Josh Martin
Josh Martin '13 was one of the singular success stories of
Columbia recruiting in the years prior to Pete Mangurian’s arrival.
Originally committed to Wyoming, CU “unhooked” the
still-developing Martin and knew they had a real gem as soon as he arrived on
campus.
Already an All Ivy performer, Martin was an even more
dominant force for the Mangurian-coached Lions in 2012.
And with several NFL scouts in attendance to look at Cornell
QB Jeff Mathews in week 9, Martin made the most of it by terrorizing him all
afternoon. He punched his ticket to the NFL that day and he’s recently been
re-activated by the Kansas Chiefs where he’s already made an impact on special
teams.
It’s true that Martin was only there for one more season
when Mangurian arrived, but the fact is he was still there and he was extremely
effective.
In fact, the presence of just the three players I’ve
mentioned so far - Sean Brackett, Marcorus Garrett, and Martin – should have been
good enough for a 4-5 win 2012 season. As it was, the Lions only barely won
three games.
And Brackett, Garrett and Martin are just the beginning of
the list of returning solid talent Mangurian was lucky enough to inherit two
years ago. Only an cowardly, excuse-happy failure would perpetuate lies about
the many treasures he was handed.
And we will continue to talk about those treasures for weeks
to come.
36 comments:
Why talk about it? It won't help next years team. You must be bored. Let it go man, let it go. PM will coach next yr and its nothing you can do about it. Stop crying like a little girl. Your NOT helping the cause. What if recruits read all this stuff about CU. How are you helping by tearing down the program? Way to go buddy, you recruit for the rest of the Ivy league!
Jake can't let it go. He spins the same record because his ego has gotten involved.
As far as he's concerned, just in case Mangurian doesn't fail on his own, he's going to give the self-fulfilling prophecy a little nudge, in order to ensure that one way or another, it actually comes true.
If you were one of the many talented players returning to the team in 2012 and we're continuing to be bad-mouthed by PM, I doubt you'd want anyone to just let it go.
I hope the recruits are reading this, so they know that no matter what lies PM will tell them now and about them later, the true fans will always appreciate their dedication to Alma Mater.
There's no guarantee Mangu is coming back. He's a highly volatile guy tht could easily have a major incident between now and the summer. My guess will be he'll start another fist fight with a fellow coach like he did when he was with the Giants.
Barring some sort of miracle season, I don't see Pete or Dianne remaining in office to the end of the season. It's always been an unwritten rule that the fans do not boo the players at Baker, which rule, I expect, will be honored next season. On rare occasions, the fans boo the head coach for things like failure to call a timeout promptly, etc. This "war on the alumni" declared by Mangurian and Murphy changes everything. Does anyone expect the fans to remain mute while Fordham scores 40, 50, 60 points next year? The chants for the dismissal of Mangurian and Murphy will be loud and constant. By the time of the homecoming game, the atmosphere at Baker will be intolerable.
So let me see if I understand this correctly:
Since PM isn't going to be fired, your strategy is to hope that he has some kind of breakdown--perhaps a fight with another coach? If that doesn't happen, your fallback position is to create as toxic an atmosphere around the program as you possibly can--the more obstacles in his way the better?
To be perfectly clear, you can't say that he would fail anyway. That's just a way of squiggling out of responsibility for your actions. The only issue is what you choose to do or not to do--to hold off and let him try to win and be judged fairly under the best possible circumstances, or to spend the off season trying to inflict as much collateral damage on the program as possible.
Which strategy do you choose?
Good point. With the pushback on the alumni that Murphy and Mangu started last month, there will now be no mercy on them in the stands. Game 1 next season is against Fordham. How long before that game gets out of hands the fans start giving it to the administration? Mangu really needs to start winning next season and I don't see it.
The REASON why Jake is talking about it, I assume, is because PM, Tellier, Dianne, etc., are telling major alums (Bill Campbell, Robert Kraft, The Hot Dog Committee, and other influential Alums and administrators) that the cupboard was (is) bare and THAT is why we are losing so much (and by such great margins). Jake is merely refuting these preposterous claims and letting the alums know that he is full of dung! Otherwise it is a convenient excuse for PM and his staff to make these erroneous remarks. Also, it’s insulting to the remaining seniors this year. Look, we all know how this movie is going to end, why prolong the agony?
Can someone, anyone, please tell me by what measure (any measure) that Pete and his Staff are a success? I am open to hear anything...
Booing is toxic? Are you familiar with the concept of being a fan?When a team falls humiliatingly behind by 50 points, the booing fans don't create the toxic atmosphere; the COACH creates it. The fans are just responding to it.
Only someone desperately worried about their job in the AD's office would suggest that fans should APPLAUD the coaching staff when their team is 50 points behind. What a joke.
While I will relish for a few minutes the inevitable booing of Mangurian and Murphy at every home game this year, I'd rather skip it and avoid the need for it altogether. Please, let's fire them now and avert the embarrassing scenes we're likely to endure. Homecoming next season will probably be against an up and coming Dartmouth team that may beat us by 57 points this time. How will the sound of 10,000 booing fans feel like? Campbell and Bollinger better be at that game and be ready to take the abuse they so richly will deserve. If not, how about saving us the misery now?
If Jake is spinning the same record, I say good for him because somebody has to spin it. So I prefer to put a positive spin on his spin. Otherwise, another crappy season will surely come and go in the frail life of Columbia football. "Life-support" not life is a better way to describe it, a traumatized patient kicked around now by the likes of mighty Monmouth U.
Don't back off, Jake. Keep the spotlight on the fiasco created by our stalwart, caring leaders Lee And Di.
I sincerely hope, as I do every year in spite of the sour
taste of the previous season, that the Lions will have a great performance. And I hope so even if it keeps Mangurian in his job because if CU has a great season in 2014, it will be because Mangurian decided to ignore the license to fail he got from Lee and Di, and decides to coach the team and coach the games properly, instead of pretending to be the Dr. Mengele of football experiments.
Um . . . Jake declared war on Murphy and Mangurian. They haven't declared on him or us. Silence isn't a declaration of war; it's quite the opposite. Let's try to keep the story straight.
Yes they did. So far, their only comments post this season's debacle is to attack alumni who are making negative comments. Incredible.
See here: http://www.columbiaspectator.com/sports/2013/11/24/mangurian-remains-determined-make-football-winner
You mean you're trying to make things difficult and they said you're making things difficult, that "attack"? Since when is agreeing with you a "declaration of war"? Why live in a fantasy world when there are so many real problems with the football program to solve?
All he said was that it was more difficult to make some headway in the face of alumni attacks. If, from that single sentence, you want to depict yourselves as victims, it certainly doesn't take much.
The quantity and civility of what he said can easily be distinguished from the likes of Jake, who called him fat, said he needed to see a shrink, and is invariably personally nasty and vituperative.
In short, if this is a war, there is no moral equivalence.
What a bunch of babies these Jake-attackers are. Don't boo, don't criticize the staff, don't be toxic, blah blah blah.
Stop trying to deflect attention from the real questions: When will Mango be fired and why hasn't it happened already?
Worst season in the history of the Ivy League. One simply cannot defend the indefensible.
A bit of history might help put things in context. Even Lou Little, a hall of fame coach, ended his tenure at CU with a losing record. His worst season was 1943, and it was as bad or worse than 2013. He went 0-8 and got shut out four times. That team averaged only 4 points per game, and gave up 39.
Buff Donelli, in his second season at the helm after Little's retirement, went 1-8. His 1958 team was shut out 6 times, scored an average of 3.9 points per game, and gave up 32 per game, including a 61-0 rout by Rutgers, then an Ivy level program. Three years later, Donelli won the Ivy title.
I'm not saying Mangurian is a Little or Donelli. What I am saying is that if you are able to think clearly, you will recognize that someone who really, really wants Columbia to turn things around, and who is impatient for results, can nonetheless reasonably disagree with the wisdom of your "solution" to last season. Jake, himself said, "make no mistake, Mangurian is a good coach". Great coaches have had seasons as bad as 2013. If you guys had been in charge, Donelli would not have been around to coach our only Ivy champs, and we'd likely be lamenting being the only progam without a cup.
So throttle back a bit. I have my doubts about Mangurian, too. The difference between you and me is not that I don't care, or that anyone's a baby, or that I'm part of some mysterious athletic department conspiracy to destroy Columbia football. It's that I haven't been blinded by the horror of last season's results, and that I can see the possibility of multiple paths to improvement. If the AD has reviewed the program and decided that staying the course is the right decision, I may disagree but I also know they are acting on far better information than you or I have. Now that the decision has been made, I intend to watch the results closely, and either congratulate their success or hold them to their failure. Now, the goal is to get the best class of recruits possible, and do whatever is possible to improve next season's results.
Brackett was awful.
I second the comment about context. It's what I've been saying all along.
Also, before it goes viral, I never said "don't boo." I was commenting on the prior entry, and someone inserted the comment about booing before my entry was posted.
Finally, this stuff about "babies": what are you, still in the second grade? The formula [0-10= fire Mangurian] won't get you the results you want. It's time that you at least acknowledged that possibility without name-calling.
Re: "a bit of history", above.
Well said, intelligently put and reasonable. A pleasure to read. Seriously.
While PM's poor record is obvious, I believe the problem most of us have here with FB is two-fold, and goes beyond some of the mean jibes, etc. that we've seen.
First, there is NO, and by that I mean ZERO, sense of confidence or hope that he is actually, consciously, proactively making things better. There is no communication with fans, parents or the public. There is no outreach. There is no sense of a bonding with the players or a plan; just reports of intimidation and alienation. So none of us have ANYTHING to hang our hopes on, just an imperious albeit win-less silence. This comment is not meant to be demeaning, just a true indication of our hopelessness with this guy. He gives us nothing. We see nothing. Are we to be content with the expectation of a magic trick next year? A rabbit out of his hat?
Second, PM is only the latest manifestation of the disease we know as Dianne Murphy. So this is another result of 9 years of her failure. And don't let the BS spin they put in the programs throw you; her "record-setting" individual championships that they tout have nothing to do with the total failure of team sports under her regime. Individual titles have more to do with talented people coming here as already quite accomplished performers, and not much to do with our athletic department. Therefore, we do not, as a group, have any confidence in DM's "insight" into PM's capability.
Having said that, I also state that this effort here is a long term one. Anyone expecting instant gratification is doomed to disappointment. I'll happily congratulate anyone for success next year. I'm also pretty sure I won't be congratulating the current regime, because if they are still here, they won't be deserving of the kudos, because the results won't be there.
Towson is playing in the FCS Championship and that coach opened his coaching start with 2-9 and 1-9 seasons. With you jerks he would have never gotten to where the program is now. Same with princeton and their current coach.
This coach is not in the same stratosphere as Brown or Towson. He has accomplished something no other coach has done..been the captain of the ship that produced the worst football team ever in the Ivy League. A feat that is almost too large to comprehend.
So wheel in somebody who can coach and wheel out the motley crew that has continued to make one baad decision after another.
At Cornell, he had a better back to back Ivy league record than any Columbia coach in Ivy league history.
I don't CARE what he did at Cornell. I CARE about his last two years at Columbia. I want to hear about his achievements at Columbia. What are they? He says that he has empirical data to support his claims of progress. Well, then, release the data. It's not as though disclosure of this "secret" information would put us at a competitive disadvantage. The very idea is laughable.
Anonymous offered "a bit of history" for "context"--that Lou
Little had a terrible 0-8 team in 1943, the middle of World War Two. He omitted the "context" that Little's first three postwar teams, 1945-47, went 21-6 and were 10-0 against Syracuse, Navy, Rutgers, Lafayette, Colgate and Holy Cross. So much for deceptive "context" by that poster and others.
No empty diversions from the Lee and Di defenders can change the controlling facts of 60 years of failure and apathy by the people in charge. They don't do their jobs because they don't care.
Their "plan" is to fire the coach every three years and bring in the next Bob Nasal or Bob ShoopDogg. Their "context" is that 60 years of failure should be followed by another 60 years of failure. Genuine fans reject such thinking.
Read the article in the Dallas Morning News on Mark Cuban and hiring a coach. According to his philosophy, PM should be given time and talent to work with. NW didn't leave much talent on the roster.
The Ivy league formed in 1954. Duh.
Thanks, Lion, for making my point. Little had that abysmal season, despite being a hall of fame coach, and then came back with three winning seasons. Under the prevailing attitude here, he should have been fired after 1943 - no subsequent winning seasons, no streak-ending win against Army, etc. Buff Donelli won an Ivy title three years after his abysmal season. What did you learn from that, Lion? That single season records can be poor bases for judging coaches? Or that coaches should be fired right away after awful seasons regardless? If you can't learn from history, you're doomed to relive it. If that's what you want, so be it. Maybe iyou're more comfortable seeing things only in black and white, lots of people are. Personally, I'd prefer to see the football program turned around. That requires a more nuanced approach.
First team all-Ivy = awful? Whatever you say, Coach Mangurian.
Hell, even when Mangurian neutered Brackett and forced him to be a drop back passer, forbidding him from scrambling, he was still honorable mention all-Ivy.
Why do you attribute Anonymous's statement to Mangurian? As for "neutering" Brackett, do you mean the coaches' plan to help him avoid injury and stay on the field, in light of the absence of a capable backup? Just curious.
Why do you attribute Anonymous's statement to Mangurian? As for "neutering" Brackett, do you mean the coaches' plan to help him avoid injury and stay on the field, in light of the absence of a capable backup? Just curious.
But Columbia football has been so bad for so long, why would bringing in new leadership make a difference? Mangurian was fairly successful as head coach at Cornell, goinig 16-14 from 1998-2000 and taking the team to a game vs. Penn for the Ivy title. Perhaps the problem lies with Columbia football more than Mangurian or any other individual - just saying.
To Anonymous who referred to Lou Little's 0-8 record in 1943: Regardless of the aberrational war year, your analogy is incorrect because Little was not in his first year or two at Columbia. It was his 14th year. His first seven seasons produced six winning years and a 4-4-1. He had defeated Penn State twice, Syracuse thrice,
Wisconsin, Georgia, Army, Navy, and Stanford for the 1934 Rose Bowl Championship and again two years later inthe regular season.
I hope we can agree on this much: Mangurian will be the coach in 2014 and I hope, as I always do, that we win every game. If he goes 5-5 or even 4-6, possibly 3-7, Bollinger and Murphy will hold hands as they do cartwheels at Broadway and 116th and let him keep coaching. We, as always, will just have to wait and see.
But as Rich Forzani keeps saying, it isn't the Nasos, Shoops and Mangurian's who count most but the people who keep hiring them. The losing system and culture persist and that's what must change. And Jake
Should keep holding their feet to the fire.
I wasn't making an analogy, Lion, just using some of Columbia's history to show that abysmal seasons don't necessary mean a coach is incompetent. Last season was awful, no doubt, but that doesn't necessarily mean the coaching was bad. That's all.
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