Cornell football coach tenure

Starting a thread apart from Cornell Football 2022: The future of football coach David Archer '05 has the legs to keep us busy in quiet weeks when there's no hockey issue of the day to argue about, when there are no more bar-closings in Collegetown to lament <sob>, and when we've stopped fearing Hoy Field might be a goner; it's all but gone. The RPI fans lurking have gone silent with the departure of their president Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson. We need something.

The conversation by people who matter more likely happens a year from now, in fall 2023. Cornell isn't ready to move in 2022 so the incumbent coach will get one more season, to Fall 2023). The time to move on from the incumbent and not mess up recruiting would be the day after the season ends: 11/20/22 or 11/19/23 (2023 schedule: [cornellbigred.com] – OOC @Lehigh, Colgate, Bucknell, with the potential to be 3 W's). Or 11/24/24 (I keed).

Why 2023: Football is Cornell's biggest coaching hire (we'd say hockey, lacrosse, wrestling) and that's a job not for the lame duck athletic director but the newcomer. Cornell may take a long time to find the AD because it doesn't want to be the last Ivy to hire a woman. (At the least it needs to show good faith.) Andy Noel has been AD since 1999, his contract was extended in 2016 (Sun story: [cornellsun.com]) for six more years to June 2022, and in March 2022 announced he would retire but would stay through the 22-23 season while a successor was found. The AD search committee was to being work over the 2022 summer.

Long shot: Football coach change could happen this fall if a new athletics director is announced in the next month. Or: Archer becomes the new athletics director. He's an alum, he's smart, he's well-liked give or take the W-L thing. Me, I'm rooting for a short-term (~5 years) AD so good she/he moves up, circa 2028, to run a Mid-Major or Big Ten program as Laing Kennedy '63 did shifting from Cornell to Kent State. Then Connor Buczek steps in at 35 and carries Cornell to circa 2060, having a Bob Kane '34 style tenure. The ideal athletic director is an alum with strong people skills and business skills (Buczek was one of only 2 or 3 people admitted to the Johnson School immediately from undergrad college). The downside is what at least a half-dozen schools could pay Buczek as lacrosse coach. John Tillman '91 draws just under $350,000 at Maryland as lax coach (Terp AD salary $700,000). The upside is Buczek probably has the skills to invest well and his Cornell salary could be walking-around money. Sort of like Bill Cleary did (for outside income) as Harvard hockey coach Bill Cleary ca. 1971-1990 with an insurance business on the side. All Cornell salaries have live within the framework of Martha Pollack's ~$600K 2018 base salary to start and total comp today $1M. (In comparison: Alabama FB coach Lou Sabin, ~$12M per year through 2030 about the age when Woody Hayes got his ass fired, Alabama president Stuart Bell, $815,000.)

I want to believe there's something good and decent about David Archer (like 2 years teaching in Newark, something my wife did for 4-1/2 years before it got to be too much) that doesn't show up in the win-loss numbers and that's why he's still coach in his 10th year with a record 2013-2021 of 21-59, 15-41 Ivies. And, boy, is it fun to watch Jameson Wang scramble, whether it's for his own safety or a Cornell touchdown.

Cornell Under David Archer 
Year    Overall Ivy     Ivy
2013	3–7	2–5	7th	
2014	1–9	1–6	7th	
2015	1–9	1–6	T–7th	
2016	4–6	2–5	T–6th	
2017	3–7	3–4	T–5th	
2018	3–7	2–5	7th	
2019	4–6	3–4	T–4th	
2020	---     ---     Covid				
2021	2–8	1–6	T–6th
Total   21-59   15-42
Total   .263    .194   

billhoward
Football is Cornell's biggest coaching hire

I cannot agree. The best Ivy League football squads of the last 30 years would be uncompetitive in Division II. The sport itself has cratered in popularity and the prestige associated with football in the northeast has long been the lowest of any region in the country.

I realize there are still a handful of rich NYC douchebags who make the trip up to show up each other's trophy wives, but for the university community as a whole, football appears to only be hanging on in cachet among the type of person who runs for school office and dreams of going into politics or finance. It's become a niche interest; that niche just happens to have a permanent slot on the NYT editorial board. But their actual population is miniscule and consists of the subset who the rest of the alumni are embarrassed by.

Trotsky

billhoward
Football is Cornell's biggest coaching hire

I cannot agree. The best Ivy League football squads of the last 30 years would be uncompetitive in Division II. The sport itself has cratered in popularity and the prestige associated with football in the northeast has long been the lowest of any region in the country.

I realize there are still a handful of rich NYC douchebags who make the trip up to show up each other's trophy wives, but for the university community as a whole, football appears to only be hanging on in cachet among the type of person who runs for school office and dreams of going into politics or finance. It's become a niche interest; that niche just happens to have a permanent slot on the NYT editorial board. But their actual population is miniscule and consists of the subset who the rest of the alumni are embarrassed by.

The Ivy League over the last 30 has had many teams ranked in the top 20 of FCS schools, They were certainly far better than Division II teams.

Ken711
The Ivy League over the last 30 has had many teams ranked in the top 20 of FCS schools, They were certainly far better than Division II teams.

Princeton, for one, is pissed the best Ivy team in football cannot go on to the NCAA tournament. Which many recent years is Princeton, champion or co-champion 3 of the last 5 played seasons.

Were there an Ivy representative in the NCAA FCS division playoffs: Five of the last 10 seasons were Ivy championship ties, including a three-way.