View From Bennett Avenue

I went to Fordham University, class of 1986, and when I was a student FU employed a solid Division III program plus good basketball (well the first couple of years anyway) and baseball teams. But some big-shot donors, remembering the good ol' days for Rams football of 40-50 years prior, decided that Fordham should return to football glory--other sports be damned. Now, 25 years later, Fordham has a bad FCS football team and a bad basketball team. In that quarter of a century, however, the respect for academics at Fordham has grown greatly. It seems that Fordham can achieve academic improvement without athletic success (by the large team sports; the FU softball, women's swimming and women's crew have all done very well in recent years). But the powers that be feel that FU can have it all: academic success and a football team to be proud of, despite any number of obstacles such a decision will bring from the lack of space for a larger football stadium to the inability to keep good coaches to the total lack of desire by the local community. It is an awfully large amount of money to spend chasing the dreams of 80-year-old donors.

And so, believing that my Rams should be very good in basketball and solid in a lower lever of football, I refused to go to West Point recently to watch the Rams tangle with the Cadets. Playing games against Army and Connecticut this year and Navy next are part of the plan to elevate the program. I won't get into the game so as not to embarrass anyone but we were barely a scrimmage for an Army team that just lost its starting QB. What was the point?