Should Columbia, Ivy League Football Tighten Cleats in Face of Economic Crisis?

Is this your college loan officer?

The deepening economic crisis and the effect it's having on university budgets is becoming more troubling every day.

Throw in the Bernie Madoff scandal, and you have actual panic in some circles here in New York.

It does not appear that the Madoff scam has touched Columbia in any direct way, but a member of the Columbia College Board of Visitors, J. Ezra Merkin, has been accused of actively funneling money to Madoff from the OTHER BOARDS he served on, including New York School, which sued Merkin on Friday over this. Merkin's lawyer says he'll fight the suit vigorously.

The question for us here is whether this economic downturn will hurt Ivy football and/or Columbia in particular. Could it actually help?

The obvious argument for those who say it will hurt us is that a financial squeeze on more Americans will dissuade kids from taking offers at non-scholarship schools like the Ivies. No one wants to take on more debt right now.

But it could go the other way as well. The scholarship schools will also get hit hard, especially the state schools. So there may be fewer scholarships to go around and some of the better prospects may not get free rides at non-Ivy schools anyway. If that's the case, a lot of players would presumably choose to come to an Ivy because they aren't getting a scholarship elsewhere anyway.

Also, many FCS/D-IAA schools may discontinue football, expanding the field of potential recruits for everyone else.

Obviously there are some good arguments to be made either way. But history is really of no help here. The last deep recession in this country was 1982-83, and the nature of the Ivies is just too different to use those times as a meaningful comparison.

In the short run, we all may suffer when it comes to facilities. Dartmouth's West Stands improvement project at Memorial Field has been put on hold, and I doubt we'll see any of the very, very, very needed improvements at Brown Stadium anytime soon.

I'd love to hear any informed opinions about all of this.

Lineman on the Hook?

Quality defensive linemen are becoming quite a rarity in the Ivies, and that's what made Owen Fraser's addition to the team and Lou Miller's emergence on the D-line so valuable in 2008.

A strong-looking Houston area high school star on the defensive line is Anthony Villamagna, and he has Columbia on his list of possible schools.