Marcellus on TV... Every Week!
Marcellus Wiley at a Super Bowl party in Miami last month
Cornell isn't the only Ivy League school earning invaluable publicity from sports.
Columbia's Marcellus Wiley '97 has been named the co-anchor of Winners Bracket, which will air on Saturdays on ABC.
Wiley continues to be the first name anyone ever throws out to me when I mention Columbia football. It used to be Sid Luckman or Marty Domres. As much as I love Sid and Marty, it's better to have people identifying with a Columbia athlete from this generation.
And it doesn't hurt that Wiley often tells people that he would never have been given the chance to do TV after his NFL career if it were not for his Columbia degree.
High School Database Update (or tidbit #2)
Today's interesting little bit of info from my continuing Columbia football high school feeder database effort is a small comment about Catholic high schools in America.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that they're in financial trouble in most parts of the country. And football is suffering because of that.
I've only combed through the rosters from 1969-74 so far, and every time I come upon a Catholic school name I have to search the Internet to make sure it still exists. So far, about 40% of the Catholic schools I've come across have either merged or closed altogether.
As many of my longtime readers know, I am a big fan of the scholar-athletes churned out by the Catholic school football programs. One can only imagine how much better Columbia football and Ivy League football in general would be if these schools remained intact.
posted by Jake @ 12:29:00 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I like Marcellus but he has thousands of miles to go before he can be mentioned in the same universe as Sid Luckman.
Or Marty Domres, who was more important to his Lion teams than Wiley. Wiley cost us the Ivy championship by doing his lame imitation of an NFL sack dance.
Why wasn't he aware that that's a penalty in the Ivy League.
I'll be a lot happier with Wiley when instead of yakking about himself, he uses his fame, energy
and personality to attract a FIRST-class, BCS-type running back or
pass rusher to the Lions.
It's silly to make comparisions between Wiley and Luckman or Domres. Let's just leave it that Wiley was a great player at Columbia, a terrific team leader and teammate, and now a very loyal supporter of Columbia Football and Columbia Athletics. We all love Marcellus and wish him enourmous success in his latest endeavor. He's the Man!
Consider that without Wiley, Columbia would not have been in contention that year. He was like a man playing with boys -- the first thing one noticed from the stands. And that is not taking anything away from Rory Wilfork, who was terrific, himself. Remember that Wiley was young then, and even the best adults can get carried away with irrational exuberance.
We wouldn't have been there to celebrate without Marcellus. Also, thru various ways, he is already helping us to attract outstanding high school student-athletes to Columbia. Sid Luckman and Marty Domres were great players in their times, but Marcellus is Columbia Football's "Man of the Moment."
I saw Marcellus doing his sack dance, and it was a cheap, lousy call. It should have been ignored by the refs. It was one more example of the plague of the Tellier years; we never seemed to get a fair shake from the refs. Marcellus was a man among boys that year. One thing that is not generally known is that he played with some substantial injuries and as I recall may have even been hospitalized at one point in the season. He was the best-- and most domiinating--defender in the league that year and one of the best in the history of the league. I saw him at the Penn basketball game this year; he still looks like he can strap it up!
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