They came in calling themselves a dynasty. The new beginning to Columbia football. As head coach Norries Wilson’s first recruiting class, they expected to turn around a program that hadn’t had a winning season since 1996.
Three years later, the dynasty they dreamed of hasn’t been exactly what they thought it would be. The seniors on the Columbia football team haven’t won any championships, and aside from their freshman year, they haven’t won more than a handful of games. They’ve learned it takes more than a year or even three to turn around a program. But they’re ready for their last shot now.
“We all had high hopes and dreams coming in here and talked a lot about what we wanted to do,” senior quarterback Millicent Olawale said. “This is our opportunity to do that.”
Four years ago they were unknowns, but they quickly got a chance to show their worth as Wilson put freshman after freshman on the field to showcase their skills, a trend that continued throughout the next two seasons as well. Wilson has never been shy about his dedication to putting the best players, the best team on the field. Three years ago, a good number of them happened to be freshmen.
With then-quarterback Craig Hormann (CC ’07) under center, wideout Austin Knowlin established himself as one of the most dangerous receivers in the league, with 44 catches for 553 yards in his debut season. His first play as a Lion: a 62-yard touchdown catch against Fordham.
Senior spur Andy Shalbrack fit seamlessly into the 3-5-3 defense Wilson employed in 2006, and has broken up 12 passes and recorded 183 tackles and nine interceptions coming into his senior year.
Olawale came into the program known for his dual-threat capability, showcasing his speed against Dartmouth when he came in to relieve Hormann. He led the team in rushing and had his first touchdown for the Light Blue against the Big Green. Though he only saw the field four times that first season, the expectations were high.
They came out 5-5 with a .500 record for the first time since 1996. The team won all their nonconference games and the contests against Brown and Cornell. Knowlin received Rookie of the Year commendations, and Columbia wowed the rest of the league, who were expecting more pronounced growing pains with a new head coach.
“When we first got here a lot of us were playing and we were all freshmen,” Knowlin said. “When you build a program you want your upperclassmen to be on the field showing the younger guys what to do. That’s not how it was the first two years we got here.”
The growing pains did arrive, though, in the fall of 2007. Behind Hormann once again, the Lions tried to build on the successes of the previous season. The loss of key players to graduation meant even more freshmen and sophomores were on the field. One young player was then-freshman Alex Gross, who enters his third season at linebacker after leading the team and the league in tackles in 2008. Another underclassman was then sophomore Ray Rangel, who became one of the featured backs and split time with Jordan Davis, CC ’09, eventually finishing the season with 244 yards on the ground.
A tough 27-10 loss to Fordham in the season opener proved to be prophetic of the 2007 season. The defense allowed Xavier Martin to go 157 yards on 25 carries for three touchdowns, giving up a total of 353 yards rushing, but held quarterback John Skelton to 4-15 completion for only 51 yards. The Lions would finish the season allowing over 200 yards passing and rushing per game.
The big-play offense powered by Hormann, who had over 400 yards passing against Penn, couldn’t maintain its high speed throughout the season. Bad losses to Lafayette, 29-0, Penn, 59-28, and Yale, 28-7, and the Light Blue ended the season a devastating 1-9 (0-7, 1-2)—winless in the Ivy league for the first time since 2002.
Then, a little-talked-about quarterback controversy took over midway through the 2008 season as then-juniors Olawale and Shane Kelly competed for the starting job.
After close losses put the Lions at 0-5, Wilson decided to put Olawale in midway through the third quarter against Dartmouth when the Light Blue led the Big Green 14-13. The result? Olawale went 7-7 for 111 yards and tacked on an extra 64 yards rushing on eight carries.
“Oh man, last year, I can’t really explain what it was like,” Olawale said. “We had a little system going on that kind of worked.”
The system included a week-by-week competition during practice for the starting job, with no guarantee that either quarterback would stay in for the majority of the game. The two handled the situation with poise and maturity, embodying the team spirit that characterized the 2008 Lions team.
“It’s not really important, I know, for me, and for Shane, it’s not really important who starts because that’s only a statistic,” Olawale said after the Dartmouth game last season. “It’s about getting those wins and helping the team when the game’s on the line. We could care less who starts; it’s just going out there and both making sure we know what we’ve got to do to lead this team.”
Olawale ended up getting those last four starts of the season against Yale, Harvard, Cornell, and Brown, but aside from the Cornell game—where the Lions recorded their second and last win of the season—there wasn’t a game where Kelly didn’t see the field as well.
Columbia lost their first five games of 2008 by a combined 33 points. After five turnovers and safety, the Lions lost to Penn by five. A fumble on the Princeton 39 a little under two minutes to go, the Lions down by a field goal, ended the game with another loss.
The only lopsided scores of the season came against Harvard and Brown, who tied for the league title at the end of the season, as the Lions fell to the Crimson 42-28 and to the Bears 41-10.
“Even though we had a tough loss at Brown and last year as a whole didn’t go how we wanted it to, in general I felt we went in the right direction,” Olawale said.
The Lions heard the same thing from opposing coaches: this Columbia team is much improved, they’re competitive, they’re turning things around. But still, Columbia finished the season 2-8 (2-5, 0-3), winless in their out-of-conference games.
That’s not enough for this team. They’ve got bigger goals.
“It’s our intent to go out and win every game on the schedule, not settle for playing close, not settle for playing competitive,” Wilson said.
They want to end the “drought,” as Wilson put it, of road-game losses that extends to 2006. And they want to get the students more involved.
“I’m just looking forward to doing something we haven’t done in a very long time, to change the attitude around here,” junior wide receiver Mike Stevens said. “Getting everyone at the school to come out to the games.”
They know, of course, that to do that they need to have a winning season. At the very least they need to break .500 to get any kind of student attendance outside of Homecoming.
But coach Wilson doesn’t believe special emphasis should be put on this his first recruiting class or the fact that for the first time since coming to Columbia he’s recruited all but one of the 118 players on the roster.
“People make a big deal about that,” Wilson said. “You know the first year we went five and five with a bunch of guys who people thought I wouldn’t care about. I’m here to coach the kids that play football at Columbia, whether I recruited them or the guy before me recruited them or they walked on.”
But his players and his captains are thinking about it. And they expect nothing less than a complete turnaround this season. Knowlin characterizes the team as “hungrier,” and there’s confidence and a determination that seems to be different going into this season.
“There’s no question that we have the talent to do it [win] and the coaching staff and schemes to do it,” left guard and senior captain John Seiler said. “It’s on the players now.”
And Wilson established Olawale as the quarterback for the season, ending the rotation between Olawale and Kelly that characterized last season. He won the job in the spring and is understands what’s expected of him when he goes on the field—mainly, that he doesn’t have to do it all himself.
“I came in here freshman year just trying to do too much, just trying to make every play a home run,” Olawale said. “Every play I had to do something crazy. I’ve realized that all I have to do is… allow other people to help us win, and that’s going to make us more successful than me just trying to do everything by myself.”
The decision has brought some solidity to the offense, which would have to be tweaked slightly depending on whether Kelly or Olawale was taking the snaps. That’s a bit of relief to the receivers.
“We have a lot of trust in Millie and it’s good to see they’ve actually made a decision so that every week we’re not really wondering who’s going to be in, what type of offense they’re going to be running this week,” Knowlin said. “We have a definite offense, definite quarterback, so things are looking really good right now.”
They’ve also got six captains—yes, six. A year after having only game captains, the team voted six players who they felt should lead the team. That includes seniors Olawale, Knowlin, Seiler, defensive end Lou Miller, wide receiver Taylor Joseph, and junior linebacker Alex Gross.
The team is returning 18 of 22 starters and has 26 seniors on the roster—more than in recent history of the football program. (Because the Ivy league does not allow athletic scholarships, the athletes are under no obligation but their own to remain on the team.)
“It’s good to have that depth, but it’s like having Barkley and Jordan and Isiah Thomas and Kobe Bryant on the basketball team sometimes,” Wilson said. “I’ve got to find a way to a) make sure that we’ve got our best players on the team and b) make sure that our eye is on the prize of winning the football game. And sometimes you have to be bigger than, ‘am I the starter or not the starter?’”
This team is looking bigger than that. In fact, they’re not quiet about the fact that they’re looking to win the Ivy Title for the first time since 1961. Despite being voted sixth in the league, they expect nothing less than to win every game.
“When you look around the league and you look at the experience this team has,” Gross said, “this has got to be the year that Columbia football really turns things around.”
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