Cornell football 2022

[David Harding]

The reality is President Martha Pollack hates athletics at Cornell.   She is currently running many of our sports teams off campus to East Hill Plaza.

The Cornell University Master Plan that envisions the Game Farm Road athletic complex is dated 2015.  Martha Pollack assumed office in April 2017.  The Reis Tennis Center on Pine Tree Road was built in 1993.  The train left the station a long time ago.
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The 2008 master plan called for the removal and relocation of Hoy Field,and the Grumman Squash Courts.  https://masterplan.cornell.edu/

[Scersk '97]

The reality is President Martha Pollack hates athletics at Cornell.   She is currently running many of our sports teams off campus to East Hill Plaza.

The Cornell University Master Plan that envisions the Game Farm Road athletic complex is dated 2015.  Martha Pollack assumed office in April 2017.  The Reis Tennis Center on Pine Tree Road was built in 1993.  The train left the station a long time ago.

As long as they don't close Lynah or let the Crescent crumble for real, I'm fine. Campus has got to densify. And I prefer new buildings to poor renovations of or ugly carbuncles added to older ones.

[Ken711]

The three most important aspects that will improve the football program:

1. Make the right hire for the next athletic director who will see and act on the current and prior (dating back to the early 1990's) awful state of the Cornell football program.

2. Hire a PROVEN head coach with a track record of winning success.

3. Follow through with the building of the indoor practice facility currently in the design phase as soon as possible.

[Ken711]

See above

[billhoward]

As long as they don't close Lynah or let the Crescent crumble for real, I'm fine. Campus has got to densify. And I prefer new buildings to poor renovations of or ugly carbuncles added to older ones.

The Schoellkopf Crescent has crumbled many times, been repaired, and has not yet fallen. The aging stadium has also benefited from Cornell's imposed weight limit of 3,500 fans at football games. Otherwise there'd probably be 10,000 at most games.

The campus could get more classroom, lab and office space with fewer buildings going taller. And/or replacing low, small buildings: the ADW White House and Big Red Barn could be donor sites.

Add-ons to buildings may be carbuncles or not, and they often work well. (The I.M. Pei pyramid added to the Louvre in the 1980s.) The Klarman Hall add-on to Goldwin Smith on the arts quad is fine and more importantly, the large open spaces are what so many students use for studying and being only between classes or while hanging out. I still think the North Campus nine dorms built circa 1970 were overwhelming doubles not singles in the suites at a time when boomer kids had likely grown up not sharing bedrooms.

[Chris '03]

And/or replacing low, small buildings: the ADW White House and Big Red Barn could be donor sites.

....

 The Klarman Hall add-on to Goldwin Smith on the arts quad is fine....

Hard disagree on both points.

[nshapiro]

The Schoellkopf Crescent has crumbled many times, been repaired, and has not yet fallen. The aging stadium has also benefited from Cornell's imposed weight limit of 3,500 fans at football games. Otherwise there'd probably be 10,000 at most games.

Is this new?  What do they do at graduation - in 2019 the crescent was packed for graduation.

[George64]

And/or replacing low, small buildings: the ADW White House and Big Red Barn could be donor sites.

No!!!   Are you just being contrarious?
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[Weder]

And/or replacing low, small buildings: the ADW White House and Big Red Barn could be donor sites.

No!!!   Are you just being contrarious?
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IIRC, the campus master plan marks that area as part of an "important view" corridor. I doubt they'd want anything tall competing with the view of McGraw Tower as you're going west on Tower Road.

[George64]

And/or replacing low, small buildings: the ADW White House and Big Red Barn could be donor sites.

No!!!   Are you just being contrarious?
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IIRC, the campus master plan marks that area as part of an "important view" corridor. I doubt they'd want anything tall competing with the view of McGraw Tower as you're going west on Tower Road.

Moreover, it was home to AD White and other university presidents, and the last vestige of the faculty row.  Before it housed the Society for the Humanities, it was the White Art Museum.
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[George64]

The Schoellkopf Crescent has crumbled many times, been repaired, and has not yet fallen. The aging stadium has also benefited from Cornell's imposed weight limit of 3,500 fans at football games. Otherwise there'd probably be 10,000 at most games.

Is this new?  What do they do at graduation - in 2019 the crescent was packed for graduation.

I think Bill's being ironic again.

[wolcoma]

That's my frustration with Martha Pollack is she is the most AWOL president Cornell has ever had.   For example, she has been president for five years and has not once come out to meet alums at our Cornell Club event.   Secondly ask many of the staff in the athletic department and they can't stand her.    My daughter overlapped one year with Martha Pollack at Cornell and never saw or met her, in comparison she met both Elizabeth Garrett and Hunter Rawlings.   I think I have seen Martha Pollack twice at Homecoming and both times she left the game prior to half time.   Come on you're president of a major university and you can't stay for Homecoming?   Meanwhile a buddy of mine who went to Princeton, daughter graduated from Cornell back in 2019 and they had to stand the entire two hours for the ceremony at crumbling Schoellkopf and he still gives me a hard time about it.   Tell me one contribution Martha Pollack has made to Cornell athletics over the past five years?  Oh yeah.............she added a red tarp to the Crescent so fans can no longer sit there.  Anything else?

[marty]

As long as they don't close Lynah or let the Crescent crumble for real, I'm fine. Campus has got to densify. And I prefer new buildings to poor renovations of or ugly carbuncles added to older ones.

The Schoellkopf Crescent has crumbled many times, been repaired...
...I still think the North Campus nine dorms built circa 1970 were overwhelming doubles not singles in the suites at a time when boomer kids had likely grown up not sharing bedrooms.

?
I'm lost here Bill.  Is your point that not all new building is wonderful? I'd rather point to the concentric hallway maze known as Uris.  But I'm not sure what you're aiming at.

(I did junior year in North Campus 5 - assuming that's the dorm group you are speaking of - and it was fine.  Two doubles and two singles in a suite.  My roommate was great and without his encouragement I might have given up pursuing my wife.  47 years later it was the best advice I can remember from a fellow class of '74 member.

The second most memorable night that year was during fall finals week when Max Jones of basketball transfer fame decided to pull an all nighter.  He blared his stereo in his single in an attempt to keep himself awake.  The other two in a double were EE's.  One held the circuit breaker for the room while the other shorted the electricity thus knocking out the circuit breaker for the suite.   And thanks to having made a master key for the building they were able to power us back up in the morning.  Thankfully my internal clock woke me for my final because my alarm clock was electric. I think the EE that used his time with projects such as master key production was the one that flunked out.

Singles may be fine but roommates are both wonderful and entertaining. )

[billhoward]

That's my frustration with Martha Pollack is she is the most AWOL president Cornell has ever had.   For example, she has been president for five years and has not once come out to meet alums at our Cornell Club event.   Secondly ask many of the staff in the athletic department and they can't stand her.    My daughter overlapped one year with Martha Pollack at Cornell and never saw or met her, in comparison she met both Elizabeth Garrett and Hunter Rawlings.   I think I have seen Martha Pollack twice at Homecoming and both times she left the game prior to half time.   Come on you're president of a major university and you can't stay for Homecoming?   Meanwhile a buddy of mine who went to Princeton, daughter graduated from Cornell back in 2019 and they had to stand the entire two hours for the ceremony at crumbling Schoellkopf and he still gives me a hard time about it.   Tell me one contribution Martha Pollack has made to Cornell athletics over the past five years?  Oh yeah.............she added a red tarp to the Crescent so fans can no longer sit there.  Anything else?

You'll be even more pissed when Martha Pollack hires a female athletic director. But just about every other Ivy's hires as AD have gone that way the past decade.

Not to dispute your points but to offer other perspectives:
* A president who leaves the football game at halftime is going to meet one group of alums, then have drinks at the Statler, probably twice, with alumni with clout or money to donate, hang with a couple trustees, then have dinner with more influencers. I bet there are times when the president desperately needs to go pee and cant' get away from a long-winded bore; it's part of the job. I sat in her box about 5 years ago and she left at halftime but she also was thoughtful to note with a shrug that she had a bunch of homecoming weekend appointments. Regardless, Andy Noel stays to the end of virtually very game, no matter how cold, rainy or hopeless the score.
* The red tarps add zest to the stadium. Nobody has been refused admission because the stadium lacks capacity. Most arenas with upper and lower bowls can drape some or all upper sections. Cornell tarps at least have a stylized C and may have Cornell's twitter handle, so think of the branding opportunities Cornell gains among influencers.
* The president or provost or head of planning comes to an alumni club meeting based on how big the club, the potential gain (versus other use of their time), etcetera. It has been perhaps two decades since Cornell has more or less guaranteed every Cornell club a name-speaker-from-Ithaca without looking at costs and benefits. The CC of Boston gets blown off less than CC of Western Mass. When I was president of that smaller group, at one point the head of Cornell planning flew out in a private plane to speak to 50 people. But then football coach Bob Blackman circa 1980 stopped making a trip to WMass to aware the trophy to the Player of the Year because a) the kids was often not academcially qualified and b) making the award in February, if he was a senior, the kid probably had his college chosen.
* Pollock did show up at a hockey game the day she was announced. Or maybe it was Skorton. We've been through a bunch of presidents this century and I forget which is which.

[billhoward]

The Schoellkopf Crescent has crumbled many times, been repaired, and has not yet fallen. The aging stadium has also benefited from Cornell's imposed weight limit of 3,500 fans at football games. Otherwise there'd probably be 10,000 at most games.

Is this new?  What do they do at graduation - in 2019 the crescent was packed for graduation.

I think Bill's being ironic again.

I think it's more like exaggeration. Extreme exaggeration. Buildings only collapse in Miami Beach, plus earthquake-prone countries with poor building codes. Or when Ukraine puts another Javelin missile on target. #AsymmetricWarfare