Visions of the Past, Present, and Future

Nico Gutierrez is looking like his old self again (CREDIT: MAXPREPS)


Here's a nice piece about a high school practice game in Connecticut this week featuring incoming freshman Nico Gutierrez. The best lines were:

"(Head Coach Lou) Marinelli said one of his biggest thrills of the evening was seeing the Columbia-bound Gutierrez back on the football field after he missed his senior season with an ACL tear.

'The best thing was to get glimpses of what Nico's going to be at Columbia and what he could have been for us," Marinelli said. "He was great and Casali was awesome and so were Neeleman and Reed. Even Steve Gallego did a tremendous job catching the ball for a lineman.'"


Tad Survives latest Cut

After day 14 of training camp, Columbia grad and CFL draftee
Tad Crawford is still looking good for the British Columbia Lions in Vancouver. But he did not record a tackle in the first preseason game against Saskatchewan last Friday night, and I'm sure Tad wants to make a bigger impact in the next exhibition contest at Edmonton tonight. But there were more than 25,000 people in the stands for that Saskatchewan game, ( BC Place Stadium has room for 60,000), and that must have been exciting for Tad as I'm not sure he saw a crowd even close to that size home or away in his four years at Columbia.

The Supreme Court handed down an interesting ruling today concerning the recruiting of middle school students by a Tennessee high school football powerhouse, Brentwood Academy (SCOTUS DECISION). Currently, there are no Brentwood Academy grads playing Ivy football, but I'm sure there have been quite a few over the years, (I'll check into Columbia's recent past over the next few days).

If the idea that a private school would go all the way to the Supreme Court to complain about not being able to recruit 7th and 8th graders as much as they'd like seems pretty excessive... I actually think it's sick. Athletics are very important in education, but these guys take it too far.

And I hope some of you noticed the open call for singers on the (Columbia website today. I have to say that anyone with the guts to publicly sing the very, very tough song that is the Star Spangled Banner is aces with me. See the info below:

SING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!
Columbia Athletics invites YOU to audition to perform the Star-Spangled Banner at a home event. Please send audition reels to Daniel Spiegel, Assistant Director of Sports Marketing – 3030 Broadway, Mailcode 1939, New York, NY 10027. All ages eligible to audition.

All submissions become property of Columbia University Athletics. For more information, call Daniel Spiegel at (212) 854-8327 or email him at das2145@columbia.edu.