you're so far behind the pack.

Columbia has to stop playing catch-up. We are now rated as a top 5 university in the entire country. We are located in the #1 city in the world. We offer unmatched access to career and cultural opportunities. Columbia football should be the #1 program in the Ivies. If we strive for anything less, we will continue to be the worst.

We are what our record says we are. And we remain a program with a 21 game losing streak and no coach and no athletic director.

So we need to get those blanks filled.

And soon.