Admission of Guilt

The big news of the past week has been college football signing day. "Signing [insert name of probably-overrated high school phenom] will absolutely send us to a bowl game this year!" Everyone who went to a Division I school is excited, some justifiably, some not. But it's a happy time of year, regardless.

Except for me. It's time for a confession. I went to a Division I school, but we're Division I-AA in football. And this isn't just any Division I-AA school. This is Columbia. Long-time holder of the NCAA record for most consecutive losses, with 44 in a row (now, thankfully, second to Prairie View's 80 straight losses in the 1990s). The only team in Ivy League history to go without a conference win in both football and basketball in the same season. Number four on ESPN's "Worst College Football Teams of All Time". There's mediocre, there's bad, and then there's Columbia. Not that we don't have decent players -- Steve Cargile (Class of 2004), was signed to the Denver Broncos active roster toward the end of December, and Marcellus Wiley, DE for the Jaguars as of the end of the 2006, has had a productive 10-year career after going in the 2nd round of the 1997 draft. But the team, as an institution, has been remarkably effective at only one thing: losing.

My optimistic side thinks that maybe 2007 will be the year Columbia finally turns it around. Not that I'm expecting to win an Ivy League championship, or even finish above .500 again (this past season was the first time in a decade that we had done so). No, my goals are more realistic. I'll be happy if the players don't go into the game expecting to lose, if undergrads even occasionally show up for the games, and if we can tailgate at Baker Field again.

Homer Simpson once said, "When it comes to sporting events, it's not whether you lose... it's how drunk you get."

Let's hope so.