Dinner Notes

A number of the people who attended the 2015 Football Awards Banquet have sent me some of their thoughts about the evening.

Before I get to that, I do want to make what I hope will be the last repetition of the usual comment about our graduating football seniors: In short, they all deserved better.

The good news is that they do seem to be leaving the program in much better hands. There's no denying that while the Lions only won two games last fall, the team could have easily won nine games and was blown out just once. This was a quantum leap improvement with essentially the same personnel.

The big award winners were pretty much no-brainers.

Cameron Molina was absolutely the team MVP and I can't remember a graduating senior closing out his career with two of his best games before Molina did it against Cornell and Brown last season.

I was also glad to see the recognition for LB Chris Conway, who exceeded lots of expectations after transferring from Duke and seems poised for greater things in 2016.

And I was especially glad to see rising senior DB Jared Katz recognized as most improved player. In the course of just a few weeks, the coaching staff turned his entire career around by challenging him to get tough. Katz's story is essential because we have to believe this coaching staff can make better players out of the men already on the roster. It's not just about better recruiting.

The full list of the award winners is here.

During the evening, we heard official confirmation that WR Scooter Hollis is coming back for this season, which is a big positive.

And a few of the attendees pointed out that Head Coach Al Bagnoli made a big point of mentioning the individual stats of many of the players, breaking from recent tradition and something everyone in the audience appreciated.

After the very difficult losses that ended the 2015 campaign, it's been often a little hard to really focus on the good things about the season. But I think we can close the book on the first year of the Bagnoli era with more than just a little hope for the future.