Wednesday, April 29, 2015

But They Love Us!



Count me among the people who don't think this proposal from NYCFC to demolish and replace Wien Stadium will ever happen.

I do see some positives from it, but plenty of negatives especially the loss of whatever autonomy Columbia has over the space. And I don't see how the streets in the neighborhood could accommodate even 10,000 more cars coming into that bottleneck 20 times a year.

But here's one completely positive thing to consider: The fact that deep-pocketed private sector investors see our home field and environs as an attractive location is a nice boost. Does anyone think that anyone saw Inwood as the place to be 40, 30, or even 20 years ago?

Hey Ivy opponents, which one of your stadiums or locations has been targeted for a $400 million professional sports stadium and millions more in other amenities? I can't hear you. Yeah, that's what I thought.

The days of deprecating our location just got a half billion dollar slap in the face. No need to actually build this soccer stadium, the proposal says it all.

The negative recruiting of players by using our location against is over and this slams the door on that.



Welcome Eric Hahn

Columbia has picked up Eric Hahn from Bucknell as our new of football operations. He's another guy with Penn and St. Joseph's connections. He's got a lot of work to catch up on as Columbia prepares for its recruiting summer camps at Baker Field and much more.


And ONE MORE Thing...

You MUST check out this great video depicting Columbia's start down the road to success.

This is what the beginning of rising from the ashes looks like:



Tuesday, April 28, 2015

BREAKING: NYFC plans to replace Wien Stadium

A story just out in the NY Times tonight reports that the MLS club, NYC FC is proposing a plan to demolish Wien Stadium and replace it with a 25,000 seat stadium to share with Columbia football. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/sports/soccer/new-york-city-fc-searching-for-stadium-site-is-considering-columbia-athletic-complex.html?referrer&_r=0

No comment yet from Columbia. 

Fighting for a Lion

Kirk Gibson



The news came down today that former baseball great Kirk Gibson has been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.

I'm sorry to say that this disease has also touched the Columbia football community as former standout defensive lineman Jim Daine '93 is also suffering from this disease.

I only learned about Jim's condition earlier this month but he tells me he was first diagnosed in January of 2014.

Jim is treating the disease with drugs, voice and physical therapy out of Helen Hayes Hospital in Stony Point, NY.

I want to do a full interview with Jim soon, but for now he asks all of us to know that Helen Hayes Hospital is trying to be one of the premiere Parkinson's therapy centers in the NY area.

Jim says the program there has gotten him back in the gym and seems to be really helping.

Donations can be made to Helen Hayes Hospital Foundation Inc. 51-55 Route 9W North, West Haverstraw, NY 10993. Please put "Parkinson's program's" in the memo section of the check.

I just want to add that Jim wasn't just a great player, he has been a great supporter of Lions football and a tremendous friend to many alums over the years.

Again, I hope to do a full interview with Jim soon but for now I know he and his family are in all of our prayers.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Spring Scrimmage Notes



1st Test: Run an effective spring practice on very short notice. DONE!


I have to start today's post with a comment or two about the Columbia Baseball team. This weekend's series against Penn was high quality, high drama, and just a great example of Ivy sports at its finest. 

And after four games, nothing is decided! We need a one-game playoff between the two teams for the second year in a row to decide the Lou Gehrig Division title. This year, the game will be at home for Columbia at Robertson Field/Satow Stadium. 

I went to the first two games of the series on Saturday after watching football practice and every pitch and ever at bat had an intensity to it that you just don't usually feel in any regular season baseball game. I watched the final two games on the Ivy Digital Network yesterday and it was even more exciting. So don't miss the game this coming Saturday.

Now to football...

Once again these bullet points about Sunday's scrimmage are a composite of a lot of spectators' accounts.


1) The Defense Stepped Up

After appearing to be behind the offense for much of the spring, the defense looked much improved Sunday. There were lots of interceptions despite decent pass protection, so kudos are in order for Coach Jon Poppe and his secondary. Coach Justin Stovall and his linebacking crew also made a huge step forward yesterday. 

DB Jared Katz basically played out of his mind. Matt Cahal and Trevor Bell stepped it up too. Their play and the improved play we've seen all spring from Cameron Roane and Colin Early added to the usual good things Travis Reim shows us has me confident about the secondary as a whole.  

The linebackers who stood out were Gianmarco Rea and Max Keefe. Also making a name for himself in a positive way was Parker Tobia who is coming off a year off the team. 


2) It's Hard to Judge the Offense Now

RB Cameron Molina was out with the flu and some other skill players were banged up. QB Trevor McDonagh was not dressed and WR Marcus Briscoe didn't play either. 

RB Turner DeMuth played very well but was injured at the end of the game. 

WR Cameron Dunn had a sharp game and so did RB Leander Cutler. 

Field goal kicking was a concern all day.

Overall, it's a pleasure to see the new coaching staff quietly and effectively do its work. Spring practice is always a little overrated for the fans, because so much changes when the new players come in for training camp in August. I think the #1 goal for the spring was for the team and the new coaches to get acclimated to each other, and I believe that was accomplished.

Just sit back and consider how important that is. This staff had very little time to even make this spring practice happen, let alone make it effective. Rome may not have been built in a day, but it seems like this spring practice was by a strong and experienced staff. This is a major test Head Coach Al Bagnoli and his assistants have passed, and probably only someone as familiar as Bagnoli is with Ivy football could have pulled it off. 

Now, the next milestone is the official release from the athletic department on the incoming freshmen and transfers. There's a chance we may see some significant news on that front, so stay tuned. 

Oh, and one more note: former Lion and current K.C. Chief Josh Martin '13 showed up to practice Saturday and spent some time talking with the players at the end of the session. He has an added connection to the team now that his former KC coach, Joe D'Orazio is now with the Lions as Tight Ends coach. 

Friday, April 24, 2015

This is What Normal Sounds Like

Peter Pilling

WKCR's sports show, The Firing Lion, interviewed new Columbia Athletic Director Peter Pilling Wednesday night. The entire show is archived here.  Please listen to it.
I have since confirmed that the comment made by Ryan Young at the top of the show -- that this was the first time the Firing Lion had interviewed a Columbia AD live -- was true. Remember, this is a show that's been around for 30 years. So that fact alone is stunning and says a lot about, a lot of bad things, about Pilling's predecessors. It conversely says a lot of good things about Pilling. I am more than overjoyed that Pilling did this interview and really sat in the booth with the student broadcasters for a long time. 
The interview was really a love fest, and that's understandable considering Pilling's very recent arrival and the fact that the WKCR crew was clearly happy to be dealing with a warmer and more cooperative individual.
But that's the whole point. Columbia is now going through a major upgrade in its athletic department simply by the fact that a sane individual, without vindictiveness, defensiveness, and dictatorial control in his heart is now running the place.  
I'll talk more about this mental health upgrade in a moment but based on the interview, there were more very important revelations from the interview:
1) Bagnoli is Pilling's "Guy" and this hire is very much how he'll be judged
Pilling confirmed that he began talking to new football Head Coach Al Bagnoli well before he was hired as athletic director. He admitted that was unusual considering he wasn't hired yet, but that just goes to show how aggressively Pilling was pursuing Bagnoli. In addition to Bagnoli himself, I know that Pilling contacted some of Bagnoli's former players and coaches to discuss the Ivy league, the Penn program and Bagnoli's talents in particular. So, it's simply no stretch at all to say that Bagnoli's track record here is going to be the number one set of data that we judge Pilling by in the coming years. If I were Pilling, I'd be fine with that. 
This educated pursuit of Bagnoli, where Pilling kept after him but still solicited extensive advice and information from people who knew the situation better than he did, stands in stark contrast to the way former Athletic Director Dianne Murphy hired Pete Mangurian. Murphy was also single-minded in hiring Mangurian, but she didn't seek out outside advice or much other information about him from anyone else. The results were disastrous and the fiasco of that hire will forever tar her resume. 
So we've gone from an AD who had Mangurian as her "guy," to an AD who has Bagnoli as his "guy." HUGE upgrade.
2) Pilling relates to people as... gasp... human beings! 
Pilling shared lots of nice personal details about his family, where he's currently living, how his wife is a big Mets fan, etc. 
Can anyone imagine any of our last three AD's talking about things like that? 
Almost everything comes down to human relationships in the end. So this is yet another upgrade.
3) Sanity Arrives
When you're the one sane guy in the asylum, lots of people point at you and call YOU the crazy one... or the trouble maker. 
That's how I and some of the rest of us who have demanded change over the last few years have been made to feel. 
I may not be a psychiatrist, but a person does not need to be a professional to know another person is dealing with mental illness... especially when that person shows those tendencies in public over and over. I say this not to stigmatize the mentally ill, but to admonish all of us who see mental illness to stop ignoring it out of politeness or fear. The worst is when other people support and enable the mentally ill person. I believe people in the Columbia administration were guilty of all of the above regarding Murphy and Mangurian. And I'm not even the slightest bit unsure of that. 
Now Pilling may not turn out to be the greatest athletics director in America and we may not win tons of football or basketball titles under him, but the upgrade in sanity alone is an absolute godsend. 
So let's not even BOTHER Pilling by telling him of the sick and mean athletic department misdeeds of the past. Why should he even hear about that when he's already demonstrated a professional and sane attitude and has acted accordingly? Maybe he'll come to understand why critics like me did what we did to rid ourselves of the madness, or maybe not. I don't care for any more vindication than the firing of Murphy and the hiring of Bagnoli have already brought me. And I am quite certain that the other people who publicly protested and were willing to put their names out there are not looking for thanks or acknowledgements either. 
What we wanted and have always wanted was a department that did the necessary work to make the Columbia athletic teams something the fans and alumni could be proud of. Pilling has already done that. I am sure we are closer to winning in the crucial sports of football and men's basketball than we were just a few months ago. 
Hallelujah.



South Lawn Campaign
A couple of updates on the excellent, worthwhile, and wonderful effort to have some football walk through practices on South Lawn this fall, (or at least one).
1) Get the Women Involved!
This shouldn't just be about football. Some astute alumni have suggested to me that we also get the women's soccer team, the field hockey team, and men's soccer to do some drills on South Lawn too. Actually, this is something that could make the Friday before Homecoming really special. Women's sports need a lot more exposure on campus and this is a great way to do it. 
2) We've Been Here Before
Former football player and Trustee Emeritus Ed Botwinick '56 reminded me this week that the Columbia football team DID used to have a practice or two each week on South Lawn in his days with the team. So this is not really a new thing and we're now only trying to reintroduce a tradition from Columbia's winning days! 

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Spring Morning Session




I checked out football practice this very beautiful morning for about two hours at Wien Stadium.

I could weave a complicated narrative, but I think the bullet points below are better and get to the point faster:

- The coaches don't yell and scream very much. Big difference from the last two regimes. Lots of teaching going on. Very nice to see and hear. 

-On that note, O-line instruction from Coach Jon McLaughlin was excellent. I was able to see and hear most of his unit coaching sessions. O-line will be better.

-Head Coach Al Bagnoli strolled from one unit to the next, spending some time teaching a concept or two along the way. Again, no yelling. Just a lot of explaining. He had every player's undivided attention. 

-Anders Hill is definitely the #1 QB. Hill does a decent job throwing the ball and had one great draw run for a big gainer.

-All of the key offensive skill players seem to be at least healthy. RB Cameron Molina looks faster and 100%. WR Cameron Dunn made an excellent catch on a pass from Hill.

- I saw a lot of nice plays by the sophomore DB's Cameron Roane and Colinn Early. I mean A LOT. They either had a great day or are really going to be seriously good players.

-LB Mark Cieslak had a nice INT.

-DL Dominic Perkovic had some good moves on the pass rush drills a couple of times. 

-Toba Akinleye is in super shape. Looks more muscular and faster. 

-Former QB Hank Trumbull is indeed a TE now, perhaps the position he should have shifted to a long time ago.


SOUTH LAWN CAMPAIGN

Have you told your friends, emailed the administration or done anything yet to get behind the GREAT IDEA to stage a practice walk-through or two on South Lawn this fall? 

This will be an important, visible and tangible event to show that football is a source of pride for this school and its students and alumni. 

Let's spread the word!


Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Backfield Equalizers


Anders Hill


There's no secret why Columbia is working on a read option offense right now. An option offense, as former CU Head Coach Larry McElreavy puts it, acts as a "great equalizer" for a team that may be over-matched when it comes to a traditional offensive set.

Spring practice so far has been encouraging for a number of reasons, but the way the offense has been clicking better with QB Anders Hill running and gunning out of the more mobile set is maybe the best development.

But for the option to work, Hill needs a large number of talented blockers and runners behind him. And if Columbia doesn't have the most talented backfield out there, it can make up for a lot of that with the sheer volume of doing it all by committee.

With the shifting of Tyler Kwiatkowski to fullback from linebacker, and the two incoming RB's we know about currently, there are certainly enough bodies, (eight to be exact), to keep that committee well-staffed.

Cameron Molina remains the most proven commodity on the offense and he could still excel in this offense and might even do better as opposing defenses won't be able to key on him as much.

Some of the other backs who have impressed include sophomore Turner DeMuth, who was the #2 rusher on the team last year, and the always hard-charging sophomore Chris Schroer.

The junior Kwiatkowski's best asset seems to be his ability to come out of the backfield and catch passes, but fellow FB Leander Cutler seems to be much improved and stronger as a rising sophomore. Check out Cutler beating out LB Mark Cieslak in this video posted to the team's Instagram feed.

Of course, the key man in all of this is Hill. He not only has to confidently run this offense, but he also needs to avoid taking too many punishing hits game after game. Finding the best ways to do that will be an important job for Offensive Coordinator Mike Faragalli and the rest of the staff over the coming months.


Lion football was all on campus before 1923



Get the Lions on South Lawn!!

Yesterday I briefly mentioned the campaign to get the football team onto South Lawn on the main Columbia campus for a walk-through practice or two in the coming season.

I don't think relatively recent fans of the team can truly realize how much of an important statement this would make if the administration found a way to make this happen.

It's been almost 100 years since the varsity football team was visible on the Morningside Campus. Once Baker Field replaced the 116th Street campus center as Columbia's home football venue, the team went out of view and out of mind for too many students and faculty.

Now, imagine how much fun it would be to see the team doing a light practice on South Lawn the day before Homecoming this fall. Or how about just before the team leaves for the Ivy season opener at Princeton?


What football practice used to look like


Whatever the cost of preparing the field and getting it back into good condition afterward would gladly be covered by alumni like me who wouldn't miss seeing something like this for the world.

Let's make this effort more than just an Instagram thing. I'll do what I can in the coming months to keep the issue front and center.  

Monday, April 20, 2015

Spring Changes


Let's see the team HERE this fall!


With just four sessions left to go in spring practice, some of our earlier conclusions about where the team stands now have been reinforced over the last week or so:

1) The Offense is Still Ahead

Confounding what just about every observer expected coming in, the offense remains sharper and more effective than the defense.

None of the skill players is standing out, but the offensive line looks bigger and much improved. The running game has been especially strong for the offense, or stopping it has been especially impossible for the defense... depending on how you want to look at it.


2) Hill is the Leader

He's still in his freshman year, but this team really looks like it belongs to rising sophomore Anders Hill right now. It just moves with more precision and the read option plays execute better. There's a spring in the step for the offense when his unit is in there too.

Yes, Brett Nottingham is back on the field and wearing #4. But he's not getting reps with the 1's or 2's, and I'm not sure where he fits in.


3) Position Changes Galore


The folks in charge of updating the Columbia football roster web page are going to be busy in the next week or so. Changing the positions of a few returning players is very common when a new coaching staff comes in, but it looks like the shuffling will outpace that norm.

Two defensive backs, speedster rising sophomore Dylan Weldon and rising senior Joshua Foster, look like they'll be moved to WR and they looked good at different times catching passes.

We already knew about junior Tyler Kwiatkowski moving from LB to FB, so the list is growing.

On defense, sophomore LB Alexander Holme looks to be moving up to the D-line. He and senior Toba Akinleye appear to be the first team DE's with Niko Padilla of course at DT. The other starting D-lineman may end up being sophomore Lord Hyeamang or sophomore Dominic Perkovic. 

Akinleye seems to bring a special brand of excitement on every play and he's trying to earn the nickname the Columbia football Instagram account gave him: "The Brooklyn Bully." (More about that crucial and must-follow Instagram feed later).

... and then all of the D-line news make go out the window when Chad Washington and Charles Melka return for training camp.

4) Check out the Team's Instagram Feed NOW!

You can check out a lot of very educational photos and videos on the Columbia football team's Instagram feed.

If you know your player numbers, you'll get more of an idea of who's playing at what position. And the video of Padilla and junior LT Kendall Pace going one on one is particularly encouraging for those of us who know the O-line has to improve.

Also be sure to "double-tap" LIKE the pic of campus as there's a movement to have the team do some informal but inspiring walk-throughs on South Lawn this fall.

5) This is Still a Very Happy and Pumped Group

Even as spring practice grinds on, the enthusiasm and just plain joy in this team is still there. It's impossible to describe how much better it feels to watch these guys out there.



Friday, April 17, 2015

Overcoming the Bumps in the Road




After new Columbia Head Coach Al Bagnoli turned Penn from a bottom dweller to a contender in 1992, the Quakers won two straight Ivy championships in 1993 and 1994.

But that was not the only turnaround story for Bagnoli at Penn. While none were more statistically dramatic than the five-win improvement from 1991 to 1992, some of the other rebounds he oversaw were just as impressive.

The first real bump in the Bagnoli road came at Penn just when most successful coaches start to have success. The 1996 season was the first year when the entire Quaker team was truly all Bagnoli's players. But the '96 Penn team was snake bitten by close loss after close loss. All five Quaker losses were by less than seven points, including a 20-19 OT loss to the Lions at Franklin Field. Penn finished 5-5 and 3-4 in the Ivies.

The next season, things got worse. A respectable 6-4, 5-2 Ivy season was wiped out at the end of the year when it was discovered that standout defensive star Mitch Marrow was an ineligible player. Five of Penn's wins were vacated and Bagnoli faced the most serious crisis of his coaching tenure in Philadelphia.

So what happened in the following season? The 1998 Quakers went out and won another championship. Led by Duke transfer QB Matt Rader and the great RB Jim Finn, Penn went 8-2 and 6-1 in the Ivies to silence those who thought Bagnoli had run out of gas.

The next five seasons saw the Quakers win three more titles, including two straight undefeated Ivy seasons in 2002 and 2003, and an overall 10-0 season in 2002.

But the next bumps in the road came in 2005 both on and off the field. Senior Kyle Ambrogi committed suicide, casting a pall over what looked like a promising season out of the gate. Penn lost its last four games and finished 5-5 and 3-4 in the league.

The next two years weren't much better as the Quakers couldn't find any consistency with QB Robert Irvin and Penn finished 3-4 in the Ivies in 2006 and 2007.

Then I believe Bagnoli had an epiphany. While his championship teams in the past at Penn had all been great defensively, they stood out for their offensive stars like Finn, Rader, and then another great QB in Mike Mitchell. By 2008, Bagnoli seemed to realize that great offensive skill players were getting harder to stockpile and he seemed to change his focus into creating a solid overall team defense and offensive line and then try to consolidate the talent in the skill positions by committee.

The '08 Quakers started the recent Penn tradition of winning ugly. They went 6-4 overall, but 5-2 in the Ivies with three of the conference wins by less than a TD.

That set the stage for an incredible 2009 championship run where none of the offensive skill players put up very impressive numbers, but the defense and the offensive line made Penn unbeatable in the Ivies. The Quakers lost their first two games of the season in tough matches against Villanova and Lafayette, but then they didn't lose again. Along the way, Penn allowed just eight points per game to all its Ivy opponents and only Dartmouth and Columbia scored more than seven points in a game against the Quakers.

The 2010 Penn team put together another championship season with the same formula but also with the winning ugly play of QB Billy Ragone who never had the greatest stats, but found ways to win time and time again.

A bit of a down year on defense doomed Penn to a 2nd place finish in 2011, but a number of Ragone-led gutty comebacks brought the Quakers a surprising championship in 2012.

Bagnoli's last two seasons at Penn have been well documented as not his best, but they don't look like they were any worse to me than the 1996, 2006 and 2007 seasons and we know how well the program rebounded from those years.

The point of all of this is to show that Bagnoli hasn't been just on some kind of long cake walk at Penn for the last 23 years. There have been several challenges and now he's taking on a new kind of challenge at Columbia. And just like there are a lot of people who say the Columbia problem can't be solved, there were a lot of people who said Bagnoli and Penn would not recover from those clusters of consecutive non-winning seasons he suffered in Philly.





 

 

Thursday, April 16, 2015

"Turnaround Al's" New Challenge: the numbers



Sundiata Rush


Head Coach Al Bagnoli and how he was hired by Columbia earlier this year is the subject of a more in-depth report from the Spectator's Kyle Perotti and you can read it here.

Be sure to enjoy the great pictures of spring practice included in the piece. If you're like me, seeing Bagnoli in Columbia swag is still weird but also great.

There are already a lot of versions of the story of how Bagnoli came to Columbia, and Perotti's is as good as anyone's. My sources tell me the Perotti account is pretty much how it went, but there was a little more initiative from Bagnoli at some point than there was than from Villanova Head Coach Andy Talley or our new Athletic Director Peter Pilling. But Bagnoli was constricted by the fact that he was under contract, so he was absolutely recruited for the job according to the rules.

But folks, it really doesn't matter how this started. Columbia has walked away from superior and exciting candidates before for reasons ranging from ineptitude to ego. Give Pilling the credit for not screwing this up as so many of his predecessors probably would have.

Now it's time to really take a look at the challenge Bagnoli has before him.

He's turned around programs before, but this is probably his greatest challenge in that department.

We're all trying not to focus on the past, but we have to be fair and not forget that this Lion team has lost 21 games in a row, and all but two of those 21 losses were blowouts where Columbia's opponents were able to bench their starters early.

The Penn team that Bagnoli took over in 1992 was not so much at rock bottom. It had suffered a poor 2-8 season in 1991 highlighted by two squeaker wins at home against weak Brown and Cornell teams. But the Quakers also lost some very close games, including defeats by less than a TD to eventual champ Dartmouth, up-and-comer Princeton, (the Tigers won the title the following year), and at Columbia.

The '91 Quakers were not terrible on defense, but the offense was anemic. Penn only scored 20 or more points once and averaged just 14.2 points a game,

By contrast, last year's 0-10 Columbia team broke the 20 point barrier twice, but averaged just 10.3 points per game.

The 1991 rushing leader for Penn was Sundiata Rush, a very talented player who would go on to an even more explosive 1992 season. But in '91 he still ran for a very respectable 787 yards and three TD's with a yards-per-rush average of 4.1.

Columbia's top rusher last season was Cameron Molina with 460 yards and a 3.2 yards-per-rush average. He also had three TD's.

Penn's top receiver in 1991 had just 28 catches for 256 yards and no TD's. Molina was also the top receiver for Columbia last season with 44 grabs for 395 yards and no TD's. But the top actual wide receiver was Ryan Flannery with 31 receptions for 421 yards and two scores. Flannery is graduating, meaning the top returning Lion wide receiver is sophomore Marcus Briscoe who had 16 receptions last season for 141 yards and one TD.

Bagnoli's inherited QB from the '91 season didn't look like much at the time. Jimmy McGeehan was just 6-feet tall and 195 pounds. But he would develop into a great all-time player for Penn. McGeehan threw for just 848 yards on 179 attempts and just a 41% completion rate. (the next season McGeehan wasn't much better, but in the 1993 championship season he threw for 2,197 yards, 24 TD's, and completed 57% of his passes).

Columbia's top returning QB is Trevor McDonagh who threw for 1,349 yards on a 130 completions and a 52% completion rate. But McDonagh may have already been eclipsed on the depth chart by Anders Hill, who passed for just 310 yards last season on 52 passes and a 50% completion rate. Hill may be more in the mold of McGeehan, and he seems a lot more effective in the mobile/pistol offense so far, but you could argue that at this point the QB situation Bagnoli faces now at Columbia is not all that different from what it looked like he was facing at Penn in 1992.

Let's get beyond the stats and look at some of the key moments from that 1992 turnaround season for the Quakers. Many of us remember that Penn went 7-3 overall and 5-2 overall in the Ivies that year. But it's important to note, and Bagnoli would probably be the first to do so, that the Quakers were still an error-riddled team on the field most weekends. Penn was only dominant in a 38-0 win over eventually winless Brown in week six. It's only other "easy" win was over Colgate in week two.

But that win over Brown was a turning point as far as team psyche was concerned. The Quakers went 3-1 the rest of the way, only losing in a very close game to the '92 champion Princeton Tigers, 20-14.

A realistic look at Columbia right now leads me to believe that this season's goal should be to get Columbia up to the level the Quakers were in 1991 and then hope for a 1992 Penn style jump into serious contention in 2016. The Lions 2014 stats are bad, but still positively misleading because so many opponents shelved their "A games" early on or never brought it out against Columbia in the first place.

But that's just me and we certainly root for a win every week.



Monday, April 13, 2015

Talkin' Baseball

Joe Falcone

Getting away from football and athletic department internal news for a second, may I just write a bit about how much of a joy it is to follow Columbia Baseball?

I don’t know if the team will win its third straight Ivy title, but the Lions are still tied for first in the Gehrig Division and the pitching and offense are impressive.

My favorite development this year has been the resurgence of senior Joe Falcone who had a rough junior year after exploding on the scene as a sophomore in 2013. Of course, Falcone is a favorite because of his time as a Marine in Afghanistan and Iraq. At 29 years old, he’s a welcome change of pace and a heartening story.

Another great development is the fact that the loss of pitcher David Speer hasn’t been as much of a killer as expected. Junior Kevin Roy has stepped up his game on the mound and fellow junior George Thanapolous has been more solid this year. And Senior Mike Weisman might be the ace of them all. Weisman only threw 19.2 innings last year and just 14 innings in 2013.  This season, he’s already thrown more than his last two seasons worth of innings combined and he has a 2.97 ERA. I wonder if Head Coach Brett Boretti wishes he had given Weisman more playing time in the past or if he just improved big time over the off season.

Other than Falcone on the hitting side, Jordan Serena is having another great year with a .339 average and a perfect 15-15 on stolen bases. One of the surprises in the Ivy part of the schedule is senior 3B David Vandercook, who is hitting well above his career average at .436 with 15 RBI.

There are many, many more individual names to point out, but do yourself a favor and watch the games on the Ivy Digital Network or in person and enjoy.


The whole genre of college baseball and the Ivy version of it is also really enjoyable. The games move fast, each weekend is filled with two doubleheaders, and with all the players under 30, every team has exciting speed. 

It Started Badly, it Ended Badly



Traci Waites

One of the best student journalists and broadcasters at Columbia over the past 25 years was a young man named Phil Wallace. 

Phil has never let Columbia sports get too far away from his mind in the more than a decade since he graduated. And now, his investigative and persuasive efforts have finally uncovered the story behind the mysterious and sudden firing of Women's Basketball Head Coach Traci Waites. 

I highly suggest all of you read this article by Phil very carefully.

I know lots of my critics will hit me with accusations that by posting this, I'm kicking outgoing Athletic Director Dianne Murphy even though she's already defeated and in retreat.

But the reason I post it is to show what the reality was in this athletic department for the past 13 years. The Wallace article rings true not only because of Phil's hard work, but because Murphy's alleged actions all follow what in my opinion was a familiar and destructive pattern during her tenure at Columbia. That is, coaches who she did not hire or she did not think she could completely control were likely to be let go. In this case, a very promising and talented coach was gone before she could establish a record of any kind.

Another reason why I post this story is because Waites' reputation was so badly sullied by the firing and it was all based on rumor and innuendo. We were told she had a past history with substance abuse, and the public was almost forced to believe that Waites had suffered some kind of relapse. In fact, that was the prevailing "story" many of us were told.

And so Waites deserves to have her side of the story made public now, no matter that Murphy is leaving anyway and Columbia is preparing to give her a loving sendoff dinner.

I strongly believe that Murphy's conduct, exemplified early on by the way she treated Waites, badly hurt the athletic department at Columbia and that her overall record was not a good one at all.

If Murphy wants to respond to Phil or Waites or me, I will make sure her comments appear here.

And even though I believe Peter Piling has already done a lot of the right things so far in his tenure as her replacement, we need to hear these kinds of reports to remind everyone about what should and shouldn't happen at our school.

Spring Practice Takeaways #1


Anders Hill on a read option

Due to the generous and warm open policy Al Bagnoli and his staff have extended to Lions fans during this spring practice period, my usual number of reporters and sources has multiplied nicely. And I plan to visit a practice myself in the coming days and I'm looking forward to it.

But even though the number of my reporters has shot up, the reports I'm getting are not varied at all. There is pretty much universal agreement that the information and impressions below are the undisputed truth:


1) The Offense is Ahead of the Defense

Based on our roster and the usual way of things, I would have thought the defense would be dominating so far at spring practice.

Not so much.

The new read option offense is working pretty well and it's opening up the passing game in a way we just haven't seen since Sean Brackett '13 used to roll out and do his damage.

Rising sophomore Anders Hill seems to be handling this new offense better than the other QB's. I know I'm biased because I have favored this kind of offense for Columbia and all the Ivies for that matter for a long time. But this is working better, period.

There's been good enthusiasm on both sides of the ball, but the biggest exclamation point of practice so far may be the impressive run and beating RB Chris Schroer put on on LB Gianmarco Rea on Saturday. Schroer ran him over like a truck. That's great news for all of us who worried that Schroer's ankle injury last season may have taken some air out of very noticeably high octane play. And it's good news because Rea is still one of our best linebackers and he'll learn from this experience for sure.


2) Players are Coming Back

I'm not sure when we're going to see a truly updated roster, but when it is fully refreshed we should see some familiar names back on it.

I expect Nicholas Annabi, Brendan Blackshear, Isaiah Gross and even Brett Nottingham to be back in the fold officially. I don't know if any of them will really get on the field on game days, but I like the fact that the new coaching regime is rekindling their desire.


3) More Position Changes this Year than Usual

We already know about Tyler Kwiatkowski switching from LB to FB, but we'll see more news of this nature in the coming weeks.

I wouldn't call it a position change exactly, but for now OL Marshall Markham is the starting center.

Much of the other shuffling will be in the front seven on defense between the D-line and the linebackers and there's been some shuffling of the depth charts there as well.

Some of the backups have been acting a little, err... testy among themselves during practice. It's possible this is an attempt to get noticed. The coaches are aware.

Truth is, I like the emotion and even a touch of the desperation. We want guys who want to win and get on the field to make it happen. Within reason, they should be almost reckless in their pursuit of this.




Friday, April 10, 2015

First Year Factor


Buffer had a tough start


Yesterday I tried to quantify the value of the new-found enthusiasm surrounding the Columbia football program.

But I failed to document at the hard results on the field that we've seen when new coaching regimes take over.

Al Bagnoli is the 11th head coach of Columbia football since Lou Little retired at the end of the 1956 season. The first year records of the 10 men in between is decidedly mixed.

Five of the coaches have put up the same exact record of the preceding coach's final season. Three have improved on their previous season, and two had worse records in their first years.

Interestingly enough, the three coaches who have brought the Lions a W-L improvement in their first years are the last three coaches, Bob Shoop, Norries Wilson, and Pete Mangurian.

But since Shoop suffered a massive loss to Brown in his final game of his first year, and Mangurian had the 69-0 late season loss to Harvard hanging around his neck like a millstone, I would say it Wilson, with his 5-5 2006 season punctuated with a dramatic win over Brown in week 10 that made his initial season the most promising over the almost 60-year period in question.

Wilson's train derailed the following year with a 1-9, 0-7 Ivy season. It took two more years before he was able to build the program back to a competitive level before it crashed back down again in 2011.

The worst initial season was under Buff Donelli, who took a 3-6 team he inherited from Little and barely got the Lions to 1-8 in 1957. But Donelli learned fast and he delivered Columbia's lone Ivy title four years later.

Most people are putting the under/over on Columbia wins this coming season at one. So if Bagnoli follows recent trends and get the Lions three wins they'll definitely call him a miracle worker.

But just getting a couple more wins this coming season is not the real goal or the real point of hiring Bagnoli. We're looking for a much more meaningful and long term result than that.

So it's important not to get too hung up on the "how many more wins are we gonna get in 2015?" question. Yes we will judge these teams by their wins and losses, but we want more wins over the next decade, not just the next seven months.


SPECIAL REPORT 

What happened to Traci Waites? Former Columbia Basketball Coach was Forced Out for Surprising Reasons

Posted April 12, 2015 | News | by Phil Wallace | Comment

raci-Waites



On the morning of February 3, 2005, Columbia women’s basketball point guard Sue Altman entered head coach Traci Waites’ office. Altman had planned to watch some film with Waites one hour before a scheduled practice. The Lions were preparing to face Yale in New Haven the next day, and then travel to Providence to take on Brown a day later. It was a key road trip for a team that had exceeded preseason expectations, sporting a 9-8 record overall, 2-2 in the Ivy League.

Before Altman could turn on the television, associate athletic director Merry Ormsby walked into the room.

“Dianne Murphy would like to see you now,” Ormsby said.

Murphy was Columbia’s new athletic director who had been hired over the previous summer, one month after Waites. She officially started the position in December 2004.

Waites went up to Murphy’s office, and Altman proceeded to watch film. Waites never came back downstairs. An hour later, Altman went to Levien Gym for practice, and Murphy was there with assistant coaches Tory Verdi and Tasha Pointer.

“Traci Waites has been indefinitely banned from campus,” Murphy said to the entire Columbia women’s team. The players sat in stunned silence.

Murphy proceeded to introduce Verdi as the interim head coach. She referred to Verdi as an “honorable coach,” implying that Waites had something dishonorable. Murphy also told players that they could not discuss Waites’ departure with the media.

“I was shocked, confused, wanting answers, and frustrated that we couldn’t get any,” Altman recalls. “I was also exhausted. The team had been through a lot over the years.”

For years, many in the Columbia community assumed Waites had done something horrible. Wild rumors were whispered around campus as athletes and coaches guessed what could have forced Waites out so suddenly.

To this day, Columbia will not discuss the reasons for Waites’ departure. And for ten years, Waites was silent. Until now. When reached at her home in Georgia, Waites provided a fairly surprising explanation for her departure from Columbia.

“Excuse my language,” Waites said. “But it was an f—ing beer.”
 

Traci Waites’ Story

When Waites entered Murphy’s office, both the athletic director and associate athletic director Al Carlson were seated inside. Murphy pushed a two-sentence resignation letter across her desk.

“I can’t allow you to have a beer on the road,” Waites recalls Murphy saying.

According to Waites, Murphy explained that there was a school policy that prohibited coaches from drinking alcohol on road trips. Waites says that she was unaware of this policy, but she did acknowledge having one beer while the team was staying at a hotel.

“We are going to escort you off campus, and don’t contact anyone,” Murphy told Waites.

“I was escorted off campus as if I were a criminal,” Waites says.

Waites cannot recall the exact road trip, but a look at the schedule reveals it may have been a trip to Western Kentucky on January 17, 2005. It might have also been a weekend trip to Dartmouth and Harvard from January 28-29. A former Columbia athletic department employee who regularly traveled with the team could only recall Waites drinking once on the road – a celebratory drink on New Year’s Eve the day before the Lions were playing at Eastern Michigan on January 1.

Waites says she had the beer in a coffee mug and shared it with Ormsby at a hotel bar. At her table were two other Columbia employees, including the one just mentioned previously. The coffee mug was used just in case in players came downstairs after they had supposedly gone to bed the night before a game.

“It was not unusual for Columbia coaches to drink on the road,” the former employee said. “But it was an unwritten rule that you’d generally try not to do it in front of students.”

The former employee also claimed to be unaware of an official alcohol policy until our interview ten years later.

Prior to her final meeting with Murphy, Waites says the athletic director had only spoken with her once. Waites said she was initially enthusiastic about the Murphy hire. Murphy had been a women’s basketball head coach at Florida State, Eastern Kentucky, and Shorter College, and after moving into athletic administration, she had served on a number of NCAA committees for women’s basketball. This included the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. The opportunity to work with an athletic director who prioritized women’s basketball excited Waites. But that excitement quickly dissipated.

In their first conversation, Murphy told her: “If you don’t do well here, then you’ll never coach anywhere ever again.”

It turns out that Murphy was right about the last part, as she has helped prevent Waites from receiving other coaching jobs to this day. More on that later though.
 

Who is Traci Waites?

raci Waites hit two game winning free throws for Rockdale High School in the 1984 Ge

Traci Waites hit two game winning free throws for Rockdale High School in the 1984 Georgia State Championship Game.

It’s worth knowing who Traci Waites is before proceeding further. A native of Conyers, GA, Waites starred at Rockdale County High School and led her team to a Georgia state title in 1984. She decided to play college at the University of Georgia for Andy Landers, and as a freshman she helped take the Bulldogs to the 1985 NCAA Championship Game.

Waites eventually transferred to Long Beach State, and took coach Joan Bonvicini’s team to the 1988 Final Four. Waites is the only player, man or woman, to have played in two Final Fours with two different schools.

“She understood the game,” Bonvicini said. “A lot of people are skilled and can play, but Traci really saw the game on many different levels.”

After playing professionally in Italy, Waites became an assistant coach at Santa Monica College, and was eventually promoted to head coach. She later joined Bonvicini’s staff at the University of Arizona as an assistant from 1994-98 before she received her first major head coaching job at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Her background made her a little rough around the edges,” says Avie Bridges, her friend and mentor who hired her at Santa Monica College. Bridges was the former women’s basketball head coach at Alabama-Birmingham, and she is now dean and athletic director at Santa Ana College in California. “She was very good at mentoring student-athletes and getting them to perform at a level beyond what they normally do.”

aites in her first season at Pitt

Waites in her first season at Pitt

In her second season, Waites led the once moribund Panthers program to a rare winning season and a berth in the WNIT. Waites was named co-Big East Coach of the Year, and she seemed like a coach on the rise. But the program suffered through three straight losing seasons, and Waites was fired in 2003 by former interim athletic director Mark Boehm. Waites says her firing was partially due to her use of profanity towards players.

Boehm is now an associate athletic director at Nebraska. At first, he wouldn’t discuss Waites’ dismissal from Pittsburgh.

“It’s not all about wins and losses,” Boehm said. “There were more things involved than just the record.”

When asked if Waites was let go because of both her record and the profanity, Boehm responded: “That’s accurate.”

Her former top assistant coach, Bill Broderick, felt there was a double standard applied to Waites. Currently the head coach of the women’s team at Christopher Newport University, Broderick has decades of experience in college basketball.

“Ben Howland was the men’s coach [at Pittsburgh] back then, and he used profanity all the time,” Broderick says. “Mike Krzyzewski uses profanity in practice. All of the men’s coaches do.”

After leaving Pittsburgh, Waites took a break from coaching for a while. She had gone through a difficult five-year stretch that included the death of her brother James Waites from AIDS in 1998 and a car accident that killed her sister Sharon in 2003.

In the meantime, Columbia was dealing with the oddly-timed departure of its women’s basketball head coach Jay Butler in June 2004. While Butler hadn’t been successful at Columbia, his decision to become an assistant coach at Centenary College in Louisiana came as a surprise.

Athletic Director John Reeves had retired from Columbia at the end of the school year, and the school had yet to replace him. Interim athletic director Paul Fernandes put Ormsby in charge of the search. Traci’s sister Keisha Waites, who today represents the 60th district in the Georgia House of Representatives, saw the opening and took it upon herself to send Traci’s resume and bio to Ormsby.

“At the time I wasn’t looking at coaching. But I came once and talked to Merry Ormsby candidly about my past. I came back the second time and knew I wanted to be [at Columbia],” Waites said to me back in 2005 for a Columbia alumni magazine article that was never published.

During the interview process, Waites won over players and athletic department officials with her commitment to discipline and her knowledge of the game, and she was hired in July of 2004. Murphy was hired as the new athletic director one month later, coming over from the University of Denver.

Under Waites’ leadership, the Lions looked like a much-improved team. Players also seemed to like their new coach.

“She had a lot of energy and she was enthusiastic. She was a breath of fresh air for the program,” Altman said. “She was pretty tough, but she got along well with the players.”

Waites also said she learned from her experience at Pittsburgh.

“I didn’t do any cursing at Columbia,” Waites says. “I made a conscious effort not to do that. I learned my lesson.”
 

Columbia’s Version

Part of what makes this story so unusual is the lack of information provided by Columbia and nearly everyone who was part of the athletic department. Columbia’s silence is still maintained to this day, and most athletic officials claim to have no knowledge as to why Waites left.

olumbia Athletic Director Dianne Murphy

Columbia Athletic Director Dianne Murphy

Murphy is leaving as Columbia’s athletic director on Monday, April 13, but she is still refusing to discuss the departure. Through Columbia’s sports information department, she issued the following statement:

“Traci Waites was hired as Columbia’s head women’s basketball coach in July 2004, approximately one month before I accepted the position of athletics director at Columbia University in August 2004. Traci resigned as Columbia’s head women’s basketball coach on February 5, 2005. Columbia is a private university. All personnel matters are confidential between the University and its employees. We do not comment on personnel matters to the media.”

Two things should be noted about this statement. First, it’s probably a mistake, but Waites actually resigned on February 3. Second, it’s interesting that Murphy feels the need to mention that she didn’t hire Waites. It plays into a belief that Murphy never wanted Waites hired as the head coach for a program she probably cared most about. More on this later though.

In the meantime, other past and present Columbia employees have been equally unhelpful. Most who were contacted refused to respond to me. Others did have short statements either claiming ignorance, or refusing to speak. Carlson is still at Columbia and he sent back a short terse e-mail saying: “I think you know that I am not allowed to comment on personnel issues.”

After serving as interim athletic director, Fernandes went back to being an associate athletic director. He left Columbia in 2008 for a job in the Ivy League office, and he’s now retired. Through e-mail, he wrote:

“My recollection was that Traci left for personal/family reasons. I believe she needed to be closer to her family and that required relocation. Since she was reporting directly to [Ormsby] at the time, I wasn’t in on exactly what was transpiring at the time.”

When told of the story about Waites drinking a beer, he responded:

“The info you have provided is new to me. I don’t have any additional information to provide to you. Hope you are able to sort it all out.”

Reached by phone at her home in New Jersey, Ormsby claimed to have no knowledge as to why Waites left, and expressed disbelief when she was told of the information previously reported.

“I had no idea that Traci Waites was going to be resigning that day [February 3, 2005],” Ormsby said. “I thought Traci Waites was a good hire and she was winning. I told her that I’d write her recommendations.”

Ormsby admitted that she did write a letter of recommendation for Waites on two separate occasions for jobs she would apply for in later years. But it seems odd that she would do so while claiming to not know why Waites resigned. Waites says that Ormsby knows why she left, and the two discussed the situation.

Ormsby also left Columbia in 2005. Waites suspects that it was related to her situation, and that would seem like a reasonable explanation. When asked why she left, Ormsby angrily responded: “That’s personal!”

Ormsby went on to compliment Murphy’s leadership.

“Dianne Murphy really knew what she was doing,” Ormsby said. “She really wanted to change the culture.”

Ormsby grew more angry throughout the interview. When asked if she wanted my contact information should she remember any more details, Ormsby shot back: “Absolutely not!”

She ended the phone call by repeatedly saying the phrase: “Leave Traci alone! Leave Traci alone!” and didn’t respond when I noted that Waites wanted her story told.

According to Waites, she receives a notification from MyLife.com every few weeks stating that Ormsby is searching for her personal information. The notifications increased to daily after Ormsby was interviewed.

The only other time Ormsby was interviewed about Waites post-2005 was by a reporter researching the story in 2007. Ormsby refused to discuss Waites, and she immediately called Murphy, tipping off the athletic director that the story was being investigated. No story ever ran.

Another odd wrinkle in this is Waites’ coaching staff at Columbia. Former Rutgers star Tasha Pointer got her start as an assistant under Waites. Now an assistant coach at her alma mater, Pointer was asked to speak about her former boss. Via e-mail, she wrote a bland statement about her “awesome experience” at Columbia, completely ignoring my request to interview her and not mentioning Waites at all.

When told of the story about Waites being let go for drinking, Pointer eventually wrote back:

“In regards to Traci, there are no specifics I can present that can shed any new light on her departure. I am unaware of any of the circumstances referencing her dismissal. Thanks for the inquiry and have a great day.”

The next big question is what role Verdi may have played.
 

Verdi’s Role

ory Verdi was Waites' top assistant Columbia. He is now the head coach at Eastern Mi

Tory Verdi was Waites’ top assistant Columbia. He is now the head coach at Eastern Michigan.

Being hired in the summer of 2004 posed a challenge for Waites in terms of putting together a coaching staff. Most collegiate coaches were already entrenched in their positions and they were preparing for the upcoming season. The normal spring window for coaching hires had long closed.

Waites was visited in New York by former Kentucky women’s basketball coach Bernadette Locke-Mattox, who had moved on to become an assistant coach with the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun. Locke-Mattox was also a Georgia alum, and she was an assistant for the Bulldogs when Waites played there. Locke-Mattox came to Columbia’s campus with Verdi, who at the time was a 31-year old lower level assistant with the Sun. At Locke-Mattox’s recommendation, Waites hired Verdi to be her top assistant, but the two did not get along.

According to Waites, Verdi had multiple “phone calls that were inappropriate with a recruit.” When asked what she meant by “inappropriate,” Waites said: “I know how a male coach is supposed to speak with a player on the phone. This didn’t sit right. It sounded like he wanted a date.”

Waites reported Verdi’s behavior to Ormsby, who was her direct supervisor. Ormsby said she would talk to Verdi and address the issue. However, in my interview with Ormsby, she claimed to have no knowledge of this. Waites said she confronted Verdi about this as well, and she planned to fire him after the season.

Verdi refused to be interviewed for this story, but back in 2007, he told the same aforementioned reporter that the Columbia staff “wasn’t always as professional as we could have been on recruiting trips” without elaborating further.

Waites and Verdi only took one recruiting trip together, and that was to Florida in the fall of 2004. While both were in a rental car leaving the airport, Verdi called the recruit on his cell phone to coordinate their meeting. Waites didn’t like Verdi’s tone and told him so, right after the call.

“I admit that I may have gone overboard in chastising him,” Waites said.

The recruit from Florida was reached for this article and agreed to speak on the condition that her name would be withheld from the story. She expressed surprise that anyone would believe Verdi was inappropriate.

“From what I remembered, Tory Verdi was very professional,” the recruit said.

Other Columbia players interviewed said Verdi never spoke inappropriately to them as well.

When told of the comments from the Florida recruit, Waites said: “That was my observation of their conversation. I can’t dispute her thoughts.”

While there is no proof, Waites does believe that Verdi reported her drink of beer to Murphy. Verdi served the rest of the 2004-05 season as interim head coach, and a dispirited Lions team finished 3-7 under his leadership. Verdi went on to become an assistant coach at Nebraska. While it may or may not have been coincidence, the Nebraska athletic director at the time was Steve Pederson, who had previously been the athletic director at Pittsburgh when Waites coached there.

Verdi would stay in Lincoln for five seasons, and then moved over to Kansas for two years. In 2012, he was hired to become the head women’s basketball coach at Eastern Michigan.

Had Verdi been fired after one season at Columbia, then it’s unclear where his career would have gone. But by taking over for Waites so suddenly, Verdi won plaudits from the Columbia administration for coaching under difficult circumstances. He was set on a career path to eventually become a head coach.
 

Singled Out

aites at Pitt

Waites at Pitt

The motives for Murphy’s decision to dismiss Waites are not entirely clear, but it may have had something to do with the athletic director’s connections to Pittsburgh.

“[Murphy] had a close relationship with people from Pitt,” a former Pitt athletic department employee said. “[Murphy] had it out for [Waites] to have someone else coach.”

Another former Pittsburgh athletic department employee said that Murphy knew former Pittsburgh associate athletic director Carol Sprague. Both have served on multiple NCAA women’s basketball committees. Sprague declined to be interviewed for this article.

By removing Waites for cause, Columbia did not have to pay the rest of her four-year contract that provided a $130,000 annual salary. With the budget savings, Murphy could then hire her own chosen coach for the program. In 2005, Murphy hired Paul Nixon, who went on to have a disappointing 70-153 record in eight seasons leading the Columbia women.

Murphy’s decision continues to follow Waites and it has prevented her from receiving other coaching opportunities.

“This has ruined my life,” Waites said.

After Columbia, Waites applied for numerous coaching jobs. Most schools were afraid to touch her, believing that she had done something terrible to leave Columbia so suddenly. But a few schools were interested.

One of them was Southwest Baptist, a Division II school in Missouri. Dr. Renae Myles had been an academic advisor in the Pittsburgh athletic department from 2000-04, and by 2007 she serving as Southwest Baptist’s associate athletic director. She pushed for the school to consider Waites.

“I’ve always admired what she’s brought,” Myles said. “I’ve always thought she deserved another opportunity at running a team.”

Waites had told Myles how she was dismissed at Columbia, and about the beer incident. Myles called Murphy for confirmation.

r. Renae Myles

Dr. Renae Myles

“[Murphy] said ‘Traci Waites worked at Columbia from this date to that date’ and she wouldn’t say anything else,” Myles says. “My bosses needed to know more and I couldn’t provide more. They were quite impressed with Traci, but we couldn’t get any information from Dr. Murphy.”

Myles is now an associate athletic director at Alabama A&M. She said that Waites’ name was put forward for a coaching vacancy there, but again said that questions about her Columbia departure prevented her from becoming a finalist for the role.

“As long as I’m an administrator in athletics, Traci is on my radar,” Myles says. “I believe she deserves another shot.”

If Waites was in fact let go for drinking a beer, then she was unfairly singled out. As noted earlier, a former Columbia athletic department employee said it was not uncommon for coaches to drink on the road. Having covered multiple Columbia sports teams myself for the Spectator and WKCR Radio from 2000-04, I also saw several coaches have beers on the road. Other reporters say the trend continued into Murphy’s tenure.

Furthermore, Waites did not have a drinking problem.

“I spent seven years of my life with her, working very closely, and I never saw her take a drug,” said Broderick, who also worked with her at Arizona. “She was just a social drinker.”

The next question is why Waites stayed silent for so long about her dismissal. Waites only told a handful of people who were close to her.

“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to talk to anyone,” Waites said. “It’s because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

“She’s extremely spiritual and felt it was meant to be,” Broderick says. “She wasn’t going to win that battle. And she didn’t want to be somewhere she wasn’t wanted.”

Waites said she considered filing a wrongful termination lawsuit against Columbia. She consulted a lawyer in Pittsburgh who thought she had a case, but he said he couldn’t practice law in New York. Her sister Keisha pushed her to fight, but she wound up not pursuing any action, deciding to do her best to move on.

“Why would a university say that you can’t talk about something? What are they trying to hide?” Waites asks. “Everyone thinks that I’ve done something because they won’t talk about it.”

“I find it pretty appalling that Columbia won’t say if Traci’s story is true,” Altman says. “We deserved a better explanation. This would never happen at another program. They couldn’t get away with it.”
 

Traci Today

After losing her job at Columbia, Waites went back to Georgia, completely devastated.

“I stayed in my bedroom for six months straight,” Waites says. “What I did next was pick myself back up.”

In October of 2005, Waites began volunteering with Chris Kids, an Atlanta-based charity that primarily helps youths ages 16-21 who have been physically or mentally abused. She was eventually hired as a full-time program coordinator until state funding for the organization dried up in 2008.

“Helping those kids … that was like my therapy,” Waites says.

In the summer of 2008, at the urging of Keisha, Waites ran in the Democratic primary for the Georgia state House of Representatives 93rd district. Waites raised virtually no money and barely campaigned, but she still finished in fourth in a six-person race, missing a runoff by less than 1,000 votes.

In 2009, Waites took a part-time job as the head coach of Atlanta Metropolitan College as a favor to a friend. Waites was asked to launch the women’s basketball program for the junior college, but the position only paid $5,000 a year. She left in 2011 and took on a sales manager role with Mattress Firm.

“It wasn’t for me. I was searching to find my niche,” Waites says. “I did pretty well there, but I just didn’t want to do it.”

Today, Waites works as an executive assistant for external requisitions at Robert Bosch, LLC. She recently started in the role full-time.

“I love what I’m doing now. I’m working with great people and I’m learning,” Waites says.

Still, the question of whether Waites will return to coaching remains. Keisha has urged her sister to get back into the business.

“I think that there’s a void in Traci’s life, and I encourage her to seek coaching opportunities,” Keisha says.

Waites says she is done coaching though, and she has been focused on the next chapter in her life.

“I feel like I can breathe now because finally my voice was heard. It was time for me to move forward in my life because it had been sitting in the pit of my stomach forever,” Waites said. “I feel like no matter what I do, I’ll be scrutinized for the rest of my life. I’m not the same person anymore. It’s damaged me so much. I don’t want to go through it [coaching] again. It would have to be something really special.”

“I’m not interested in anything else besides clearing my name. Nothing else,” Waites added. “I’m proud of myself that I got through it. It has taught me a lot about myself.”