Lining it up Right

Why was Brackett under center in this game from 2012?



It's not always about recruiting.

It's certainly a huge part of the story, but Columbia football fans know very well that even during the brief periods where we've seen superior talent on the field, it hasn't always been used properly.

The basic problem seems to be that several of our most recent coaching staffs have either misdiagnosed our talent or they came into each season too closely married to a specific system no matter the player personnel.

We saw this in 2012, when Pete Mangurian decided to put speedy and resourceful QB Sean Brackett '13 into a pro set despite the fact that his talents and track record screamed for a read option strategy like the Pistol formation.

Before Magurian, Brackett wasn't exactly used 100% properly by Norries Wilson and his offensive coordinator Vinny Marino either. It was colossal example of waste as the best overall QB this program has seen in 25+ years was held back from doing the kind of damage he should have been able to do for four years.

Reason #215 why the hiring of Al Bagnoli is such a relief and a rallying point for some many of us long-suffering fans is this: the overwhelming lesson you get from Bagnoli's long successful career is that he is always ready to change his system based on who he has on the field.

We've seen Bagnoli win titles with running QB's like Billy Ragone. We've seen him do it with pro-style passers like Gavin Hoffman and Matt Rader, etc.

If there is one constant in Bagnoli's career it's that he always seems to sacrifice most everything else in order to have a strong defense and good offensive line. But that's not something that I can see ever being the wrong thing to do.

These last two years of Columbia football have made the job of assessing our best talent very hard. When you go 0-21 and lose every game by buckets of points, it's really impossible to feel confident about ratings our strengths and weaknesses. Everything just seems like a weakness.

But I'm quite sure Bagnoli and his staff will assess this team based on what it is, not what they think every team should be. And based on that, I do think we'll see an offense that calls for using a mobile QB a lot more often. And I do think that under Jon McClaughlin we'll build our O-line the old fashioned way, instead of slimming down our incoming freshmen and putting them well behind the 8-ball before they step foot on campus.

As Bagnoli and his staff fix things, I predict they're going to come to a realization that the previous staffs and the administration did not fail because they had bad luck despite good and honest best efforts.

They're going to find that Columbia football has failed in the past because of stubbornness in the face of failure, defiance in the face of fair criticism, and self-assurance that everything possible was being done in the face of better and more extensive efforts by everyone else around them.

The overall problem of making Columbia football a championship program won't be easy. But making it a lot better is something that's already on the way because a proven competent staff is in place.

And we're about to see how that staff starts to use the players the right way.