Expectations Risen

(I apologize for the lack of posting lately, as I was traveling abroad. But I have returned to New York!)

Today's Columbia Spectator is the latest publication to note the high ratings for the football team's incoming recruiting class.

Besides the obvious fact that such talk truly raises expectations for the team, I thought there were two points in the piece worth of special note:


1) Head Coach Al Bagnoli's comment that the coaching staff is making a big splash on social media. This isn't just the #1 way news and info is getting out there for young people, it has now become the #1 way news and info is getting out there for everyone on Earth.

2) Greg Abbruzzese '91, was right to point out how even after more than a year at the helm no one is complaining publicly or privately about Bagnoli. There has never been so much "buy-in" from the Columbia world on probably anything.

Trinh Bolts

Based on the across-the-board offers he received, you could argue that LB Anthony Trinh was the #1 incoming freshman football player in the Ivies.

But now Trinh has decided to nix his verbal commitment to Princeton in favor of a preferred walk-on offer from Stanford.  "Preferred walk-on" status usually means the player taking that offer will have a good chance of getting a scholarship slot in a year or two.

While I have argued many times that it's the smartest move to take the Ivy offer over a slot at just about any other program, it's hard to make that same argument about schools like Stanford, Cal, Michigan, and Northwestern, etc. And the Trinh story shows just how easy it is for those schools to disrupt our recruiting process.