Columbia Football: The Numbers Game

With 18 players of our 2013 recruiting class already announcing they're coming to Columbia, we're more than halfway to the total number of recruits the Lions will be allowed to add this year.

Last years' incoming class was rather large, and the Ivy League has all kinds of rules about how many kids you can bring in every four year period.

If we bring in 30 freshmen, that would put our roster total—as of today—to about 120. For a team that struggled to keep 76 kids on the roster just three years ago, this is a huge step up.

As much as some of us get excited about freshmen breaking onto the field and making an immediate impact, the best results of our bigger roster should be a starting lineup made up of more juniors and seniors than freshmen and sophomores.

We're just six days away from "National Letter of Intent" signing day, which is a much bigger event for the BCS schools. However, it helps Ivy recruits come to their decisions as well. We should get more names to add to our list in about a week or so.

As it is, we're way ahead of previous years. It seems like the rise of the Internet and the growing general interest in high school recruits is making it easier to find articles and public reports on Ivy prospects.

Sobering Story

Speaking of publicly-reported recruits, it's important to remember that none are set in stone. Yale found that out the hard way recently, when prized linebacker prospect Chris Wade changed his mind about coming to New Haven. Instead, he is taking a scholarship offer from Miami of Ohio instead.

Snobby Ivy Leaguers like us may scoff at Miami as a school, but it is a very strong academic institution. In fact, Miami of Ohio is so good academically that Ben Roethlisberger's parents pushed him to go there rather than a lot of bigger football schools, because they wanted him to get a strong education.

This is an scary reminder that just because we have more public information about recruits, publicity doesn't equal certainty.

But it's cold outside and we have 233 days until our season starts.  These kinds of stories are what we have to hang our hats on!