Cornell football coach

[Ken711]

We are nationally competitive in lax, hockey, wrestling, and certain other sports. There is no good reason why we can't compete in the Ivies in football.  All teams at Cornell share the same admissions  financial aid, student academic requirements, senior administration, etc.  The coaching staffs are different though...

Very true.  To go through the process of finding the right head coaching search takes time and work that Andy had no interest in doing.  Let's hope Nikki Moore does.  There is no justification keeping a head coach in ANY sport at Cornell that produces 10 straight losing seasons....none...nada.

[Local Motion]

Well Jim Knowles who is currently the #1 defensive coordinator in all of college football, best season at Cornell was 6-4 in 2005 and he should have won multiple Ivy titles for the Big Red.   When are we going to learn???   Without support from Day Hall, we could hire Nick Saban and even he would probably struggle on the East Hill.  The other sports are irrelevant as football is a different than other Ivy sports.  While the Harvard vs. Yale game next Saturday will draw 50K give or take, Cornell will be lucky if the ushers show up for the Columbia game on Saturday.   The Cornell admin constantly complains they don't have money for athletics and then Harvard vs. Yale charges $100 per ticket.  Is it any wonder why Harvard and Yale have such a huge endowment?   Cornell can do better.  Go Big Red!!!

[CAS]

Why are the other sports irrelevant?  Lax plays in the same stadium as football.  Lax is relevant nationally, not just in the Ivies. Lax played for the NCAA championship just two years ago. Does Day Hall bestow special gifts to lax?  Do they care about lax & not football?  I believe football (& Schoellkopf) should get more funding, but coaching is the most important determinant of program success.

[Weder]

There are some $100 tickets for the Yale-Harvard game, just like there are some $100+ tickets when the Cornell hockey team plays at MSG. There are also lots of cheaper tickets for the Y-H game, and they also give one free ticket to every Yale student and employee.

[Ken711]

Why are the other sports irrelevant?  Lax plays in the same stadium as football.  Lax is relevant nationally, not just in the Ivies. Lax played for the NCAA championship just two years ago. Does Day Hall bestow special gifts to lax?  Do they care about lax & not football?  I believe football (& Schoellkopf) should get more funding, but coaching is the most important determinant of program success.

[/b]


X's and O's besides the jimmy's and joes is just as very important. Archer was a very poor choice to begin with.  When does a head coach get hired with no prior experience as even a coordinator?  Andy felt he'd learn on the job I suppose?  In any case, after 5 years, the writing was on the wall that this coaching experiment was a complete failure.  The fact that Archer was given another 5 years, and has failed yet again to achieve a winning season is just mind blowing.  

Archer should, but I doubt he would, resign on his own.  He needs to be a dismissed after next week's game and a national search for a qualified coach from a winning background has to be hired and given all the resources he needs to succeed.

[BearLover]

Some of the stuff in this thread is crazy. People aren't paying $100 to attend Harvard-Yale except maybe some crazy rich people who want to pay for some sort of VIP package. It needs to be stated that almost no one attends games at even the successful Ivy programs—they have very few fans in general and the students don't care at all.

Yeah the president of Cornell doesn't care about athletics, but where's the evidence any of the other Ivy presidents care? I highly doubt success of the athletics program cracks any Ivy president's top 5 things at their university worth caring about.

Archer has been terrible, but Cornell football's lack of success long predates him. I personally believe that even if someone were to replace Archer and somehow find success, that person would jump ship to a better program the moment they were offered. For all the aforementioned reasons, I would say that, yeah, the administration doesn't care about Cornell football (and certainly not enough to pump more resources into the program), but they aren't unique in that respect, and frankly there aren't many reasons they SHOULD care.

[Swampy]

Some of the stuff in this thread is crazy. People aren't paying $100 to attend Harvard-Yale except maybe some crazy rich people who want to pay for some sort of VIP package. It needs to be stated that almost no one attends games at even the successful Ivy programs—they have very few fans in general and the students don't care at all.

Yeah the president of Cornell doesn't care about athletics, but where's the evidence any of the other Ivy presidents care? I highly doubt success of the athletics program cracks any Ivy president's top 5 things at their university worth caring about.

Archer has been terrible, but Cornell football's lack of success long predates him. I personally believe that even if someone were to replace Archer and somehow find success, that person would jump ship to a better program the moment they were offered. For all the aforementioned reasons, I would say that, yeah, the administration doesn't care about Cornell football (and certainly not enough to pump more resources into the program), but they aren't unique in that respect, and frankly there aren't many reasons they SHOULD care.

Well, there's an old saying: "A successful university president provides sex for the students, parking for the faculty, and winning football for the alumni."

[Trotsky]

His complaint with admissions was having to deal with separate admissions offices for each undergraduate school.

Let's change the basic structure of the university to accommodate sportsball.

[cth95]

It needs to be stated that almost no one attends games at even the successful Ivy programs—they have very few fans in general and the students don't care at all.

I don't watch a lot of Ivy or even any college football in general, but I happened to watch Yale at Princeton while flipping through the channels yesterday.  If the stadium was 1/3 full, I would be surprised.  Apparently we are not the only ones with an attendance problem.

[ugarte]

... 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.

Knowles left to take a DC position at a power conference school (even though it was Duke). He helped Cutcliffe turn the Duke program around and has since moved on to better (Oklahoma State) and better (Ohio State) programs as DC. At the risk of being rude, it appears he was too good to be coaching at Cornell.

[George64]

His complaint with admissions was having to deal with separate admissions offices for each undergraduate school.

Let's change the basic structure of the university to accommodate sportsball.

In the '60s, when checking out graduate schools, I looked through The OSU course catalogue.  There was a course, titled something like Fundamentals of Football, taught by Professor Woodrow Hayes, open by permission of the instructor.  No joke.

[dbilmes]

Back in the 1970s, I was taking an Advertising course in what was then called the Communication Arts Department. For my final project, I created an advertising campaign to increase attendance at Ivy League football games. Low attendance at games was a fact back then and that hasn't changed over the ensuing decades.
Having lived in Connecticut now for over 40 years, Yale used to get larger crowds for home games back when there was no cable TV and people read daily newspapers, most of whom had sportswriters covering Yale games in person, as well as covering the mid-week luncheons with the coach. That train has long left the station.
Most students going to Ivy League schools aren't sports-obsessed. If they were, they wouldn't go to an Ivy school. I know excellent students from Connecticut who went to schools like Alabama because they wanted a big-time sports atmosphere. That means most Ivy teams have to rely on the townies to increase attendance, and there isn't a single Ivy school which is located in a place which can be considered a hotbed of college football.
As for Archer, I wonder if the football alums with big pockets have put pressure on the AD to change the coaching staff. Or if those alums are satisfied with the status quo.

[nshapiro]

His complaint with admissions was having to deal with separate admissions offices for each undergraduate school.

Let's change the basic structure of the university to accommodate sportsball.

In the '60s, when checking out graduate schools, I looked through The OSU course catalogue.  There was a course, titled something like Fundamentals of Football, taught by Professor Woodrow Hayes, open by permission of the instructor.  No joke.

That course is probably gone now, but the educational challenges for Ohio State football players are still minimal.  My son is a grad student there, and every time a course he teaches (yes, teaches, not TAs) has a football player enrolled, there are also 4 or 5 extra students who audit the course.  I don't know if this is standard for big time football schools, but it happens today at OSU.

[nshapiro]

His complaint with admissions was having to deal with separate admissions offices for each undergraduate school.

Let's change the basic structure of the university to accommodate sportsball.

In the '60s, when checking out graduate schools, I looked through The OSU course catalogue.  There was a course, titled something like Fundamentals of Football, taught by Professor Woodrow Hayes, open by permission of the instructor.  No joke.

That course is probably gone now, but the educational challenges for Ohio State football players are still minimal.  My son is a grad student there, and every time a course he teaches (yes, teaches, not TAs) has a football player enrolled, there are also 4 or 5 extra students who audit the course.  I don't know if this is standard for big time football schools, but it happens today at OSU.

[George64]

His complaint with admissions was having to deal with separate admissions offices for each undergraduate school.

Let's change the basic structure of the university to accommodate sportsball.

In the '60s, when checking out graduate schools, I looked through The OSU course catalogue.  There was a course, titled something like Fundamentals of Football, taught by Professor Woodrow Hayes, open by permission of the instructor.  No joke.

That course is probably gone now, but the educational challenges for Ohio State football players are still minimal.  My son is a grad student there, and every time a course he teaches (yes, teaches, not TAs) has a football player enrolled, there are also 4 or 5 extra students who audit the course.  I don't know if this is standard for big time football schools, but it happens today at OSU.

I undoubtedly have too much time on my hands, so here's some sports trivia courtesy of Wikipedia.  "When Hayes was first hired to be the head coach at Ohio State, he was also made a "full professor of physical education", having earned an M.A. degree in educational administration from Ohio State in 1948. The classes he taught were usually full, and he was called "Professor Hayes" by students. Hayes also taught mandatory English and vocabulary classes to his freshman football players. One of his students was a basketball player named Bobby Knight, who later became a legendary basketball coach."

Controversial and unethical basketball coach, David Bliss '65, MBA '67, was a protege of Bobby Knight, so four degrees of separation: fired football coach Woody Hayes > fired coach Bobby Knight > fired coach Dave Bliss > Cornell athletics > David Archer.