SDLSS (Springtime Delusionary/Low Self-Esteem Syndrome)

Over the long weekend, the Athletic Department officially announced the football class of 2018. 

There were some changes to the class as of my last check on Feb. 14^th.

Gone is Benet Academy linebacker Nick Surges, and added to the list are WR Landon Baty, DB Colin Early, and OL Benjamin Robbins.

There's no sign of the possible transfer from Minnesota.

I’m encouraged by a couple of the names on the list, specifically QB Anders Hill and DL Collin Breckinridge, but there’s nothing to tell us whether this class is better or worse than any we’ve had in the past. Anyone trashing these guys excessively, (other than noting that so many of them have absolutely terrible highlight videos), is going too far just as anyone praising them too much is also too removed from reality. There’s a reason the rest of the league’s fans laugh at us so mercilessly and it’s not just because the football team loses. It’s mostly because so many of the football fans at Columbia routinely cheer anything and everything other than wins and expect to be taken seriously. How any fan can get all excited about the football quality of this class before it plays one game, let alone wins one, after all that we have been through is stunning to me and laughable to everyone else.

But as I say every year, it isn’t wrong to say that all these young men are already winners. Why? Because they and their parents have made the wiser choice to go to an Ivy League program when most of them could have walked on, or at least tried to walk on, to a bigger football program.

Think Big: We're Selling Pure Gold

They're also winners because they’ve basically won the lottery. A friend of mine recently ran the numbers and found that non-varsity sports athlete applicants have less than a 1% chance of getting into Columbia or any other Ivy school. These kids are in, and most of them will do as well if not better than the non-athletes after graduation. Good for them for seeing the forest for the trees, but no matter how poor our football program is, I fear too many of the readers here are missing the fact that getting into any Ivy for any reason is a major achievement that a lot of players and parents are willing to forget about win-loss records to attain.

In other words, everyone here who thinks our recruiters are geniuses and Head Coach Pete Mangurian is doing something right simply because we pick up a few quality recruits is deluding themselves. Columbia, and all the Ivies, sell themselves simply with our name. The only thing we should look at is how badly Ivy recruiters do at selling something as easy to sell as an Ivy League education and diploma.

I say this as a general indictment of all the league, not just Columbia. I hope a lot of you got a chance to check out  this amazing story about the former UNC fullback Devon Ramsey who had an un-named friend who went to Columbia to play football. Ramsey was dragged down by an academic scandal at Chapel Hill, but he realizes that it would have been better for him to come to CU like his friend and get a real education for life while still playing ball.

Question: why doesn’t Columbia and the rest of the Ivy recruiters do a better job of getting this message across? I realize some players and their parents will forever be deluded about their chances of going pro, etc. But our “catch rate” for better basketball and football players should be higher. I would make the point that Harvard has made its move to the top in basketball based very much on honing this pitch to best of all recruits. It’s time for Columbia to do this too in football.

It’s time to shake off the low self-esteem we all have when it comes to Ivy sports and stop celebrating getting commitments from only the mid-major prospects.

We have something priceless to sell, let’s start selling it better.

Baseball Gets it Done

It was another thrilling weekend for baseball, as the Lions swept a tough four game series over a super-pitching Cornell team in Ithaca. The Lions are now tied with Penn for the Gehrig Division lead at 13-3 with the all-important four game home-and-home series with the Quakers beginning on Friday in Philly.

Men’s tennis also won the Ivy title this weekend with a win over Princeton.

I like this piece by Peter Andrews in the Spectator today documenting the strong spring for CU athletics after the terrible fall. But Andrews is also 100% right that this should do nothing to relieve the pressure on Mangurian and Murphy when football season comes along. He also makes the point that winning just one game this fall is not good enough to be considered an adequate improvement.