Victory!
I'm back from my brief travels, but still need a bit more time to get back into posting. But here are some quick thoughts until later this afternoon:
Genarlow Wilson at 17
Justice!
Genarlow Wilson will soon be free! Pay no attention to the pathetic appeal being filed by the Georgia prosecutor, Wilson will be out soon. This is great news.
Some readers emailed me to ask whether they thought Columbia would recruit Wilson again as soon as he's out. First off, it should be noted that Wilson was only lightly recruited by CU and Brown before the incident that put him behind bars. Second, he may need some serious time to get back into the swing of things football-wise once he is released. But Hell, wouldn't it be great if he turned out to be a great student and player for the Lions or any school for that matter?
Rating the Freshmen Classes
Some readers have been asking for my analysis of all the other Ivy teams' incoming freshmen classes. It is a very tricky deal to try to predict which players look better than others more than two months before training camp. However, I am willing to look closer at each recruit list and make some predictions about how many potential impact players are out there. (Of course with my luck, I bet 2-3 of my "top picks" will probably end up quitting before the season starts). Look for my take sometime today or tomorrow.
Yale's Mike McLeod has to be the favorite to win the 2007 Bushnell Cup (CREDIT: Yale Daily News)
Bushnell Sweepstakes
There's a good discussion on the VOY Ivy Sports Board on who the favorite should be to win the Bushnell Cup, (Ivy League MVP), this season. Since freshmen have about a 0% of winning, I don't think it's too early at all to start thinking about this. Here are my top 5 choices:
1) Mike McLeod, RB Yale
McLeod was really the best individual player in the Ivies last year. But he missed out on the Bushnell Cup because winner Jeff Terrell of Princeton was a great leader for the team most experts thought was the best in the league, (remember Princeton beat Yale, AT YALE, making the shared Ivy title with the Bulldogs a bit dubious in my eyes). But McLeod led the league in rushing with 1,364 yards and he had 20 total touchdowns to boot... as a sophomore! If he repeats that performance in 2007, it will be hard to keep him from grabbing the Cup this time around.
2) Joe Sandburg, RB Penn
This is all contingent on Penn either winning the Ivies or coming darn close. If the Quakers do win it, I can see the coaches voting to reward Sandburg who's using his 5th year of eligibility to play in 2007. He can really carry his offense at times. But if Penn puts in another 3-4 in-league record, or even if Penn comes in second, I think his candidacy is basically dead.
3) Craig Hormann, QB Columbia
Craig Hormann may not be the most talented player on the Lions, but if he recovers from his ACL injury and leads Columbia to a 6-4 record or better, then he could very well be the beneficiary of the "shocked factor" from the majority of the Ivy coaches who I expect to pick the Lions for 7th or 8th again this year in the pre-season poll. But Hormann would flat out deserve the award if he continues to avoid interceptions, (he threw just six all of last season, one in every 54 attempts), and boosts his TD passes and overall completion percentage.
4) Brendan Circle, WR Princeton
Princeton was been underestimated in the pre-season polls in 2005 and 2006, and with Roger Hughes growing into one of the best coaches in the league, anything is possible. But in the 27 years they've been awarding the Cup, only two wide receivers have won it, (Harvard's Carl Morris won it twice in 2001 and 2002, and Brown's Seam Morey won it in 1997). Circle will be working with a new QB this season, probably Greg Mroz, and that means we can expect some of the passing stats to fall off a bit at least in the first few weeks. But if Princeton wins the championship, it will be hard to believe that Circle won't be one of the biggest reasons why.
5) Luke Siwula, RB Cornell
I'm not as bullish on Cornell's chances this year as I was in 2005 and 2006. Siwula's numbers dropped off a bit last season without a dangerous running QB to keep defenses off-guard. But he's still a talented runner and he could be extra motivated for his senior campaign. But Siwula's candidacy also relies on the Big Red having a big year.
posted by Jake @ 10:55:00 PM
12 comments
12 Comments:
McLeod is a creep--his somersault into the end zone was bush league, and he had some off the field problems. Sandberg is a nice player who wanted out of Penn but we could not touch him. He transferred to Rutgers and then returned to Penn. Circle may not even be all Ivy. Hormann can do it; QBs have a great shot. Siwula is a decent back but not really a candidate. Austin Knowlin is the best receiver and runner after the catch in the Ivies and is a future candidate.
Well, I have to agree that I'm not exactly rooting for McLeod after those antics in the CU game last year. But he is racking up big numbers for Yale
The Bushnell Cup takes sportsmanship into account. As far as I am concerned McLeod stands for the exact opposite of a Bushnell winner. I hope that our defense remembers his stunt when we play Yale at home this year.
Yale's head football coach was a jerk for calling a time out so one of his players could score a nasty last minute touchdown against Columbia in last year's game. As far as I know, neither Sadieki nor his players apologized to Coach Wilson and the entire Columbia team for that stunt so it's on their collective conscience for the rest of their lives. I have no idea whether McLeod is a "creep," as one blogger suggests, but that term certainly fits Yale's head coach.
Jack is a low life creep and McLeod's somersault puts him into the same category as Jack. I hope that we can not only beat Yale this year, but win big. Jack's last second TD was pathetic. Supposedly a lot of his guys hate playing for him; not a surprise.
It's the defenses job to prevent the offense from scoring, not the offenses' head coach. If the Yale head coach called a time out in an attempt to punch another one in late in the game, the "D" should man up and stop them, not whine afterwards about the other team scoring late and hurting their feelings.
For the record, no one on the CU team complained publicly about the TD and neither did Norries Wilson. I suspect the incident will only serve as a motivator for this season.
It has long been a tradition that when the team with a lead has the ball with less than a minute to play and the defense has no time outs left, that the offense takes a knee. Any caoch at any level with any class orders his QB to take a knee. This nonsense that it's the job of the defense to stop the offense is an excuse for the classless behaviour of a coach who should know better. It reminds me of the time when George Allen was coaching the REdskins and called a time out against the Giants with about a 40 point lead so that he could kick a field goal with seconds left on the clock. As far as I am concerned, Jack's teams can't lose enough. He is no Carm Cozza, who was a classy guy who never would have pulled that stunt. It will be a real problem for me when Yale plays Penn this year unless somebody can come up with a way for both teams to lose: the best I can do is a scoreless tie after 3 OTs.
Jake, how can anyone rate the incomings without good film evaluation on them all? Other than that you can pick all the guys that got the biggest hype in their local papers. That doesn't make them better players. Until they take the practice field against legit Ivy players, no one really knows.
dabull:
Very true... it's very difficult. But there are some impressions you can get and I would have to say that a good majority of the most-hyped frosh coming into Columbia over the years turned out to be great players.
I've found that the pre-Ivy predictions usually play out, but it's the other factors like injuries that end up playing just as big a roll. The crap shoot is not so much in gauging a player's ability, but in trying to judge how lucky they'll be avoiding injuries and handling the academic pressures.
The coaches are unlikely to pick us for the bottom of the league this year. We have too much talent on both sides of the ball. I think that we are going to challenge for the title this year. The way we finished the season was magnificent. We can replace our seniors. We are loaded with incoming palyers who can make a difference. We have the best returning passer in the league. We have the ROY and two other players who could have been ROY. We have a brilliant defensive scheme. And we have a great staff.
If we are picked higher than 6th, I'll be shocked. The Ivy coaches will not respect us until we put up more wins. It's not like they put a tremendous amount of thought in the poll, so they usually just go with the safe choices, and Columbia is not a traditionally safe choice to win it all. Princeton was picked 6th last year and co-champion Yale was not in the top 3 as I recall. Expect Penn or Harvard to come out on top, and maybe Yale. I usually welcome getting buried in the pre-season polls as they allow us to sneak up on a few teams if not the entire league.
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