The Onslaught of Excellence

Faculty House

I’ll start with the positive things we learned from today’s event at Faculty House:

1)      Rick Taylor said we needed to pay our assistant coaches more. That’s very true and it’s helpful for him to say that publicly.

2)      President Lee Bollinger announced that $3 million is being spent to replace the playing surface at Kraft Field. That’s good news too since the Field Turf is 10 years old and Field Turf has a 10-year shelf life.

3)      The program has dropped the Fordham game beginning in 2016. (Not exactly “positive” news, but the right move for now).

4)      Everyone needs to give more money. (I know that’s not exactly different from what college administrations have said about everything for 100+ years, but a lot of people should donate more).

Now to the harder part.

I have to play the role of a realist again because much of what we heard and saw at Faculty House was an exercise in corruption.

New Athletic Director Peter Pilling is innocent of that charge of course and we still wish him every success. The same will go for the new head football coach, who Pilling said we have a soft target of hiring by mid-March. 

It wasn't fair to drag Pilling into this event at all. It may harm his ability to set a newer, warmer and more humble tone in the department's relationships with alumni. 

For example, I don't think Pilling would have rejected out of hand the idea for a practice field nearer to campus had he known how important an issue that's been to so many alumni for so many years. 

Meanwhile, Bollinger and Taylor were disappointing as what they said failed the truth test and failed the test of giving long-suffering fans and alumni some real hope.

Based on my own impressions and the impressions of several alumni who were at the event or listened in, here's what really stood out as egregious, false, and disappointing from Taylor's and Bollinger's words, (again, many of these impressions come from what I heard and what other alums who listened to or attended the event. I stand by them): 

1) Bollinger Thinks He's Awesome

Bollinger began by stating that Columbia and its administrators are doing a spectacular job in every aspect of human existence but for some curious reason, football alone has not responded to their onslaught of excellence. 

The praise for outgoing Athletic Director Dianne Murphy was excessive and contained the repeated false impression that she's overseen more Ivy championships in her tenure compared to her predecessors. 

That is false. 

But even if it were true,  no one is taking responsibility for this one place where the Bollinger regime isn't the greatest thing since cronuts.

I'm glad Bollinger is at least willing to admit there's a problem with football, something he was unwilling to do adequately last year, but it's clear that these people don't consider themselves responsible for creating the problem. How can a problem be fixed if no one takes responsibility for fixing it?

For a man who has such strong support from the trustees right now, his words in that preamble sounded oddly defensive and almost embattled.

2) Money for Nothing?

According to Taylor, our facilities are first class, our financial aid is first class, our administrators are first class but the alumni need to double their contributions. Why is money the problem if all these things are first class already? Is there something specific, like maybe a high-priced, but totally worth it head coach and assistants you want us to donate money to pay for? If so, why not just say the word? I have always insisted that a lot more money would come pouring into Columbia football even before we start winning, as long as something specific was there for donors to latch onto. 

We didn't get that today. 

Something also changed in Taylor's message from the December meeting compared to today.

When Taylor was asked at that first meeting if more alumni giving and participation would turn things around, and he said that wasn't really very important. 

I will give Taylor the benefit of the doubt that he simply reconsidered that statement and now honestly feels that alumni donations and participation will make a key difference to football's chances for winning. I'll also allow that maybe he didn't hear the original question clearly. But it's fishy. 

3) Mangurian Delusion

According to Taylor, Pete Mangurian did a hell of a job and was on the verge of success. He actually said that at one point.

I have to think they would have kept Mangurian if they could despite the 0-21 and the continued worsening performance of the team on the field. 

That really doesn't make me feel confident in their abilities to evaluate the depths of the problem. 

Taylor also said he did not have a more in-depth meeting with Mangurian after their initial meeting because he resigned beforehand.

Excuse me, but isn't Mangurian getting a pretty expensive buyout of his contract? Shouldn't one condition of that be that he keeps his appointment with Taylor? If that wasn't required, that's financial negligence on behalf of the administration.

4) Absence Breeds... Love?

According to Taylor, the fact that Bollinger allowed a situation to occur in which we had no AD or head coach for months is not a problem. The problem is my blog and cheap alumni.

5) As Expected: Bashing the Blog

And that leads to the fact that once again, an inordinate amount of time was spent talking about the blog and me... even if no one could bear to mention my name. 

They kept referring to me as "the blogger" like the Arab terrorists always call Israel the "Zionist Entity." 

Folks, the curious thing about all this is this: if they hate the blog so much and it's so bad and they resent the attention it gets, WHY do they keep giving it so much publicity?

The fact is, every failing regime needs to create scapegoats and phantom enemies.

In that sense, this blog must be the best thing that's ever happened to the Columbia administration.

I'm like Israel is to the failed Arab leaders in the Middle East: a phony enemy the regimes can focus on to deflect attention from their own failures.

Meanwhile, I don’t think there’s much need to respond to Taylor’s comments about me and the blog today since I explained very well yesterday how this concept that the blog is harmful is quite false and frankly dangerous for a regime that needs to hear as much criticism as possible.

The fact is, I respect Taylor even if he does not understand me or the work I’m doing. I am very used to being criticized and I try to take it to heart instead of ignoring it all out of hand. 

I Gave Taylor a Chance to Clarify the Record

But I do think it's important to clarify what Taylor was alluding to when he mentioned something about him on the blog that was not true. 

What he was talking about was my glowing summary of some of the positive things he suggested Dartmouth do to turn its program around about seven years ago. 

I emailed Taylor a few months ago and during his responses to me, he told me of his complaint that some parts of that praiseworthy account were not true, but never gave me any specifics. 

I told him that I considered my source on that story to be unimpeachable, BUT that does not mean that source’s information was 100% correct. 

So, I offered him the chance to tell me on or off the record what was wrong in the account, and he refused saying he wanted to focus on the present. 

Folks, when someone publicly complains that he's been portrayed inaccurately but he then refuses a simple chance to clarify the record, it's a big red flag. 

If what I said about the good things Taylor did at Dartmouth was wrong, it clearly wasn't so wrong that Taylor felt it was worth a minute of his time to fix. 

Now feel more confident than ever in every aspect of the Dartmouth story.

The funny thing is, my profile of Taylor and his moves were 100% positive! So it’s odd that he seems to take exception to them. As he spoke about that account today, he made it seem like I had some criticisms of his job or of him, but I have not. I only criticize him now for his comments today and his continued parroting of an erroneous untruth about the blog being a real problem. 

This is not criticism, but since we are speaking of accuracy, there were inaccuracies in Taylor’s comments today. His praise for Mangurian was over-the-top ridiculous, but then it really went too far when he gave him kudos for allegedly instituting the recruiting weekends. In truth, those weekends were instituted long before his arrival. Sure, some aspects of them were unique to Mangurian, but Taylor made it sound like he invented the wheel.  

And if we want to bring track records into the equation, well my record speaks for itself and so does the football program’s. 

Let’s just say my winning percentage is a lot better.

In short, Bollinger and Taylor embarrassed themselves greatly today. Pilling was unfortunately associated with that, but hopefully he'll wipe himself clean of it and I will try to help him do that. 

Meanwhile, every account of today's event will have this as a headline: "Worst Program in College Football Blames Alumni and a Blog for Failures!"

That will be followed by more endless jokes about Columbia football.