Thursday, November 13, 2008

Scouting Cornell


I went to a little school called Cornell... have you HEARD of it?

Cornell is another one of those Ivy teams that's a little hard to figure out. The Big Red began the season 3-0, highlighted by a great defensive effort in a 17-14 home win over Yale.

But then the bottom fell out as Cornell lost four in a row with only one of those games being close, (the 31-26 loss to Princeton at home), before burying reeling Dartmouth at Schoelkopf last weekend.

For a 4-4 team, the Big Red's stats are right in line. They're giving up about as much rushing yards as they gain, and passing for about the same amount of yards as they give up.

The quarterback, Nathan Ford, is throwing for a lot of yards and TD's, but also lots of interceptions.

The leading running backs, Randy Barbour and Luke Siwula, have their moments but both are averaging under four yards per carry.


The leading tackler, Tim Bax, is in the secondary... which is a bad sign, (for Cornell, that is).

You could crunch the stats more for additional evidence of why the Big Red are a prototypical .500 team, but the Columbia-Cornell series over the last 20 years has really not been about stats. The two New York Ivies have played an overwhelming number of close and exciting games since 1989 no matter where they were sitting in the standings.

Last year was one of the very rare years when the game was not really that close. A touchdown return on the opening kickoff began a flurry of bad luck for the Lions that ended in a 34-14 loss. You have to go back to 1990, when the Big Red drubbed the Lions in rain-drenched game by 41-0, to find the last home game when Columbia was routed by Cornell.

But since 1989, Cornell leads the tight series 10 wins to 9 with 10 of those games decided by a touchdown or less.

I expect this weekend's game to be tight again, and another test for the young but very talented Lions secondary.


Fuller Stands?

The Cornell-Columbia game is usually very well attended, thanks to regularly strong attendance from the Cornell alumni who make the game a big event at their alumni club. That includes a short parade, rain or shine.

Speaking of Cornell alums, perhaps the most famous Cornell alum these days is the fictional "Andy Bernard" character from NBC's The Office.

The character actually mentioned Nathan Ford's name during a funny moment in a recent episode of the show that got me laughing and gasping at the same time.

For some reason, the Andy Bernard character is a total idiot, which I fear may be the result of Harvard alum and Office writer/actor B.J. Novak's, (no relation), typical Harvard snobbery. My suspicions of Harvard elitism dripping into Bernard's antics take some of the fun out of it for me even though I'm not a Cornell alum of course. I have to say that Ivy-over-other-Ivy elitism and snobbery depresses me like nothing else. Whenever I see it, I am more inclined to believe that even if there were just two people left on Earth, they would eventually kill each other.

Okay, back to the game...

The forecast is for steady rain Saturday, and that could keep the numbers down... which is a shame because this is also "Senior Day" for the 17 guys on the roster who stuck it out for four years. For the last few years, the final home games have begun with each senior getting individually introduced and met on the field by his family. It's a great tradition that I hope continues.

A tradition that I hope also continues is Columbia's one game home winning streak, not only this season, but also against the Big Red who fell to the Lions 21-14 the last time they came to Wien Stadium.

I hope to see you there too.

9 Comments:

At Fri Nov 14, 12:12:00 AM GMT+7, Blogger cj from san andreas said...

Hey, I am a current Columbia cheerleader and have been frequenting your blog this year. I just want to say I enjoy it thoroughly. Looking forward to this last home game of the year and hoping for a couple more wins.

Peace

 
At Fri Nov 14, 12:17:00 AM GMT+7, Blogger Jake said...

Thank you cheerleader! We always welcome current students, especially those who support athletics.

I hope you saw the post I wrote a while back about a former CU cheerleader who is now a big success.

The link is here, (just scroll down to the middle of the page for the relevant info):

http://roarlions.blogspot.com/2007/03/get-better-craig-fast.html

 
At Fri Nov 14, 02:57:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jake,
At the risk of being edited out I just want to point out that Cornell is only half Ivy. A former starting OL from Cornell who was an associate at my law firm told me that the coaching staff steers a lot of their recruits to hotel administration and two other state schools which are not academically demanding. If you were to post the Cornell two deep for football and basksetball you would see that Arts & Scinces, and Engineering, which are great schools, are not well represented.

 
At Fri Nov 14, 03:38:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, only four starters are engineering, including the team captain and starting quarterback. Just looked through the roster and there are three Hotel students (the best program in the country by the way, and two are walk-ons). Believe me, all of these students could have gotten into Columbia. It's frustrating to hear people who don't know what they are talking about pretend they are superior in some way. Cornell has wonderful, talented student-athletes, just like Columbia. And of course, Cornell has the well-earned reputation of easiest to get into, but hardest to graduate from. Let's celebrate all the kids instead of trying to tear them down. Just a ridiculous post.

 
At Fri Nov 14, 05:01:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jake, there is a significant change ont he two deep. DeBernardo has moved to RG and Lipovsky is starting at RT.

 
At Fri Nov 14, 08:14:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Agree in that we don't need any Cornell bashing going on as I have siblings that have played for both and they are both great schools in their own right. Ithaca is fair game, just not the school-J..This has always been a very well attended game in NYC-sadly mostly from Cornell- and as Jake says historically a very competitive in- state rivalry game. I would expect more of the same Saturday. Go Lions!!!

 
At Fri Nov 14, 09:25:00 PM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is it OK to bash their Big Ten style band?

 
At Fri Nov 14, 10:02:00 PM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why bash the Cornell band? It's the best in the conference. If only our band could carry a tune like them...

 
At Sat Nov 15, 03:30:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

A few of our seniors were thrown into the fray during the last stages of the Shoop years, when we had mass defections and they weren't ready to play. Hats off in particular to Ralph DeBernardo, who was forced to start as an undersized freshman offensive tackle and has developed into a fine player for us.

 

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