Now and Forever
Back to Lehigh in '12?
Lehigh football blogger Chuck Burton reports that Columbia is tentatively expected to play at the defending Patriot League champ Mountainhawks in Bethlehem in 2012.
Columbia hasn't played Lehigh since a 63-13 loss at Goodman Stadium in
1999.
Patriot League in Peril
Speaking of the Patriot League, Lafayette’s president has come out against football scholarships just four days before the full Patriot
League votes on the issue.
The vote was forced last year by Fordham’s decision to go to athletic
scholarships for football. The temporary solution for the rest of the
Patriot League teams was to keep the immediate future schedules intact while
barring the Rams from being able to win the Patriot championship.
If all the other Patriot schools follow Lafayette’s lead, then Fordham will
simply have to find a new conference home.
But if there is a significant split, the league may dissolve and the
residual effect that would have on the Ivies would be profound.
Stay tuned.
Mystery of the “C” Explained
A good catch by the folks at the athletic department for linking to this great story explaining how that magnificent “C” painted on the rocks behind the Baker Athletics Complex came to be.
The Difference between “Now” and “Forever”
December is recruiting weekend time for the Columbia football team, and this
was one theme I couldn’t get out of my head all weekend:
Cam Newton ran away with the Heisman voting and grabbed the trophy Saturday
night.
Newton is, no doubt, a superior athlete.
So were Matt Leinart, Jason White, Chris Weinke, Danny Wuerffel, Gino
Toretta, Andre Ware, etc.
You get the picture.
Maybe Cam Newton will be a star in the NFL and remain in the league long
enough to build a huge fortune and cultivate other financial opportunities.
But even after winning the Heisman, the odds that he’ll still be in the NFL
five years from now aren’t great. And even if he remains in the league, the
financial hardships endured by the overwhelming majority of NFL retirees is
well documented.
I know we’ve been arguing lately about the things that need to be done to
get Columbia winning more football games in the immediate future.
But the most important reason to play football at Columbia or any Ivy school
is to do what’s best for your long term future.
The facts don’t lie: the average Columbia football alum has a better
personal and financial success rate than the average Heisman Trophy winner!
All the Ivy schools can boast tremendous post-graduation success for their
athletes. But my own research shows that Columbia’s athletes tend to far
outpace non-athlete alums at our school by a mind boggling degree.
In other words, the decision to come to Columbia to play varsity sports is
all about the next 40 years of your life, not the next four.
It’s also important to focus on long term thinking at a time like this in
the face of what’s been a pretty bad, but ephemeral, week of PR for our
beloved university.
The bad PR will pass, the prestige of a Columbia degree coupled with the
special career opportunities for alumni athletes won’t.
posted by Jake @ 8:41:00 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Re bad PR this week: I wonder if our admissions department shouldn't enter into a period of introspection regarding non-athletic admissions decisions. Perhaps they could do a better job of screening out students with a propensity to engage in self-centered and self-destructive anti-social behavior. It infuriates me that our financial aid packages go to students who would in isolated cases bring harm not just to ourselves but to our great university. PS, kudos to our Lion mens' basketball team in showing how to win close games.
Interesting that the women's basketball had such a heralded frosh class and they are struggling badly while the men lost so many to graduation and we did not hear much about our frosh, yet many are starting/contributing and our record is decent
Any thoughts as to why?
I wonder whether, when something like the drug busts occur, anybody in the admissions office reads the newspaper reports, recognizes the student names and thinks to him or herself: "I remember voting in favor of admitting that guy. I made a mistake." I wonder if admissions officers feel any personal sense of responsibility when something like this happens.
Ahh forget about this drug thing...pops up every few years on Ivy campuses. Exeter classmates of mine went to Princeton and then got busted peddling drugs and expelled/arrested. Hasn't hurt anyone's reputation except those (ex)students.
This too shall pass. Let's not clog the blog with any more of this.
Chen 82
The Columbia Women's basketball team lost its three best players--superstar Judie Lomax, super point guard Sara Yee and super shooting guard Danielle Browne. Very difficult to replace those three + poor shooting from this year's group. Paul Nixon is an outstanding coach, but if the players are shooting 16% from the field they are not going to win many games. Meanwhile our men's basketball team is doing very well under Coach Smith's leadershp. Several of the returning players (Agho, Ampim, Barbour, Cisco Craig, Daniels and Grimes) have improved significantly and there are three very talented, hard-working freshmen -- Dyami Starks, Steve Frankoski, and Van Green--who have made huge contributions to the team's pre-Ivy League season success.
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