Cornell v. Monmouth

Monmouth leads 17-0 with 9:37 in 2nd Quarter. Defense unable to get a stop (Monmouth converted a 3rd and 16 to a wide open receiver on the last scoring drive), and the offense has done very little.

Cornell has very little size and no real speed -- a deadly combination

Archer has a huge job in front of him to bring us to respectability, let alone being a contending team.

scoop85
Monmouth leads 17-0 with 9:37 in 2nd Quarter. Defense unable to get a stop (Monmouth converted a 3rd and 16 to a wide open receiver on the last scoring drive), and the offense has done very little.

Cornell has very little size and no real speed -- a deadly combination

Archer has a huge job in front of him to bring us to respectability, let alone being a contending team.

No argument there. For all the supposed coaching experience Kent Austin brought for his short time at Cornell, he failed as did Jim Knowles in recruiting the size and speed to compete in the Ivy League with the likes of a Harvard and Penn.

If there is a weaker team in the FCS with a running game I would be surprised.

Another dreadful second half a la the Yale and Colgate games.

Hopefully, we'll beat Columbia for at least one Ivy win, but there are no guarantees.

Ken711
Hopefully, we'll beat Columbia for at least one Ivy win, but there are no guarantees.

The game's in Ithaca. There's a chance.

Al DeFlorio
Another dreadful second half a la the Yale and Colgate games.

I think the second half game fades can be traced to not controlling the clock with a running game. The defense runs out of gas by half-time.

There was some good things coming out of the game. The weather was perfect and there were some decent tailgates; Monmouth stands high in the US News rankings for most parking spaces per 100 students right on campus. Plus you're five minutes from the shore and lots of places to go for dinner or a stroll on the boardwalk. And Monmouth has the cleanest Portosans I've ever seen. No flush toilets yet at the football stadium of Monmouth, est. 1933. This is the smallest stadium Cornell will likely play in anytime soon - 4,000 seats, a press box with canvas top and back.

The bad and the ugly included Cornell's inability to capitalize on all the Monmouth mistakes. If Monmouth fumbled the ball away deep in its own end, we gave it back. If Monmouth's punter has to chase down a high snap, he gets there first and kicks it out of the end zone for a 2-point safety and a free kick vs. Cornell first-and-ten on the Monmouth 10. But mostly Cornell was done in by a defense that had challenges defending the long pass and stopping the running game. Breakaway runs didn't kill us so much as when the first and second tacklers couldn't bring down the runner. Jeff Matthews looked pretty good for Cornell except for a horrible fourth quarter pick (when a comeback seemed possible if you were an optimistic fan); it flew short and right at a Monmouth defender. Matthews threw for about 400 yards - 223 that were caught and on the scoresheet, the rest dropped or through the fingers. There was a scary play at midfield where he scrambled, slid feet first to the ground, and from the stands it appeared that a Monmouth defender hit Matthews helmet to helmet but no flag.

Actually, the worst thing if you're an older alum (if you graduated before 1990, you're an older alum) is that so many people in attendance are Cornell football alums and players' families. The number of alumni and students who like to go to a Cornell football game on the road seems less every year. Maybe it's the power of RedCast. (How was the quality of the video?)

I wonder whether anyone in the Ivy cognoscenti has considered moving the season up three weeks. Exchange three weekends in the 40s for three in the 60s and you might see far higher attendance.

Trotsky
I wonder whether anyone in the Ivy cognoscenti has considered moving the season up three weeks. Exchange three weekends in the 40s for three in the 60s and you might see far higher attendance.

I'm guessing a few wins would do more.

Trotsky
I wonder whether anyone in the Ivy cognoscenti has considered moving the season up three weeks. Exchange three weekends in the 40s for three in the 60s and you might see far higher attendance.

Maybe not enough sleep last night. At first, I thought you meant the 1960s. Yeah, bringing back Gary Wood and Pete Gogolak would help.

Trotsky
I wonder whether anyone in the Ivy cognoscenti has considered moving the season up three weeks. Exchange three weekends in the 40s for three in the 60s and you might see far higher attendance.

And those who implemented that proposal would draw my eternal ire. We'd start having Homecoming in August to celebrate, you know, the first game of the season.

Football is a fall sport: one nice game, a few with pretty leaves, and the rest with snow.

Scersk '97

Trotsky
I wonder whether anyone in the Ivy cognoscenti has considered moving the season up three weeks. Exchange three weekends in the 40s for three in the 60s and you might see far higher attendance.

And those who implemented that proposal would draw my eternal ire. We'd start having Homecoming in August to celebrate, you know, the first game of the season.

Football is a fall sport: one nice game, a few with pretty leaves, and the rest with snow.

Homecoming is supposed to be the first game of the second home stand, so at worst it would be game 3. If the season began around 8/25, that would be at earliest around 9/9. This year, for instance, Homecoming would be the Colgate game which would have been held on 9/14.

But add the proviso that the earliest possible opening game is 9/1 (which gives a 9/1-7 range) to keep away from non-traditional, non-leafy August. This season that would have moved the opener from 9/21 to 9/7, and the Homecoming game to a perfectly reasonable 9/21.

Homecoming was always early October when I was in school. We always seemed to be playing Brown, Dartmouth or Yale.

While homecoming is an event for all alumni, Cornell really wants to draw younger (under-30) alumni back to Ithaca and make it a mini-Reunion, except you get to see classes on either side of yours, too, not just plus/minus 5 years that you don't know. That part seems to be working. Doing it in September provides better weather and maybe some who like the Homecoming game will have more choices to come back in 2013.