Front Five Failure

Columbia will invade Franklin Field on Oct. 13th


Penn Schedule

Penn announced its 2012 schedule yesterday and William and Mary will be the Quakers’ opponent
the week before Columbia comes to Franklin Field on October 13th.

It will be interesting to see how Penn responds to playing the Lions so soon after taking on a traditional FCS power.

Pros at CU

Columbia is one of three schools taking part in a special MBA program geared towards professional athletes and their tricky schedules. Former Steelers WR Antwaan Randle El is one of the
people you might see on campus in the coming weeks, (hey… don’t we need a new WR coach?).

Offensive O-Lines

Yesterday I outlined the incredible lack of success Columbia has had in recruiting and fielding top quality running backs since 2005.

Some of you pointed out that the offensive lines were to blame and that is a good point.

While Columbia has been able to field NO All Ivy 1st or 2nd Team running backs since 2005, it has only been able to field THREE All Ivy 1st or 2nd Team offensive linemen during that same seven season span.

Jeff Adams was the big exception of course, getting on the 1st Team each of his last three seasons.

Can you guess the other two All Ivy O-lineman in the Norries Wilson era?

Pin a medal on yourself if you remembered it was Matt Barsamian who got onto the 1st Team in 2006 and Mike Brune who got onto the 2nd Team in 2008.

Just to do the math again, in the Wilson era a total of 65 All Ivy 1st and 2nd Team slots were awarded to offensive linemen. A grand total of just FIVE of those slots went to Columbia players; three to Adams and one to Barsamian and Brune.

Yes, that was by far the lowest number of any Ivy school in that period.

To be fair, there were some players who deserved All Ivy recognition and didn’t get it. Names like Ralph DeBernardo and Bob Hauschildt come to mind right away.

But for a head coach like Wilson, who starred as an O-lineman in college and had been an offensive line coach for so many years, it was a true disappointment that Columbia lagged behind the rest of the league so drastically in this category.

New Head Coach Pete Mangurian comes to Columbia after several years as a successful offensive line coach in the NFL. Hopefully he’ll fare a lot better than Wilson as the Lions desperately need to break this weak trend up front.

Bill Campbell Makes me Sad

Speaking of offensive linemen, I still love Bill Campbell and all he’s meant to Columbia football.

But he makes me sad with his new initiative to help “save” American journalism by helping to pour money into the joint journalism project at Stanford and Columbia.

Campbell sits on the Apple board and let’s face it, this is a man who really only became a super success AFTER he got out of the collegiate world and got into the private sector.

So he should know better.

The best way to move journalism forward is to invest in a for-profit enterprise that will encompass blogs, websites, cable TV, iPads, etc.

Look at the faculty list at Columbia Journalism School; it reads like a Who’s Who of the recently laid off and burnt out from the real news media.

These are the LAST people who will be able to move journalism forward and they should be the last people getting their hands on Campbell’s money or his friends’ money.

Universities CAN do a great job gathering talent in medical and technical fields and getting them to move their fields forward in university settings.

But is there anyone who thinks the best journalists are actually working full-time as academics right now?

I thought not.

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