Schedule Clarity
Chad and his fellow Bishop O'Dowd college signees
6-2 220 lbs. DL/TE Chad Washington is coming to Columbia.
Chad comes to us from the Bay Area’s Bishop O'Dowd. He would be the fourth documented grad from O’Dowd to play football for the Lions. He is preceeded by Andy Boli ’02, Rocky Roberts ’01, and Pierce Rowe ’07.
Chad was honored as a National Football Foundation scholar athlete last year. At that point, he listed his college choice as Cornell. Perhaps we stole him away from the Big Red?
This season, Chad made Honorable Mention on the San Francisco Chronicle’s All-Metro team.
You can see Chad explaining why he chose Columbia here.
Way to Go, Joe!
Incoming OL Joe Kopp has just been named Maryland All-State, Big Schools.
Schedule Released
It was fun to speculate for weeks, but now we have the official announcement from the athletic department on the 2011 slate.
2011 Columbia Football Schedule
Sept. 17 at Fordham
Sept. 24 ALBANY - 12:30 p.m.
Oct. 01 at Princeton
Oct. 08 SACRED HEART - 12:30 p.m.
Oct. 15 PENN - HOMECOMING
Oct. 22 at Dartmouth
Oct. 29 YALE - 12:30 p.m.
Nov. 05 HARVARD - 12:30 p.m.
Nov. 12 at Cornell
Nov. 19 BROWN - 12:30 p.m.
I like the following things about the schedule:
-Six home games.
-Seven of the first eight games of the season are either home games or very short trips from the Columbia campus.
-I still think setting the bar very high for Homecoming every other year and making it against Penn is a good idea. We won’t be serious contenders in this league until we start truly challenging and beating Penn and Harvard. Why not try to set up that breakthrough win on the biggest stage?
The only “negative” I can think of is that Sacred Heart and Albany aren’t exactly the kind of opponents that will spark the imaginations of many Columbia fans.
But will any of us care if the Lions turn out winning those games?
posted by Jake @ 8:40:00 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
The early schedule is scary. As it happened last year, you can get a false reading on the team’s capabilities and then play PENN and not function as expected. The false impression on the effectiveness of the smaller DL is a great example. They need to be using the big guys at tackle. Sommers and Groth, Fraser if he is healthy/in game shape/shows effectiveness. Hopefully the coaching staff has learned from last year and will be more willing to change if things aren’t working. Unfortunately other than Fordham, who’s OL wasn’t particularly impressive last year, they will not get a true test until the PENN game.
Dartmouth actually drew a decent crowd (by Dartmouth standards) last year when Sacred Heart came to visit. I think fans were expecting an easy victory and wanted to see it. They got the victory... but it wasn't easy. Helped that weather was great that day, too.
Popeck is a force at DL.
just fyi Boli, Roberts, and Rowe all quit the team eventually. in fairness to Roberts he did have a serious illness.....
Popeck is one of the best DL players on the team. Because of his size (245 listed) it might be smarter to play him at DE and leave the 270+ guys in the middle.
I'm seeing a pattern in the schedule - start off strong against weak opponents, underrate Dartmouth or Yale, lose to Penn and Harvard, scramble to salvage the season against Cornell, hope for the best against Brown. Beating Yale and Dartmouth are the key - that's who we need to separate from.
Until CU becomes a truly dominant football team, THERE ARE NO WEAK OPPONENTS. We barely got by Cornell this past year, and it took the last seconds. It was a great, gutsy win for CU, but still... I'm not trying to be a downer, but just realistic, for what it's worth. Dartmouth was on a huge losing streak a couple of years ago, when they beat us. Let's take one game at a time, before we think ahead.
With benefit of hindsight, we played Penn as well as anybody in the Ivies except Dartmouth. Maybe the early wins made the team too optimistic but reality is that we played okay vs. Penn. The problem was the post-Penn letdown vs. Dartmouth and Yale, and then the freefall vs. Harvard and Brown. It was discouraging to see the team regress in the second half and I think that's why there was so much fan anger at the end of the season. The early season schedule had nothing to do with the fact we could barely beat Cornell in week nine.
Respectfully, we did not play OK against Penn. Penn ran through us all day long and we couldn't do much of anything on offense. That's not anywhere near OK.
-Dr.V
The Penn game was a disaster. We were rattled on offense and turned over the ball. Bags ran the ball at us with impunity. We could not stop the lead fullback from kicking out our LBs.
Someone said
"With benefit of hindsight, we played Penn as well as anybody in the Ivies except Dartmouth"
and
"The early season schedule had nothing to do with the fact we could barely beat Cornell in week nine."
With all due respect, we had issues from game one that didn't become apparent until the Penn game which was a mess on both sides of the ball. Go back and look at the games that are available and you will see the issues. Turnovers, confusing play calling at times and lack of size on the DL are a few examples. To use the DL as an example, in many of the games they moved the ball against us down the field then we switched to the bigger guys for a few plays and held them. How about the goal line stand where they had the big guys in and were holding, on a 4th down play they switched to the smaller line and the team ran the ball with little effort right through the middle. Not to just pick on the defense, the offensive play calling (for years) at times really doesn’t make sense. It always seems that we don’t start adjusting until late in the 2nd half on both sides of the ball which also hurts. Both make it hard for the team to get into a rhythm which leads to turnovers. Not adjusting and a potentially a false impression from week early opponents definitely can be a factor.
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