Catch the Action

Harvard and Cheung Ho look to repeat as Champs

You can watch the Ivy League Media Day live on the Web, (beginning at 10am Eastern I suspect???), at this link. Again, I'm not 100% sure when it will start, but keep clicking on the link to check it out. Hopefully, each of the eight Ivy coaches will get a one-one-one interview.

The annual Ivy Football Poll was released with a couple of minor surprises. Yale and Harvard came in tied for first with 124 total points. I can't remember the last time there was a clean tie at the top.

I was a little surprised to see Dartmouth picked seventh. I thought they would fifth or sixth after last season's wins over Penn and Cornell.

As expected, the Lions were picked last. Last year, we came in 6th in the poll which was high for us. The voters weren't going to be generous again.


Coaching Staff in Study Mode


The Hartford Courant is reporting that Coach Wilson, Coach Marino and a few other Columbia coaches paid a visit to the UConn Huskies practice yesterday. As former Huskie assistants, it's nice that Wilson and Marino are still welcome.

Wilson explained the visit like this:

"We routinely go places to try and find something new and to see what other people are doing."

The article goes on to say the Lion coaches visited Florida this past Spring.


BIG CHANGE

Another year, another big rule change. This season the play clock in college football will be a 40-second clock, but it will begin right after each play ends. This change is being made in hopes of keeping the games going, but without reducing the total number of plays.

You'll remember that last year they moved the kickoffs back to the 30-yard line, but I'm not sure that produced any more exciting returns in the NCAA in 2007.


Schedule finalized... sort of

A quick look over at the "schedules" page on the Columbia football Web site now puts the start time for the home game against Dartmouth at 4pm. Still no official announcement on whether this is the game that will be broadcast on Versus, but it appears to be a done deal.

The usual home game start time of 12:30 is still intact, but it will be altered again for Homecoming to 1:30. Still no word on whether they will bring back the free beer and soft drink service in the picnic area again this season, but I don't see why they wouldn't.

As for the somewhat odd road game start times, the Towson game in week 2 is at 3pm, and the Harvard game starts at the super early 12 noon. But it's all good.