Lionized
goober
Posts: 69
Reg: 11-23-04
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11-29-05 04:58 PM - Post#11185
Just a personal p.s. to my post rebutting Foehi. I take back my use of the term "a higher level" in referring to
F's claim that Jones is just using Columbia to get a better job. I will never stop believing that CU in the City of NY is a top "higher level" location for students, student-athletes and coaches, regardless of the limited facilities and resources the Admin has made available.
It just takes the right coach, plus the new all-out push to improve athletics promised by AD Dianne Murphy. If she
comes through, she'll find that her words--whether she meant them or not--of awakening a sleeping (giant) Lion will come true, and it's possible in football as well as basketball. NY's media, in the media center of the world, has had ZIP and NADA to cover in college sports for decades and would love the chance.
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Anonymous
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Re: CU Athletics and Coaches
11-29-05 05:47 PM - Post#11186
In response to Lionized
Let me add, as I have here for several years, that CU could have a program equal to the P's if it would build an on-campus arena worthy of a mid-major and show its committment to winning.
CU will never have a football program that will be successful----too many hindrances....the uptown location, the Ivy stupid refusal to play in the playoffs....the utter lack of interest in NY for college football, much less 1-AA football(it's not as though Fordham has been turning them away at the gates). Forget about football---basketball could be great.
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Lionized
goober
Posts: 69
Reg: 11-23-04
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Re: CU Athletics and Coaches
11-30-05 05:25 PM - Post#11187
In response to
Thanks for encouraging words re bb. An arena is do-able...new buildings go up on this campus, regularly. But it won't happen without complete commitment of Admin, which obviously has been absent before.
As for football, I didn't mean we had to go bigtime or even enchant NYC with our Ivy League product. We need to
get the Columbia community itself behind the program. Success would be real competitiveness in the Ivy and some
league titles, and I certainly don't think that's impossible if we ever get the right coach, and the
right recruiting scheme and support.
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YoungLion
newbie
Posts: 4
Reg: 11-30-05
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Re: CU Athletics and Coaches
11-30-05 10:27 PM - Post#11188
In response to Lionized
A new arena is not out of the question, but there are certainly some hurdles that have to be crossed before we can start thinking about it.
For one thing, Columbia has an arena - and while Levien is little more than a glorified high-school gymnasium, the crowds at basketball games rarely approach its capacity. Coach Jones has made great strides in building the homecourt crowd, but I don't think there will be any major push for a new arena until large numbers of spectators are consistently turned away from Levien. For that matter, it wouldn't hurt for Columbia to draw a crowd that was willing to pay for its tickets - operating a real arena isn't cheap, and as long as Columbia gives away most of its seats, the administration is going to be skeptical about footing the bill for operating costs.
There's also the little problem of finding a place to put it. In the 1920s, there was a wonderfully fanciful plan to build a huge neo-classical stadium on a pier out in the Hudson, linked to the campus by a bridge spanning Riverside Park. Sadly, the Coast Guard deemed it a hazard to navigation- and in a time-honored tale, the university couldn't come up with the needed funds. In the 1960s, we tried Morningside Park - and we all know how well that worked out. There's a new science building going up on top of Levien, taking the last major spot on the campus itself. The way I figure it, that leaves Manhattanville as the only plausible location - which raises two issues. Does the university have the stomach to try to convince the community to accept an athletic facility again? And even if it does, will students really walk north to attend games?
Enough speculation. I'm going to turn on the game, and listen to the Lions go 5-0. Question: How many more games before the NYTimes runs its annual "Don't look now, but Columbia's winning" article?
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