One of our more highly-regarded commits for the coming fall has ditched CU for Stanford.
These things happen, but you hope guys like Braden Marceau have at least made this decision based on getting an athletic scholarship. We'll see.
Poppe to Union
Former Lion Defensive Backs Coach Jon Poppe is the new head coach for Union College Football. Of course, Union was CU Head Coach Al Bagnoli's first head coaching gig and it appears he highly recommended Poppe to the Union search team.
This is perhaps as good a time as any to speculate again about Bagnoli's tenure with Columbia. I'm happy to report that my sources telling me the 2022 season would be his last with the Lions were either incorrect or Bagnoli simply changed his mind.
It feels like two strong candidates for the job whenever Bagnoli does hang it up are now head coaches. Many recent football alums are high on UNH Head Coach Ricky Santos, who was the Lions QB coach for three seasons under Bagnoli. Others are high on Poppe, whose case to get the job here seems to have improved now that he will have some head coaching experience to bank on whenever the Columbia job opens up.
I'm hoping we keep Bagnoli for another three years at least.
24 comments:
Th Union press release had effusive praise for Poppe from our own Al Bagnoli. Not a word from Harvard’s Murphy or anybody else at Harvard.
I m not by any means a defender of Murphy, but to be fair .... Al is featured in the Union College press release because he is a Union College Hall of Fame Coach (inducted in 2003) .... You can bet that Murphy suppored Poppe who he made a special effort to bring back to Harvard for a 2nd tour !!! ... but Bag's is of greater interest to Union alums than Murphy ....
Just my opinion ... and I'm sticking to it
Remember, Al Bagnoli was hired at Union, by their Athletic Director, Dick Sakala, CC’ 62, and was a quarterback on the ‘61 team.
Dick was an Associate Athletic Director at Columbia until going to Union in 1977.
Can we turn our attention for a minute to the disaster that is the MBB program. Why are Columbia’s alumni the only group demanding that the coach be replaced ASAP! Where is the protest & outrage from the student body? I can only surmise that they somehow lack the motivation to involve themselves in correcting an embarrassing and untenable situation that affects the entire Columbia community, past and present. It’s shameful!
because everyone is basking in the success of WBB.....1/2 isn't bad......they typically both suck, but the girls are having an historic run. so much fun to watch......we can't wait for next weekend, but it's all about WBB. MBB is minor league.
Why not have Al stay until he turns 78 and then run for president?
Jim Engles' motto? "KEEP ON LOSING!"
The MBB situation is clearly a disaster. We have three talented backcourt players but yesterday’s winnable game at Hanover showed that our front court is not competitive. The two first years have some potential but are not physically equipped to play D1 ball without at least a year in the weight room. A previously unheralded Dartmouth senior center went off for 40 against us—it was like an NBA player against a high school team. And did the coach try to double him, as the very pro-Dartmouth announcers wondered aloud? Of course not. So a winnable game was lost in the last 2 minutes.
Glad to hear Coach B. likely back. He has turned the culture around, regarding our football program, to the point that we are competitive and respected once again throughout the league. The fact that we can attract attention from a potential recruit like Braden Marceau speaks volumes.
Sorry, the rule at present Is you have to be at least 80 in years, and minus zero in intelligence, honesty, morality and
patriotism. Even a smidgen of common sense disqualifies you.
Why would an athletic director protect an awful college basketball coach for seven years? What's going on and why? This is a very bad situation that is likely to get much worse thru inaction. And where are the Board of Trustees of Columbia University? I just hope that this is just a mistake in judgment and not something else.
Clearly you misunderstand the role of the board of trustees at Columbia. While there might, and should be, individuals amongst that group who are outraged by the incompetence of our basketball coach, the board as a group could care less. It will be basketball alums who dictate terms to Pilling to end this farce.
We finally got rid of Mangurian when the players openly revolted against him. This will not happen since Engles is not the martinet that Mangurian was. He is a good man who just isn’t a fit here.
A "mistake" after seven years? Give me a break!
As I posted sometime ago, I gave up on Engles years ago.
A another scandal? I think so.
Bollinger and the Board of Trustees have done nothing to tell the truth about the Columbia Data Scandal.
Over 300,000 Columbia alumni have been betrayed.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Our next coach should be someone with at least a .500 record as head coach. And if he has Ivy experience (including as an assistant), it should be with a winning program, ideally somewhere like Princeton. Under no circumstances should anyone with any ties to Engles be hired.
Let’s face it—a university president should never stay more than 8 to 10 years. Bollinger’s last few years have been a train wreck. perhaps he was mailing it in, perhaps he was burned out, but the USNWR fiasco can only be explained by incompetence or malfeasance, or both. My issue is his failure to recognize the centrality of the College and to chip away at its status as the crown jewel of the university.
It may be difficult for us College Alumni to accept, but the role of the College in the University is not what it once was. It was not that long ago that the major administrative positions at the undergraduate level were all staffed by people who had “CC’xx” after their names. That includes; the Dean of Columbia College, the Director of Admissions of the College, the Athletic Director.
There are ten people with the title of “dean” in the College; and not one attended Columbia College. Today, even the editor of CCT (Columbia College Today) is not an alumnus.
How does one preach the doctrine of the “Core Curriculum” without ever having experienced it?
Indeed, the College once was the “crown jewel”, but no longer.
It was in September of 1903, that Daniel Chester French’s sculpture was erected. While the sculpture remains the same, little else remains the same at my alma mater.
The chair of the board of trustees is a member of the College class of 1988. Let’s see what he does in his role. And let’s see what we have in the new President and the new Dean of the College.The most passionate and devoted alumni of the university have always been College alums. Money talks.
I would be careful to describe Coach Engles as a "good man who is just not a fit here," until the facts come out. When a coach's record is as bad as his is, you have to assume that he has some friends in high places. I am not suggesting that anything improper happened, but absent any rational basis for his continued employment, you have to wonder what is really happening. Also, the Mangurian analogy while certainly pertinent, involved a football team with about 100 players including many upperclassmen and lots of active interested alumni. The Columbia Men's Basketball situation is entirely different as you only have about 15 current players and a much smaller alumni group. What happened with Columbia Football 5+ years ago, is very unlikely to be repeated with Columbia Men's Basketball. In this day and age, where transferring is now the standard, young players who are unhappy simply transfer to another school rather than complain about the head coach. Many of Engles best players have already done that.
Engles must have video on somebody high up. Let's get the DOJ involved and I guarantee that within 10 years, we will find out! Meanwhile how many 1-13 years can we experience?
EARTH TO PILLING
"Friends in high places"? No need for that......all that's required is a good ole buddy heading the Athletic Department. It's crystal clear, for whatever reason(s), the AD has been and will continue to be the principal protector of the MBB coach. Obviously, consecutive 1-13 Ivy results is adequate enough justification for both of them to continue moving down this ruinous path.
The pope is also a good man, but that doesn’t mean he should be our coach. Then again, he couldn’t possibly lose more games than Engles. And we’d probably have better attendance numbers.
No white smoke yet in the Columbia Chapel! But can we make an offer?
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