Rising junior Justin
Aimonetti’s latest column in today’s Columbia Spectator serves as the best proof yet that the Lion football players
are just as excited as the fans are about the arrival of new Head Coach Al Bagnoli.
The column also makes a case for the entire spring practice
process from the player’s perspective. But honestly, this is a crucial period
for member of this very new coaching staff that needs to see and judge these
players for themselves.
Spring practice begins in just six days on April 1st.
The big question is whether there will be any big changes in
the depth chart after these practices and scrimmages. And if so, how much of
that info will become public?
Maintaining the fan excitement over this offseason with
almost six months still to go will be a challenge, but hopefully those active
Twitter accounts maintained by the new staff will keep everyone interested for
a long time.
More Excitement
Could Inwood soon become an urban tech hub like Silicon
Alley further downtown in Manhattan?
City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez wants to transform the
mostly undeveloped property from 207th to 215th street on
the east side of Broadway.
You can read more about his plans here.
It’s probably a long shot that anything this grand in scale will
happen soon, but the fact remains that the area around the Columbia athletic
complex is already hotter than any of us ever thought it could be. And a major commercial
development in the area to go along with the residential and small business
revival would likely affect the game day
experience in a positive way.
I expect to see more parking garages, added transportation
options, and lots more restaurants and attractions. I also believe our high
school recruits will become more excited about playing in the area when they
see it on official visits to Columbia.
3 comments:
Interesting article. I had no idea the origin of spring practices started with Harvard. In today's game, spring camp is to install your overall system. You only get a handful of practices and some of them are non-contact so it is a lot of orchestration. You have your general drills to get football-ready but camp is critical to getting an understanding of the system they will be using. Gives them a running start towards the summer practices. In-between players can study the playbook. Not sure if film room is off limits during that time by NCAA rules.
Film room is not off limits and is definitely utilized during Spring.
As you stated it's a time to install packages but also a time for young bucks to compete with each other and show what they can. I would expect competition level to be very heated this year given the coaching change and despite a lack of talent it would probably be an interesting spring session to attend, I'm guessing there will be some serious skull cracking going on as these kids fight to prove they belong on the field this fall.
Tweez,
Not sure there is a general lack of team talent. Hard to determine total team talent level as player ulitilization for the last 3 years was sorely lacking.
The new group of coaches may be able to uncover some diamonds in the rough, as well as being able to push up the talent level of the entire team.
A decent showing this year will undoubtedly help future year's recruiting efforts.
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