Cornell football coach

[billhoward]

(See Ken711's post "New Cornell football coach search" for discussion on the search to replace David Archer. This November 2023 thread has been on the the possibilities of a coaching change; with Archer departed, it's no longer germane.)

With 2 games left in the 2023 season, David Archer has a .296 career winning average (.279 Ivy). The best of his 10 seasons overall was last year's 5-5; the best Ivy season was 2019 with a tie for fourth/fifth with a 3-4 record.

Cornell has had 27 head football coaches going back to Marshall Newell in 1894-1896 (no head coach 1887-94).  Only three coaches have Cornell HC careers running into double-digit years: Archer 10, Lefty James 14 (1947-61) and Gil Dobie 16 (1920-36, 3 national championships).

Archer's predecessors at Cornell lasted this many seasons: 3 (Kent Austin, the immediate predecessor), 6, 3, 3, 8 (Jim Hofher), 1, 6, 6, 2, 9 (Jack Musick) and 5. BTW the 2-season coach with a .167 W-L percentage was George Seifert, the same Seifert who won two Super Bowls coaching San Francisco and when he left the 49ers had the league's second highest winning percentage ever. Maybe Cornell helped his upward path.

Of the current Ivy football coaches with at least 5 years experience, all but one are .600 or better (records through end of 2022 season):  

Code Select Expand

Harvard    Tim Murphy    1994* .688 overall
Princeton  Bob Surace    2010  .608
Yale       Tony Reno     2012  .600
Cornell    David Archer  2013  .289  
Penn       Ray Priore    2015  .600
* first year as head coach

If you were the athletics director and wanted regime change, what year would you have done it? After just 3 seasons with a total of 5 wins? Certainly not after 2016 with the 3-win improvement. Perhaps fter 2018 with the back-to-back 3-8 seasons? In the 2-8 year after the cancelled Covid season? Not after 2022's 5-5.

Code Select Expand

Year W L Ivy     Ivy Finish
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, no competition                
2021 2 8 1-6 t-6th
2022 5 5 2-5 t-6th
TOTALS 26 64 17-46

Why nothing happened in the years after the 4-6 2019 season: With AD Andy Noel retiring in spring 2023, there was no way Noel was going to stick the new AD with a replacement football coach after fall 2022 (or after 2021 if Noel knew then he was winding down). A dismissal might also transfer Archer elsewhere in the athletic department after 20 years at Cornell including 6 as assistant and 4 as a student. Hockey (men's and women's), lacrosse and wrestling are probably Cornell's most important programs for rabid fans but even at Cornell the head football coach may be the most prominent sports hire to the world at large.

So, what would you do? What will new AD Nicki Moore do? If she's a hard charger destined to run a $100-$200-million (budget) Big Ten or similar program five years from now in her early 50s, getting the football program straightened out is crucial. And also if Moore likes upstate and spends the next 20 years in Ithaca. Either way.

[ugarte]

close your /code/ tags please! (I voted!)

[Ken711]

That record is truly abysmal...Fire Archer. :-D

[ugarte]

.658 with No Coach. Could it work again?

[billhoward]

.658 with No Coach. Could it work again?

It's how Ultimate (Frisbee) is played in college, more or less. The players pretty much run things.

And Ultimate is a sport that led to one of the best-ever intros in sportwriting:

"How did our kids wind up in this stoner sport?" my friend Aaron asked as we pulled up to a multi-field complex in Rockford, Ill., where the Preying Manti, the Flying Horsecows, the Spidermonkeys and the Vicious Circles were all warming up. A guy with rainbow-colored hair jogged by us, boomboxes blasted "Teenage Dream," and flying discs filled the broad Midwestern sky.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-clueless-dads-strange-trip-to-the-ultimate-tournament-1527173558?st=ctgkbc65zl7yhs7&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalin

[Local Motion]

While I agree we need a new head football coach, the overall football programs goes far beyond the coach.   On the list you have some very successful coaches who have left like Jim Hofher and Jim Knowles, but departed the program frustrated with the lack of support in terms of facilities, admissions, and financial aid.  As we discussed the Ivy League is a sports conference and not an academic affiliation, meaning at the very least Cornell needs to be competitive with the other seven institutions to be successful.   As I mentioned before, Schoellkopf Field is not up to Ivy League standards with the ugly parking garage it's basically a "half a stadium".   Buddy Teevens was dealing with the same issue when he returned to Hanover in the mid-2000's, but he was able to have the entire stadium rebuilt.   We don't need that at Schoellkopf, but at the very least we need to fix the west side as it's ugly as ugly gets.  In addition, you don't win football games without talent and Jim Knowles was incredibly frustrated to have recruits accepted at other Ivies or Patriot League schools who basically ran right over the Big Red whether on offense or defense.  

With that being said, I have been outspoken regarding my displeasure with Martha Pollack as she could care less about Big Red athletics or basically anything not related to computer science.  You can agree or disagree with me, but it's a known fact on the East Hill, Martha Pollack is a difficult leader to get along with regardless of the department you work in.   She is not a visible leader and is not the type of person to listen to leaders in other departments like athletics.

[tycho]

Archer generally doesn't stir the pot, and I think that's why he sticks around. He's the poster child of the administration's disinterest in football. Seems to me the bigwigs over Nicki Moore are perfectly content to keep him on.

[Al DeFlorio]

While I agree we need a new head football coach, the overall football programs goes far beyond the coach.   On the list you have some very successful coaches who have left like Jim Hofher and Jim Knowles, but departed the program frustrated with the lack of support in terms of facilities, admissions, and financial aid.  As we discussed the Ivy League is a sports conference and not an academic affiliation, meaning at the very least Cornell needs to be competitive with the other seven institutions to be successful.   As I mentioned before, Schoellkopf Field is not up to Ivy League standards with the ugly parking garage it's basically a "half a stadium".   Buddy Teevens was dealing with the same issue when he returned to Hanover in the mid-2000's, but he was able to have the entire stadium rebuilt.   We don't need that at Schoellkopf, but at the very least we need to fix the west side as it's ugly as ugly gets.  In addition, you don't win football games without talent and Jim Knowles was incredibly frustrated to have recruits accepted at other Ivies or Patriot League schools who basically ran right over the Big Red whether on offense or defense.  

With that being said, I have been outspoken regarding my displeasure with Martha Pollack as she could care less about Big Red athletics or basically anything not related to computer science.  You can agree or disagree with me, but it's a known fact on the East Hill, Martha Pollack is a difficult leader to get along with regardless of the department you work in.   She is not a visible leader and is not the type of person to listen to leaders in other departments like athletics.

You continue your anti-Pollack rants but have never provided an ounce of support for your ugly assertions.  You, I believe, also rant about her in the same ugly manner on Voy forums. Your unsupported rants are repetitious and tiresome.  

I don't know what your personal gripe is with Pollack but it must be more than the current state of Cornell football given the tone of your rants.  I've been watching Ivy football since the early 1950s and Cornell has, over the course of those 70 years, been on the whole subpar.  And that predates Pollack by a lot of years.  West stands were torn down and not replaced long before she came to East Hill.  If Pollack has a focus on keeping Cornell's computer science and related technology programs top-notch I'm all for it.  If so, she has her priorities right.  So take whatever your personal gripe is with her someplace else,

[Local Motion]

Al............I am only giving you the reality of the situation.   Have you talked to either staff or students at Cornell regarding Martha Pollack?  Have you read the Cornell Daily Sun or been back to campus?     Have you ever even tried to meet Martha Pollack?   I didn't just make this stuff up, there is a lot of paralysis on campus right now as we have a leader that is not very visible and it's tough for departments like athletics to get things done when you don't have support from Day Hall.

[billhoward]

Martha Pollock like predecessor president David Skorton seem neutral on sports. Don't want to expand it, don't want to kill it. That kind of leaves the Teagle pool replacement in limbo.

Perhaps Cornell's most glorious athletics years, 1967 first NCAA hockey championship to 1970 second to 1971 first NCAA men's lax championship, IRA (rowing) title and Ed Marinaro / Cornell's first football championship in the formal Ivy League era ... they came during the Vietnam era unrest. (As there is unrest now.) The president, Dale Corson, seemed pretty neutral about sports on campus. Still, sports prospered. The basketball team even was written about in Sports Illustrated. Oops, wait, that was about Cornell's horrible record and racial unrest on the team.

(Aside: Corson seemed dry and humorless to me as an undergrad. There was actually a subtle Midwestern sense of humor there, and he was absolutely the right person to lead Cornell back to normalcy. He also, I learned years later, was a staunch foe in the fifties of McCarthy-era bullying and anti-semitism. R.I.P.)

[Swampy]

Martha Pollock like predecessor president David Skorton seem neutral on sports. Don't want to expand it, don't want to kill it. That kind of leaves the Teagle pool replacement in limbo.

Perhaps Cornell's most glorious athletics years, 1967 first NCAA hockey championship to 1970 second to 1971 first NCAA men's lax championship, IRA (rowing) title and Ed Marinaro / Cornell's first football championship in the formal Ivy League era ... they came during the Vietnam era unrest. (As there is unrest now.) The president, Dale Corson, seemed pretty neutral about sports on campus. Still, sports prospered. The basketball team even was written about in Sports Illustrated. Oops, wait, that was about Cornell's horrible record and racial unrest on the team.

(Aside: Corson seemed dry and humorless to me as an undergrad. There was actually a subtle Midwestern sense of humor there, and he was absolutely the right person to lead Cornell back to normalcy. He also, I learned years later, was a staunch foe in the fifties of McCarthy-era bullying and anti-semitism. R.I.P.)

SI also wrote about the hockey team. IIRC, it was on the cover.

Regarding Corson, as we get older and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the Good becomes less of an enemy to the Perfect. Maybe someday we'll look back at the Pollock years this way.

Put this another way: if CU athletics were really and inherently in the trash, we wouldn't have the highly ranked teams we do have: hockey, lacrosse, rowing, wrestling, etc.

[rss77]

As an undegrad in the late 70s I think you have it wrong about Corson.  He would attend Cornell road football games and other Cornell sporting events.  Going back to the Ben Bluitt days coaching basketball-Bluitt would hold post game gatherings open to the public and I rembember Corson being at some of those sessions.  Getting back to the conditions Seifert dealt would suggest that one read the late Robert Kane's book about Cornell athletics.

[George64]

As an undegrad in the late 70s I think you have it wrong about Corson.  He would attend Cornell road football games and other Cornell sporting events.  Going back to the Ben Bluitt days coaching basketball-Bluitt would hold post game gatherings open to the public and I rembember Corson being at some of those sessions.  Getting back to the conditions Seifert dealt would suggest that one read the late Robert Kane's book about Cornell athletics.

I've always believed that Seifert was fired because Bob Blackman became available.  Blackman's record at Dartmouth: 104-37-3 (73.2 percent), at Cornell: 23-33-1 (49.2 percent).

[nyc94]

Surprised that as bad as Archer's record is Cornell has never finished in 8th place - alone, untied, dead last - during his tenure.

[mike1960]

Surprised that as bad as Archer's record is Cornell has never finished in 8th place - alone, untied, dead last - during his tenure.

Maybe that fact will figure in the season opening press release next year.