With a couple more days to ponder the now-official list of incoming football freshmen, here are some key points of note:
1) After a long period of seeing fewer and fewer Engineering students on the football team, we have a real bumper crop of SEAS enrollees in this freshmen class. Six of them are enrolled in Columbia Engineering when the entire remainder of the team has only three SEAS students. But among those three are superstar WR Ronald Smith, and two very promising sophomores in QB Dillon Davis and DL Ogonna Oraedu. Get the picture?
When Norries Wilson was the head coach, he talked about how scheduling conflicts made it very hard for Engineering students to make it on the team. I assume Head Coach Al Bagnoli has helped to resolve these issues, thus helping to broaden Columbia's recruiting horizons. Being able to recruit and admit students with talents and transcripts more geared, (no pun intended), to Engineering is a big deal.
2) On the coaching side, I've been lax in reporting that Joe D'Orazio is back on the staff. He had been coaching tight ends in 2015, but is now overseeing the running backs. Joe is very dedicated to Coach Bagnoli and the idea of college coaching above all. The fact that he kept contributing in any way he could to Columbia Football during his two years gone from the program tell you all you need to know.
3) More and more, I hear players and parents telling me how relieved they are that QB coach Ricky Santos stuck with Columbia over some strong offers from Brown and his Alma Mater New Hampshire. The crucial work needed to prepare a new Lions starter at QB will be a lot easier with Santos and his talents and continuity on board.
11 comments:
Yes, i agree with oldlion when he says that Columbia Football's incoming class of 2018 may very well be the best to date, but I still believe that what will make Columbia Football redoubtable this Fall is Bagnoli's magic, his singular ability to make a great player greater, and by turning a group of great players into an even greater team.
Make no mistake: Columbia in 2018 will be a potent team. And as long as Columbia has Al Bagnoli as its Head Football Coach, Columbia Football will become exponentially better every year.
It's unbelievable to be able to say (after literally decades of ineptitude), but it's true: I smell an Ivy League Football Championship in Columbia's not-too-distant future.
And won't that be beautiful!
I know. It's going to be a long summer. Nonetheless, virtually every day, I check Roar Lions 2018. Maybe there will be an announcement of another great player committing to Columbia's Class of 2019. I also check each coach's Twitter account; sometimes, by doing that, you will learn something new about Columbia's football program. When I checked Coach Stovall's (@coachstovall) Twitter page, I came across again the 9:40 Columbia Football's 2017 highlights video. I hadn't watched that for quite sometime. Even though I had seen all 10 games on my computer last season, I was once again amazed and excited by all the spectacular plays made by so many different players. I recommend every Columbia Football fan watch this highlight video. It will help you get through the long summer we all face.
What about those Lion victories at Yale , sending CU to the NCAA Baseball tournament for the 4th time in 6 years!
Go Lions
HOW ABOUT A SHOUT OUT TO OUR BASEBALL TEAM!!
Yeah baby! I drove down to New Haven to see our Columbia Baseball Lions stuff Yale two games to none over two days, shutting them out 4-0 in game 1, and then taking them down after 15 INNINGS 2-1 in game 2. Columbia held Yale to only 1 run in 24 innings. A superb performance by the players and coaches. Hats off to Brett Boretti! Now, on to the NCAAs.
Go Lions!!!
This year marked the death knell of the old canard that Baker Field's locale would preclude athletic excellence. Football, tennis and baseball speaks volumes as to the fact that Baker Field is now the home of athletic excellence.
Columbia Softball had an outstanding season and could win the Ivy League Title next year
One of the best stories for the baseball team was senior pitchers Egly and Wiest, who both struggled for parts of the season, dominating against a good Yale team. Congrats to Boretti and the team. It's a terrific program. And Old Lion is right, pretty much all the Baker teams for both genders had excellent years.
Jake, our recent recruiting is certainly in the upper echelon of Ivy FB recruiting in terms of results. One question that have intrigued me is the following: since we generally target the same student athletes as our competitors, how do we manage to recruit against Penn when so many of our coaches have such longstanding ties to Penn. We have too classy a group to disparage Penn, but our coaches must constantly be asked to compare us to Penn in view of the shared experience of so many of our coaches with the Penn staff. My guess is that our guys talk up the advantages of Columbia but do not talk down Penn. Any insights here? And in a head to head competition with the other Ivies, which schools tend to be our toughest competitors in recruiting? I read a lot on voyforums by people like Sprint 66 who say that Cornell cannot successfully compete because of the size of its endowment, but just how true is that. We seem to be doing just fine although our endowment is not in the top three in the IL.
Jake, 'm not sure you want to blog about this, but I wonder why the Florida QB wound up at Dartmouth.
6/4/18 Came across a wesbsite "Columbia.247sports.com" that featured a list of Columbia 2019 Football Offers.
Interesting.
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