No, the Columbia athletics department has not yet released the 2023 football schedule.
But Marist just did.
And sure enough, the Lions will be hosting the Red Foxes on October 7th, week four of the season for the Lions and the fifth game of the season for Marist.
That confirms that Columbia has indeed canceled, or at least postponed, a once-scheduled road game at Wagner for that week. It also confirms that the Lions will have five home games in 2023.
Columbia has played Marist six times and won each contest. The Lions easily cruised past the Red Foxes in the CU season opener in Poughkeepsie last year, 38-3.
30 comments:
Marist College’s enrollment, 5,000 students. Midwood High School in Brooklyn’s enrollment, 4,000 students. All it would take to get there, or to Baker Field, is a subway token. Whoopee, we will have someone to beat up on. Very disappointing. Really difficult to get excited about the seventh matchup. And no, “a win, is not a win”.
I would rather play Fordham or Stony Brook or Horstra or Monmouth, all local schools that would prepare us better for tough Ivy teams. However, let us not forget that for most of the past 50 years there were no patsies for the Columbia Lions. We couldn't consistently beat any opponent. Hence, let's appreciate the considerable progress our football program has made in that we have consitently outclassed Marist and our other non-confeence opponents in recent years.
Well let's face it, there weren't a lot of available options out there this late in the game. If nothing else, hopefully this will afford the opportunity to get some of the younger guys some playing time. Last season our home games were too close and there weren't many snaps available for the 3rd and 4th stringers.
Columbia is clearly a strong contender this year win its first Ivy League Championship since 1961. Obviously, the coaching staff believes that playing Marist rather than one of the other teams that has been mentioned will help the Lions reach that goal. One of the benefits of the Columbia Women's Basketball Team's historic run to the finals of the WNIT is that they raised the bar for all of our teams. Again, our goal this year should not be to defeat Fordham, Monmouth or Stony Brook, but to win the Ivy League Championship.
In the fall of 1964, before Archie Roberts’ senior season, we played a very tough OOC opponent in our first game and lost 3 or 4 starters, effectively ruining our season. since that time, I have been dead set against playing a tough OOC opponent at the start of the season, when the opponent will have scholarship players and will have already played several games.
I wish our OCC games had a chance to enhance rivalries with schools that have a claim to be athletic and academic peers, auch as Colgate, Lafayette, Lehigh, Bucknell, rather than the rag-tag bunch with which we have no history and no realistic chance of attracting their fans in any significant numbers. i remember well how many alums Colgate used to have at Baker Field in the not that dostant past.
This has been the MO the last 6-7 years to mask the actual Ivy record. And no offense to those schools but come on. Injuries can happen any game so that theory is rubbish. Play schools you recruit against. Iron sharpens iron-it's a disservice to the programs to be playing the Red Foxes of the world.
We don’t recruit against Stony Brook, Hofstra, Monmouth or Albany and only rarely against Fordham. So I am all in favor of playing the Lafayettes, Lehigh, Bucknell etc even though they are partial scholy schools.
Hofstra?
1964?
I would bet that there is zero evidence that playing a good football team results in more injuries than playing a bad one. FCS schools line up to play FBS schools every September - if they were clearly losing players to serious injury then it would stop. And yes, I understand the schools are craven and are signing their kids up for a bad loss mainly for the money. And no, we are not talking about playing Penn State. We're talking about getting a horrible game like Marist off the schedule and replacing it with a Patriot team. I love what Al has done for our program, but the OOC reflects a lack of confidence in our football team. Or maybe just a realization that Marist will draw 3,500 and Lehigh or Colgate would draw 3,800, so you might as well just win the scrimmage.
Harvard plays Merrimack, after all
As much as I prefer tougher teams on the schedule. Marist at home SHOULD allow for some inexperienced players to see the field and gain valuable snaps/experience. CU had that opportunity only 1 time last year and it was only in the last 3 minutes of the Wagner game because that game was closer than it should have been.
Marist at home should afford the opportunity for a number of last year's freshmen to get some meaningful playing time. CU desperately needs that opportunity.
I felt like we sleepwalked through the OOCs last year, but maybe we just weren't very good. Princeton & Penn were a different level in games 3 & 5 and we weren't ready? But maybe I'm wrong. There is a rationale for one easy game, so that backups can see the field. But we had two last year, Marist and Wagner, plus a down Georgetown (which is a game we should keep imo). If we had to play a little faster in game 2, maybe that would help v Princeton?
Not positive I am right, but I am positive I won't go see Marist.
LET’S BE HONEST— Green was injured early on and we didn’t really make the transition until the last three games of the season, when Bell was firmly in charge—at that point we were a good team. We beat Harvard and Brown on the road and totally dominated Cornell. Playing a tougher OOC a schedule early on wouldn’t have made any appreciable improvement. In fact were in not for a few untimely mistakes the Princeton game might have turned out differently. Penn was when we had to pull Green due to his injury. As far as the rest of our games, if our place kicker hadn’t shanked a short FG we wold have beaten Dartmouth. The only truly bad game we played was against Yale, when IMHO we were shell shocked by blowing the Dartmouth game the week before.
Let’s not forget how awful the punting game was, and how much that impacted several losses. 38-3 games do not demand much from a punter. This is not the NFL, where to quote a certain former coach from the New York area, “We are who are our record says we are.” Racking up wins against lesser teams maybe masquerades a team’s shortcomings. Alas, maybe the coaches indeed have a motive.
I am officially appealing to the football gods to please ignore the comments in this thread about marist - seems folks are nearly begging for a very unpleasant surprise this Fall
Beating Hofstra in football would be truly amazing, especially since they discontinued the sport several years ago.
Haven't seen a post from Old Lion in quite sometime.
Hope he's well and happy.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
True, Georgetown and Marist last year were easier wins. But since they were road games, there were no new players who were even there. There was one freshman on the travel squad and only and a handful of underclassmen. The travel squad is significantly smaller than the home field squad. Wagner should have been an opportunity for a number of freshmen and sophomores, but that game was much closer than it should have been so instead of a whole quarter to get those kids some snaps, there were only 2-3 minutes.
I'm fine with Marist at home this year. Wouldn't mind a tougher road OOC game next season if at all possible.
Old Lion has been on voyforums.
Craig Haley believes Marist should be much improved this year and could push for a Pioneer League title. Scroll down: https://theanalyst.com/na/2023/04/jump-on-the-bandwagon-seven-under-the-radar-fcs-teams-that-will-be-improved/
OUR LION BASEBALL TEAM DID IT AGAIN THIS WEEKEND, SWEEPING YALE AT NEW HAVEN BY TAKING THREE ONE RUN GAMES. CONGRATS TO COACH B, HIS STAFF AND THE SQUAD. EXCELLENT PITCHING THIS WEEKEND (ACTUALLY FROM YALE AS WELL AS US).
Is there any risk that our wonderfully smart, talented and highly successful Baseball Coach is going to get in trouble with the higher-ups in the Columbia Administration? See Columbia's Men's Basketball
Not sure what that comment above is getting at? Are you snarking that Pilling or the higher ups prefer failure? Baseball is very well supported, as witnessed by three road trips South this spring to start the season. Not to mention major upgrades over the years to our facility and the fact that Brett recruits nationally and has a full complement of assistants. Pretty sure Paul Fernandes had one assistant back in the day. I do wonder at times why the entire league seems to have elevated baseball - we are not the only school taking multiple long road trips to play Top 20 teams, eg. The real issue is why Pilling is content to let MBB languish. This is not the norm for Columbia anymore.
Yes, I was just "snarking" at Pilling and others in the Columbia Administration for paying Engles a fortune to screw-up the Columbia Men's Basketball Program over the last seven years. Brett is a great baseball coach and already has seven wins this year against Columbia's Ivy League opponents. Compare that to Engles' record of four wins and 38 losses in the last three basketball seasons.
It is a mystery why Pilling tolerates this embarrassment of a program. Maybe next year we can play eight or 10 D3 games, get Jim closer to .500.
I am starting to believe the Sherwin rumor that he left a large gift contingent on Engles keeping his job, as a thank you for allowing Gerry to sit on the bench. What else could it possibly be? We simply do not have an Ivy caliber team and has not for several years.
If 4-38 over the last three Ivy campaigns isn’t enough to get rid of Lucky Jim, then I don’t know what is. What a travesty! I’m just waiting for half the current roster to quit, along with the inevitable injuries to another quarter of the team. I actually think we would win more games with no coach than with Lucky Jim. Getting rid of him would truly be addition by subtraction.
When a clearly incompetent employee is not terminated for cause it is usually because of an illicit relationship that person has had with a superior or favors that employee has extended to others. In Lucky Jim's case, his record as an employee of Columbia University is so awful that you have to assume that one or both of those reasons are why he hasn't been terminated yet by our Lame Duck President and the current Athletic Director. My guess is that they are trying to push this issue off into the summer or fall.
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