The storyline in Morningside Heights isn’t uncommon. Want to win? Hire a winner. Columbia hired a winner.
You can take different angles when writing about college football. I especially enjoy writing commentary about a perennial loser turned winner.
A great example is Army 2016. Army’s big (and expected) early-season road win against Temple caught my attention. Who expected that from a 2-10 (2015) team? Army went on to have a good year (8-5), which included a bowl win and a defining victory (finally) over Navy. The Cadets are at it again this season. The 6-2 Cadets beat Temple last weekend and accepted a bowl bid following the game.
Courtesy: Columbia Athletics
A turnaround like Army’s seems to happen every year. And I can’t think of a better example in 2017 than the Columbia Lions. Yeah, I’m talking about the same Lions that perennially fly under the national radar–save for coverage in The New York Times.
The lack of interest is partly because Columbia plays lower-tier football that’s outside the national limelight. But it’s also because the Lions have historically played bad football. (More on that later….)
But, here we are, with four games to go in the season and Columbia … deep breath … is undefeated (6-0), leading the Ivy League. That’s a far cry from the Ivy’s pre-season poll, which predicted the Lions would finish 7th in the 8-team league.
But predictions go only so far. In reality, a big hurdle toward the Ivy championship was negotiated successfully last Saturday. The Lions visited Hanover, NH and beat previously undefeated, Dartmouth, 22-17.
I picked the Big Green to win that game (ESPN’s Win Probability was Dartmouth 60%). Why? It wasn’t clear to me–still–whether Columbia could be taken seriously. Over the years, Columbia seemed more like a categorical member of the Ivy League than a championship contender. In fact, losing had become a way of life.
To gain a concrete feel for that conclusion, all you have to do is read how ESPN described Columbia football in its post-game coverage of last Saturday’s game.
–The Lions have had losing seasons 59 of the last 65 years.
–The Lions haven’t had a winning season since 1996.
–The Lions won only 5 football games from 2013-16.
–Columbia has never won the Ivy League football title outright and has shared the crown only once (1961).
But today there’s good news:
–Columbia’s current winning streak, which includes a victory over Brown in the 2016 finale, is the school’s first 7-game skein in 82 years.
–Not since 1932 has Columbia opened a season 7-0. But that’s exactly what will happen if the Lions win this Saturday. What about going 8-0? Yes, it happened … 114 years ago.
So it’s no hyperbole to label Columbia’s performance as a turnaround of epic proportions.
Columbia’s Al Bagnoli (photo, Columbia Athletics)
And it’s a story that I’ve been following since early 2015—largely, again, because of the program’s coverage in The New York Times. The media giant’s spotlight has been on the Lions’ new head football coach, Al Bagnoli.
Columbia Hires Ex-Penn Coach Al Bagnoli, Surprising Its Ivy Peers (February 25, 2015)
Al Bagnoli Is Building From the Bottom at Columbia (September 16, 2015).
The storyline at Morningside Heights isn’t uncommon in sports. Want to win? Hire a winner. Columbia hired a winner.
Bagnoli’s bio on CU’s athletic site tells that story: “Bagnoli arrived at Columbia after 23 years at the University of Pennsylvania, where he totaled a 148-80 overall record and 112-49 record in the Ivy League. His Penn teams won nine Ivy League Championships, including six undefeated conference marks (1993, 1994, 2002, 2003, 2009, 2010) and three perfect seasons (10-0 in 1993 and 2003, 9-0 in 1994).”
Bagnoli had retired as UPenn’s head coach—just as he had planned—and took an administrative job there. But he missed coaching, so off he went to Columbia—a program that had been double-punched by losing (27 out of the previous 30 games) and scandal (Bagnoli’s predecessor had resigned amid reports of player abuse.)
Still, Bagnoli had a tall and steep hill to climb. In his inaugural season (2015) the team went 2-8 (1-6), tied for the Ivy cellar. 2016 wasn’t much better at 3-7 (2-5), second to last in the league.
But there were signs of a turnaround last year. The Lions won two of their final five games—against Dartmouth and Brown—and came close against Yale, Harvard, and Cornell (losing by a combined total of 19 points).
Courtesy: eBay
Now, it seems, Columbia football has finally arrived. The biggest obstacle to an undefeated season and Ivy crown is right in the Lions’ headlights: Yale, on the road, this Saturday. You can watch the game live on SportsNet NY (SNY), 1 p.m., Channel 639 on DirecTV (with other broadcast options available).
Sans souci (trans, Fr., without concerns) is what they say in Morningside Heights. That phrasing might apply to football this year. Yowza!
Yeah, I love following stories like Columbia football. That love was born years ago, long before the advent of the internet and availability of TV games galore. Each year I’d pour through the pages of the annual NCAA College Football Guide. With stats, photos, and profiles of schools across the spectrum of the game–including “small college football,” as it was called back then–I’d learn about how teams did the year before and what pundits had to say about the upcoming season.
I was always on the lookout for turnaround teams. Decades later I’m still at it.
