A Vision of CU Football’s Rise to Glory

Say, hypothetically, that Columbia wins the Ivy League title in football next fall. The Lions have forty-five juniors and seniors, several players who dominate their positions, and a decent amount of depth. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton will be stacked next year, but if all the bad luck from last season balances out, then it’s not unreasonable to imagine the Lions grabbing at least a share of the title. March is a good month for considering radical sports upsets, so here’s how it could all go down.

The last game of the season is at Brown on Nov. 22. The administration will throw all its effort into getting students to the game. They’ll distribute free T-shirts and giant foam fingers, but this will only entice the 15 percent of Columbia students who already follow athletics. To snag the others, there will be a trail of Reese’s Pieces leading from Butler Library to shuttle buses on College Walk, much like in the movie E.T.

When Brown’s scoreboard clock hits zero, Columbia fans will storm the field. The marching band, more drunk than usual, will play “Roar, Lions Roar” while the Brown fans trudge home in shame. President Bollinger and Dr. Murphy will be standing by the stadium exits hitting them in the face with banana cream pies.

When the celebration ends, Norries Wilson, drenched in sweat and Gatorade, will walk into post-game press conference. Wilson will treat it like any other post-game, meaning he will lose patience if a question is too general and get angry if it casts any Columbia player in a negative light. A Spectator reporter’s first two questions will be “Coach, how does this win symbolize winning in general? Why couldn’t Drew Quinn win the coin toss?”

On Sunday, Kitchenette will make a killing on its hangover-curing pancakes. The graduating senior football players will come to terms with the end of their playing careers. At least one Columbia player will start talking to an agent about the NFL combine. Highlights from the game will be on SportsCenter, and news reports of the victory will travel the world. In a lonely corner of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will shed a silent tear. And that will be that.

The coaching staff will take a day off and start on the same recruiting trek it goes on every year, only this time it’ll use gold championship rings and stories of Columbia’s return to greatness to persuade players to turn down Harvard. This will give them an edge in recruiting, but high school players and their parents will be skeptical. “Wasn’t it a weak conference last year?” they might ask. “What about all those injuries on the other teams?”

The coaches from the other Ivy colleges will be on the road providing their own answers to these questions. The powers that be at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale will be hard at work re-inflating the egos of their alumni networks. The 2008 Ivy League title might have a marginal benefit to Columbia in the short run, but lasting collegiate cultures aren’t built in the short run.

If I were at the hypothetical Brown game, it would be high on the list of my best college memories (just below winning the ZBT case race with Tighe Holden). Memories of sports glory have a dollar value, and alumni tend to overestimate that value the older they get. An Ivy title would spur donation and, more importantly, obnoxious school pride, which is an area where Columbia seems to lag behind Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Case in point: I was at an alumni dinner a few weeks ago, and when the night ended with a performance of “Roar Lions, Roar”, most of the alumni either refused to sing along or didn’t know the words.

One Ivy League football title might not change the entire athletic culture of Columbia, but it’s the only possible first step, and for that reason, I am excited for the start of spring football practice.