Game Notes Posted
The GoColumbiaLions.com site has posted the game notes for the contest at Dartmouth this Saturday.
Note the later start time this year, 1:30 as Dartmouth wants to give more time for its Homecoming festivities and it now has lights in Memorial Field in case it gets dark late.
So far, the weather forecast is beautiful.
The starters in the two-deep look to be the same group we've seen pretty much since week three.
But be ready for a nice surprise at one key position on Saturday...
posted by Jake @ 7:12:00 AM
21 comments
21 Comments:
Random, unrelated question for the Lions fans. The Nike apparel that the coaches were wearing during the game on Versus(hats, shirts, etc.)...are those sold in the school store? (don't see online) At the field? Not sold anywhere? Is there any way long-distance Lions fans can purchase these items? Thanks for any leads.
Mike Stephens is not on the 2-deep. Done for the season, thus career?
Jake- you mentioned earlier this week that there was a chance the Dartmouth-Columbia game would be televised. Any updates on that?
My compliments to the Columbia Athletics Departments on the improvements in the athletic website, particularly the new videos feature.
Our receivers are getting there now with huge showings by Williams, DiNovo, Havas and the tight end, Garner. If Stephens can come back for all or part of the second half of the season, we should have a very strong group. And, of course, we can expect some contribution from the freshmen in the second half.
We still need a breakaway threat along the lines of the Dartmouth star. Don't we have any speedsters on this year's team?
I just keep thinking, now that Jake has reminded us of his signal accomplishments on the field, of what our own record might be if we in fact had a back like Nick Schweiger. He truly seems the missing piece of the equation.
And Dartmouth wonders how good they'd be if they had a QB like Brackett.
A back like Schwieger? Sure, let's get one! Let's get the next Walter Payton too. What supremely gifted ballplayer would not want to play at Columbia?
But I predict a victory this week at Dartmouth. Of course, considering whom we're dealing with, it's far from a sure thing. But there's a 75 percent chance of winning imho. The odds go down if it rains.
Enjoy it, my friends!
Really Mitch, if Dartmouth (with all that snow and cold) can get a back like Schweiger to attend, so can we with all our bright lights and job opportunities. I'm not saying it'd be easy, but even 2nd and third stringers from this year's Don Bosco and BC teams across the river might work.
(Although, now that I think of it, isn't Nick Gerst from BC?)
Interestingly, Don Bosco usually draws greater crowds than any Ivy game. I'm tempted to wonder out loud whether DB's coach Toal might be interested in moving "up" to the college level. But then I remember how badly Gerry Faust, also from a Papist h.s., did at Notre Dame and I shelve this vague reverie.
Yes, however, Saturday's game appears eminently winnable. On the web, anyway.
Interesting article in today's New York Times about the Stanford football program that moved from 1-11 in 2006 to be one of the top teams in the nation today. Shows that a reversal of fortune is possible with the right coaches, administrative and alumni support.
Dartmouth offers a webcast for aboutb twelv e bucks. Any news on Brackett's condition? Speculation on who Jake was alluding to moving up to the two-deep?
Stanford's rise in football since Harbaugh's arrival four years ago is breath-taking. But looking at the totality of his performance at Stanford, his fine job at San Diego and his truly mind-boggling start with the 49ers, you can see that Jim Harbaugh is a great, great football coach.
It's absolutely appropriate that we think about supporting any coach with a full institutional commitment to winning, but finding the next Jim Harbaugh to become the next Stanford is a search for a needle in a haystack. Yes, we should look but let's not kid ourselves about the odds of finding it.
By the way, Harbaugh demanded as a condition of taking the Stanford job that the admissions office not interfere with any marginal academic recruits. That is not an apocryphal story. He's not recruiting players with SEC-level academics but he told the AD, "I get the last word on admissions with my recruits." I'm not sure how far that demand will get with the Ivy League.
Hate to bring up the coaching again, but since someone mentioned Mike Stephens, that alone is a firing offense--or one that epitomizes the abysmal over-all situation. Possibly our best receiver, a captain and team leader, out all last season with an injury, not only returning kicks but returning them late in a game that is totally lost. How incompetent does a coaching staff have to be before someone on it says "Replace Stephens at KR, there's absolutely no reason for him to be doing that."
Cathar, I know you are just musing, but you greatly underestimate the talent of Ivy football teams and the challenges of coaching college football vs. high school. The 2nd string RB at Don Bosco will never play college football, much less FCS level. Gerst was a superstar at Bergen Catholic -- a superstar. He is a good Ivy back who is underutilized, but he's not Nick Schwieger. It's an insult to our guys to think a HS sub could play Ivy ball.
The Don Bosco coach is terrific, but he doesn't have to recruit from a fairly shallow pool of 1300+ SAT students from across the country against Ivy and Patriot schools, and sometimes Stanford or Northwestern, with better facilities and history than CU.
In Dallas, the coach of the best HS team in the state moved up a few years ago to North Texas and he got crushed every Saturday for about five years until they fired him. It's a different world.
Live video of game on SideLion Pass (courtesy of Dartmouth, their feed). I think we'll win this one.
Also, here's some good news, Lion fans. Terrific QB from top Kentucky HS wants to come to Columbia (he says so in first video). 4.0 GPA and 4.5/40, runs and passes equally well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwiCvQgMqw4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3Z0BlPe7Ro
Harbaugh did not engineer his brilliant turnaround at Stanford with a glamorous offense or other "schematic advantages," to use Charlie Weis' infamous words.
Stanford's formula was simple: Recruit much, much better athletes and then have them play physical, smashmouth football until they run over their opponents.
There is only one prequisite to this approach: bringing in much, much better athletes. I don't think that kind of strategy is compatible with the Academic Index.
Agree with comment regarding second string players at top high school stepping in to play here. Most of our players were two year starters and excelled at very high levels in high school. A truly gifted athlete will find the field in high school as some position. Let's be a little more considerate of players.
Of course, just about everyone who plays college football was first a starter in high school. But there are starters and then there are "starters." I have no idea of Don Bosco's current academic rating, but I do note that, even as it regularly supplies Rutgers, our own football program showed two Bosco grads playing for Albany. Certainly those two clearly slipped through some sort of "net." The reported percentage for Bosco players who go on to play college football, by the way (so says a friend who was a trustee there) is supposedly quite high, in the 60% range. If that's true, it speaks well of the program in so many ways.
I don't, however, necessarily ever assume that most good h.s. football players are somehow "dumber" than those who play for the Ivies. Just to page through an NFL team's playbook (which someone who spent three years mainly on the Browns' practice squad and was a Colgate grad once showed me) is to be baffled. I can only vaguely imagine what mastering it is like.
Perhaps football jocks at SEC-type schools simply slough off on academics for a variety of reasons (from high school on), but I never automatically assume they're not as smart as the guys at Yale or Dartmouth. (And didn't either Florida or FSU recently produce a Rhodes scholar who played football?)
A classmate of mine at CU is a prof at Stanford. He's tremendously impressed by the kids there, including the football players. He says he's never had an academically weak football player in class -- and he's not exactly a football fan. Former SDS!
With the spread offensive scheme at Columbia you can not compare Schweiger and Gerst or any other Columbia back especially when he gets 5 carries a game. Dartmouth will run out of the I, one back,and pro set giving their backs BEHIND A GOOD OFFENSIVE LINE lots of opportunity to generate big rushing numbers. They will rush the ball 35 times a game and not have their quarterback get beat up(Penn, Yale, Harvard)
Thats the big problem with the offensive philosophy at Columbia. Like all the succesful IVY teams they will run out of the power I, one back pro and spread occassionally. The spread is the most difficult scheme to run the ball...Ask any great lineman whats easier to block when it comes to rushing the ball...
You will never know how good the Columbia offensive line is until given a chance to block out of a power rushing scheme.An offensive scheme that gets a speed back off tackle out a of a stretch play for instance with a the quarterback under center...A play made to order for a quarterback like Bracket and a speed back like Gerst...That same formation creates play action, option etc...
Doesn't mean you can't run the spread occassionally...Everything opens up when you are not predictable and you use your weapons...
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