An Honest Assessment?

Mathiasmeier Named Player of the Week

Following on my lead after I named him the MVP of the game, (ha ha), the Ivy League has named senior S Ben Mathiasmeier the Defensive Player of the Week. This is well-deserved for him personally, even though the defense overall is probably not very proud of its overall performance in the win.

2-0... for real?

In my 35 years of following Columbia Football, the team has been 2-0 a grand total of five times (1996, 2005, 2006, 2018, and 2021). Only the 2005 team turned out to be weak, while the rest finished at .500 or better.

I certainly don't think this team is as bad as the 2005 squad. But these wins did come against relatively weak opponents, (though let's see about Georgetown at the end of the year). On the other hand, this is a CU team that's winning without its best offensive skill player who should be back for the rest of the schedule. 

Nevertheless, these Lions have me thinking about an Al Bagnoli team of the past. 

Of all of Bagnoli's amazing achievements as Penn's head coach for 23 years, the job he did with the 2012 Quakers was probably the best. 

Somehow, some way, that team won the Ivy title despite going 6-4 and looking a lot less than impressive in several games. 

Even a weak Columbia team came into Franklin Field that year and really should have won. As I documented the game at the time, only a ridiculous pass interference penalty and a dropped gimmee interception lost that game for the Lions. 

That Penn team started the season 0-2, and then 1-3 before winning 5 of their last six in one close game after another. 

Why am I mentioning this now?

Because that's the kind of team Columbia will probably need to be to contend for a title this season. Unlike the Quakers in 2012, the Lions are now 2-0. But they'd probably be 0-2 if they played the kind of competition Penn faced in the first two weeks of 2012. There are some pretty good things about this Columbia team, and its best offensive skill player still hasn't played a down. But the Lions are probably not going to dominate any Ivy opponents this year, especially Princeton in New Jersey. 

Like they did in 2017, and like the Quakers did in 2012, each Ivy game is probably going to be close... if they win. Don't discount the chances of Columbia losing big on the road to some of the stronger teams in the league, which is a possibility unless we see some improvement in the pass rush. 

On the other hand, this Lion team may simply be playing up or down to the competition. My sense is that if CU makes it a game of any kind at Princeton Saturday, the biggest reason why will be because Columbia is letting the opposing teams set the pace. That's not always a bad thing, but it does tend to make games against poor opponents closer than they should be. 

Princeton has played two very bad teams that are even worse than Marist and Georgetown. But the Tigers have annihilated both of them and that means something... maybe not a lot, but something. 

Depending on whom you ask, the Lions will lose by anywhere from 14 to 35 points this weekend. 

I guess that's bulletin board material for the Columbia players, but it should also serve as motivation to Bagnoli and some of the guys who were with him at Penn nine years ago who remember that you only need to win by one.