Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Friends in High Places


Browns Owner Randy Lerner, Class of 1984


With the news that Senator Judd Gregg will be taking the job as Commerce Secretary, we now have two Columbia College grads in the cabinet to go along with our Columbia College grad president.

Gregg has probably been the strongest alumni supporter of the school of the three and he was an athlete on the golf team while he was a student. He also reportedly wore the Lion mascot costume at several football games!

Attorney General Eric Holder is no slouch as he was a letterman on the lightweight football team in 1971 and 1972.

And then there are those possibly apocryphal stories of a young Barack Obama being lightly recruited to run track while he was at CU.

But with all the big names at the top, we can also expect some claims of elitism.

Some ugly innuendos reared their heads in this piece in today's National Football Post.

The author hints that maybe Eric Mangini was hired by the Browns because Browns owner, (and CU alumn), Randy Lerner felt like he had more in common with a Weslyan grad like Mangini as opposed to Romeo Crennel. Not exacly a claim that Lerner is a racist, but close. That's a nice thing to call someone you don't even know, isn't it?

6 Comments:

At Wed Feb 04, 05:49:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jake, I love your work but this is totally over the top. To suggest that the Lerner family may be racist is just flat unfair. You should consider a retraction.

 
At Wed Feb 04, 06:33:00 AM GMT+7, Blogger Jake said...

Please read more carefully! I was DEFENDING Mr. Lerner against the ugly insinuations in the linked-to article.

Did anyone else misread this?

 
At Wed Feb 04, 06:40:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jake, I have reread your post and stand corrected. My apologies.

 
At Wed Feb 04, 08:35:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Judd Gregg 69C indeed wore the Lion suit while a cheerleader during his undergraduate years at Columbia (as did I, 72C).

 
At Wed Feb 04, 11:24:00 PM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jake, do we now have a workable "list" of recruits to date?

 
At Thu Feb 05, 07:14:00 AM GMT+7, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jake, did you read the solid, upbeat article by Jonathan Tayler in the sports section of yesterday's Columbia Daily Spectator. Tayler interviewed Dr. Murphy who said that renovations have begun on the Chrystie Field House. A new locker room for the football team and other significant improvements to the Field House are expected to be completed this August. Also, a prominent architectural firm has been hired to design the new athletic building next to Chrystie.

 

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