ELynah Forum

Upbeat: Note the last item in the 2025 Big Red football schedule.

Could be of a sporting nature: College Bowl (TV quiz show), cheer squad, Miss America, Nobels, Pulitzers (Jay Branegan '72, Jeffrey Gettleman '94, Marc Lacey '87 (2X), Eric Lichtblau, EB White, Molly O'Toole, all Cornell Daily Sun; faculty have also won). Nobels. Also Olympic gold medals. Also Medals of Honor. How wide does one go? Oscars?

Good step forward. Columbia is also beatable. Maybe ... Princeton. LGR!

Quote from: scoop85 on October 25, 2025, 02:19:10 PMI'm astounded at how often football coaches can't see what's in front of them.

a) Fog of war.
b) Duffy Daugherty, Michigan State coach circa the Marinaro era (paraphrasing): "Monday morning, anyone can tell me the right play to run. On Saturday afternoon, coaches have 25 seconds." He also had a bunch of Yoga Berra-isms led by, "My only feeling about superstition is that it's unlucky to be behind at the end of the game."

Cornell used a lot of running, got the score to 23-7 after three, 30-7 five minutes into the fourth, then Bucknell caught fire and got two TDs 6 and 12-1/2 minutes in to make it 30-20. Cornell's next position lasted all of 22 seconds, Bucknell moved quickly past midfield, got intercepted, Three Cornell kneeldowns were enough to run out the clock.

A very good game. but how much interest? Almost 24 hours after the game was played, there are less than a dozen comments here on the team's first win and some decent play. And only 4200 showed on a pretty nice day.

The West Stands were fabulous. Okay, that was fifty years ago, and it reminds me: Saying "you shoulda seen the '70s" to current students is like a Class of '25 (1925) grad telling me (Class of '74) in the Vietnam / 29-0 / Marinaro /first lax championship era how cool it was wearing raccoon coats (and celebrating national football championships) and drinking Bees Knees (gin, honey syrup, lemon juice) in the Crescent. The West Stands:

• • Held 4000 people.
  • Were enclosed, with steel under your feet and behind your legs, so they felt like real stands not what you had in HS. There started about 8 feet above ground level; you could see over the players; compare to Berman Field stands about half as high.
  • Were around 1947 to 2016, held mostly Cornell students, and were a suitable for launching plastic champagne corks between quarters.
  • Were useful at graduation when there are capacity issues.
  See this Cornell Daily Sun 2016 article on the demise of the West Stands: https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2016/03/west-schoellkopf-stands-torn-down-due-to-underuse-disrepair
  
  I have hopes that at some point Cornell moves the playing surface closer to the Crescent (remove the old running track no longer used for competitions) and builds in the space between the garage/press box and the field:
  
  • Maybe a grassy knoll like some schools have for lazing at the game, catching sun, etcetera.
  • Or better, a thin building slides in there, maybe for athletic administration, with an open but covered top level that holds 500 for, say, early season lacrosse, or sprint football. Thus making Teagle Hall available to be reconfigured with a 50-meter swimming pool.
  
  The terrace seating used for lacrosse late in the season was great for getting close to the action, taking photos up close, getting a beer or wine legally, or — this happened also — lets parents and boisterous alums yell at the refs up-close.

Facebook Reels post by Amalfi Aviation, a new and upstart private jet transporter. They are big on bravado. Fun to watch up to a point.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1276015440402249

And you are also one of the ones elated that Shirley Ann Jackson has since decamped RPI? IIRC, SAJ was going to be in the 2017-2021 cabinet of President H Clinton except that hit a roadblock.

Quote from: mike1960I don't see how it is possible to know where teams truly rank until around the middle of the season.

a) no, it's not 100% possible ... but ...
b) readers/fans want to know what the experts believe
c) if one journo fails to make the prediction, another site or pub will do it and site 1 loses readers to site 2
d) think of it as entertainment mixed with some insight (see below)
e) there's no harm in making WAG predictions 8 months before the season begins  

I do find that the most likely summer/fall-before rankings every year, id taking the winner / runner-up teams from Memorial Day and making them the upcoming season's top two in the ranking. It gets more interesting to see how they think teams outside the top four or five are ranked.  

I believe betting sites have reasonable insights into the chances a team will win the championship, more so for pro sports and big time college (football, basketball), far less for hockey and lacrosse.

I get press releases from the flack for betonline dot ag (Antigua) with weird-ass stuff like the odds of Kimmel not returning (1/4 ie 80% odds he won't), odds a dildo gets thrown on the WNBA court and then onto a football field and odds on what color it will be (green leads), and the most likely game (Giants at Cowboys). See, this is news. As is the odds these are the most panicked college football teams (Florida, Arizon State, Michgan lead). Also the odds Donald Trump completes his term (N0 = 5/7 or 58% chance he won't).

Quote from: mike1960I don't see how it is possible to know where teams truly rank until around the middle of the season.

a) no, it's not 100% possible ... but ...
b) readers/fans want to know what the experts believe
c) if one journo fails to make the prediction, another site or pub will do it and site 1 loses readers to site 2
d) think of it as entertainment mixed with some insight (see below)
e) there's no harm in making WAG predictions 8 months before the season begins  

I do find that the most likely summer/fall-before rankings every year, id taking the winner / runner-up teams from Memorial Day and making them the upcoming season's top two in the ranking. It gets more interesting to see how they think teams outside the top four or five are ranked.  

I believe betting sites have reasonable insights into the chances a team will win the championship, more so for pro sports and big time college (football, basketball), far less for hockey and lacrosse.

I get press releases from the flack for betonline dot ag (Antigua) with weird-ass stuff like the odds of Kimmel not returning (1/4 ie 80% odds he won't), odds a dildo gets thrown on the WNBA court and then onto a football field and odds on what color it will be (green leads), and the most likely game (Giants at Cowboys). See, this is news. As is the odds these are the most panicked college football teams (Florida, Arizon State, Michgan lead). Also the odds Donald Trump completes his term (N0 = 5/7 or 58% chance he won't).

Quote from: adamw

Quote from: BearLoverI hadn't realized he was color commentator alongside Al Michaels for the miracle on ice, nor that he was president of the Maple Leafs the last two times they reached the conference finals. RIP

Dryden will always be known for the follow up to Michaels' "Do you believe in miracles? YES!" ... Dryden: "Unbelievable"

He's also prominently heard right before Eruzione's game winner ... "The U.S. team is relying too much on Jim Craig, he's had to make too many big saves" -- BOOM, Eruzione scores.

His book -- not ghost written -- "The Game" is quite simply the best sports book I ever read.

Ken Dryden is Cornell's Bill Bradley. Or vice versa.

A lot of Sun reporters go on to the pros. More go to grad school, law school, med school, or non-journalism work. They money has never been good in entry-level publishing of any kind, now many pubs are dying, what remains include roles where there is a premium on fit-looking people in nice clothes who look good on camera. It also helps to the subject matter. I was one of the few Sun grads my year who went on to publishing: newspapers, PCMag, Forbes. Great ride.

Cornell won the NCAA hockey title in 1970, I arrived in Ithaca that fall, and was lucky to land one of the men's hockey beat roles that winter, helped immensely by having worked 20 hours a week for the Gannett Rochester paper junior and senior years on HS as a sportswriter, and it paid real money, something like 1.5X then-minimum wage. I loved every minute of my Sun years and seeing the triumph and heartbreak of hockey (March 1973, up 5-2 on Wisconsin early in the third, tied in the last 10 seconds, 6-5 loss in OT), lacrosse (first championship ever) and Marinaro-era football. There is nothing like sitting in the press box of the old Boston Garden, which press box was suspended from the balcony, and when the fans stomped there feet, the press box rose and fell about six inches. Jane, this was the era when women were excluded from the Schoellkopf press box, although the AD's wife was excepted, and ended when Cornell would not admit the Crimson's female football writer. That exclusion ended the next week when Harvard formally complained to Cornell's administration.

While video is the prevailing format going forward, there remains a need for insight that comes best from the written word, like Adam and College Hockey News.

AI? It's not perfect but it's getting way better. It can write stories of small town HS sports for the small town papers (that mostly don't exist anymore). It can make reporters smarter, and it also can make them have to write even more stories with the help of AI.

I keep my hand in shooting photos of ECAC hockey, primarily of St. Lawrence women's hockey (our son is trainer) when they're in Ithaca or Princeton area near us, with the understanding that they otherwise would not be not hiring a freelancer to shoot stills at away games, so I'm not taking work away. It's fun.

+1

Quote from: Trotsky... my aims for the Casey Jones Era, whether that is 5 years or 25:

1. Fill Lynah.  Our discriminator is our crowd.  It all begins there.  This also means the AD encouraging the students and not getting in their way.  Don't overwhelm them with loud piped in garbage and ads and gimmickry.  This is Cornell.  The fans lead the rink, the band supports.  The administration's job is to clear obstacles and allow the fans to intimidate the visitor while amusing themselves.

2. Beat Quinnipiac. Harvard, for all their bullshit, is still an academic institution.  Q is everything wrong with the last 50 years: commerce without standards and aggressive enshittification.  In a just world we drive Q into the sea and they finish behind Brown every year.  Well, if you aint up on things, it is not a just world. So we need to do ourselves and the free world a favor and destroy these punks whenever possible.  Sic semper numbskullus.

3. Win a National Championship.  It's just a jump to the left.  We have climbed the mountain so often, and we have seen RPI, Harvard, Yale, Union, and Q get there.  There is no reason that Cornell can't win it all.  So, win it all.

Re Fill Lynah: We are the best draw among the ECAC and I suspect among most or all Hockey East teams. Cornell has ~2X as many students as in 1970. But they seem to have more things to do including, ah, study. Maybe there's less excitement and desire to be there than when your team just won an NCAA title. (If so, lax will draw more in 2026.) We can have contests, give away tickets, have more entertainment in the dead 30 seconds before the next puck drop, but we have to steel ourselves for games where it's not full and games where it's noticeably not full although always > 50% full.

Re Beat Quinnipiac: We want to beat them because they have been the best / highest-ranked ECAC team the last decade. A lot of us still get more of a thrill beating Harvard because they are the #1 university in most eyes. Plus I was there the year in Cambridge when they first attached a chicken to the Cornell goalpost; I love that we are perpetuating the feud the way the South believes the Civil War remains unsettled. We also want / need to beat BU in the odd-year MSG games. I would not rag on the academic strengths of a Quinnipiac or some of the other not-top-50 schools. Not everyone will go to an Ivy and run a venture capital fund or become a federal judge or cure cancer. Q has a good nursing school and RNs can make $75K a year not long after graduation.

Re Win National Championship: Gonna be tough. Since that 1970 title, the number of D1 teams doubled from 32 to 65, and 7 of the championships have gone to the new teams: Quinnipiac (ECAC team), Union (ECAC team), UMass-Amherst, Maine twice, Northern Michigan this year, Bowling Green. More realistic goals are to win the ECAC championship (and make the NCAAs), get to the Frozen Four, and ultimately win the title again. Cornell lacrosse did it after a 48-year gap. Remember the Covid year ended hockey in 2020 with Cornell ranked #1; that could have been a title year.

I disagree on this: Loud music from the scoreboard (not band) plus video animation, we can live with if not love. We're just getting old. #suckitup  Cornell fans coming late, it's a little rude, but they do show up. Compare this to Saturday night games at Quinnipiac where maybe a third of the students have left after the second period for parties. We did have a soft turnout hosting Q last fall, but it was also a week before we played them at MSG. Sheesh, how do we manage these oddly timed matchups. Also: The video board is newish, but it's not very high-res.

For the sake of all fans including those at home: Cornell needs to improve its video with higher placement of cameras (it can be done with remote-operator cameras), cameras over the goals, a center ice reverse-angle camera, in-goal cameras. Wouldn't hurt to clean the Plexiglas for side/end cameras (RIT has the glass buffered after every game). I think the better video also helps recruiting and certainly benefits parents and siblings who live far away.

Casey Jones did a lot at Clarkson with a lower-profile program and smaller student body. He is regarded as a good recruiter. If he can entice players to go to Clarkson, he can get them to apply to Cornell as well. I was about to say, "...and Cornell alone among the Ivies has the Ag School," but a goodly number of current players are in the Dyson School in the ag college and that is tougher to get into than Arts or Engineering.

And also: Women's hockey is a legitimate title threat. They're Cornell hockey, too. They starting playing just after the men's 1970 title, in 1972, using beat-up, cast-off equipment.  Title IX became law in 1972, but it didn't really get rolling for a while.

With a new AD, Cornell may aim higher and seek to host more NCAA regional events. Hockey would be obvious. So would lacrosse regionals. OTOH, playing at Hofstra May 2025, it's almost like home field.