BREAKING: The Price of Success

Hold onto your hats folks, but I have learned the total compensation package Columbia is offering for a new football head coach is Earth-shattering by Ivy standards.

How much is it, you ask?

It's in the neighborhood of $4 million to $5 million.

Yeah, you read that right and yes that's a nice neighborhood.

I can't confirm just what part of the package is cash and how much housing and other perks factor into that total.

No matter how they do the math, the offer blows away any kind of salary ever offered to a head coach in this league.

I suspect the hackles will be raised inside and outside of the Columbia world when this number gets out. But I APPLAUD President Bollinger and whomever else is showing the willingness, courage and determination to put this money up in hopes of luring a transformational head coach for football.

That is what Columbia needs, and no one should be under the illusion that a Columbia resurgence in football would be anything less than an earthquake for the rest of the league.

Sheldon Hackney


$$$ + Hackney + Kim = Success

Perhaps the powers that be at Columbia are finally embracing the philosophy that Penn's then-President Sheldon Hackney used when he helped, or at least allowed, the turnaround for Quaker football 33 years ago.

After Penn's transformational 1982 season, it was Hackney who famously said in several speeches that he had discovered that "winning costs less than losing."

In other words, Hackney saw that a winning football team was generating a lot more alumni donations, alumni interest, and student involvement in campus life.

But here's the problem for Columbia and its big pile of money: WILL we get a taker?

Because if we don't get one soon, I believe the administration will let the interim coaching regime stay in place for another season if need be in the belief that 10 more months of this offer out there will surely lure a big fish by then.

Now, I think Coach Chris Rippon is doing a fine job in this interim role. But I also believe allowing an interim coach to remain in place for more than 1-2 more months would be severely harmful for the program. For one thing, it would promote the rumor that no decent coach would ever want to come to Columbia no matter how much money is on the table.

So, I have some advice on that score that could save us all some time and perhaps even save the university some major dollars.

Before you just roll out the big bucks, please also understand that a series of public statements by President Bollinger will go almost as far as those millions of dollars in luring the right coach.

If we want to simply lure a big name coach from D-1 or NFL football, the money might be enough.

But if we want someone more than a former big-time candidate on his way down in his career, the potential pool of applicants needs to hear the right things from Bollinger.

Columbia wants someone on their way up career-wise, and no one who will put winning at the top of his list is coming to Morningside Heights until he knows the administration will allow him to do everything within the rules to win, AND create new rules to give us an edge like Tommy Amaker has clearly been allowed to do with Harvard basketball.

(If anyone is unclear on what new rules/devices Columbia can use that it has thus far not done, they are available in the archives of this blog for all to see. I have been discussing them with the readers here for years).

Jim Yong Kim


Hackney's post-1982 speech was basically copied and improved by then Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim in 2009.

I say "improved" because Kim made very positive comments about football in not just any speech. He made them in his FIRST speech after being named the president of the College!

Kim then walked the walk; showing up at practices and hanging out on the sidelines playing the role of #1 cheerleader. I know some people inside the actual football program found that annoying, but the value of having a very visibly football-friendly president is a major reason why Dartmouth has returned to respectability in football. Don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise.

I don't think President Bollinger can or will match Kim's enthusiasm, but he can make a similarly bold statement for football and then hire an athletic director who does the same.

The financial commitment has finally been made in a way commensurate with the needs of this Columbia football program.

Now it's time to take the next step, and that involves very clear and very public statements. The days of just communicating with a few alums here and there must be ended.

If not, a fool and his money will be easily parted.