Why is NYC College Football so Lame?

HOLLANDER: Two weeks ago, Stephen A. Smith’s show on 1050 ESPN Radio delivered a major announcement, live from ESPN Zone in Times Square: ESPN’s New York City Flagship station had partnered with New York’s College football team for Saturday broadcasts from 2006-2008. Who is “New York’s College football team”? Syracuse. 

“Since so many staff at ESPN Radio graduated from Syracuse,” reasoned ESPN Radio Program Director Mike Thompson, “bringing Syracuse sports to New York was a natural decision.” 

I’m not sure I see what’s so natural about subjecting over a million New York area sports radio listeners to weekly play-by-plays of a school that’s 250 miles away just to pleasure a handful of Stuart Scott wannabes at a sound studio in Bristol, Conn. But what are the alternatives? New York City college football offers remarkably slim pickings. 

Columbia received a lot of notoriety in the off season for hiring the first ever African-American head football coach (Norrie Wilson) in Ivy League history, but the program is primarily notorious for losing. Columbia hasn’t enjoyed a winning season since 1996. I suggest designing uniforms that project a little more ferocity that the powder blue look they’ve been rocking for so long. Columbia’s Bronx-based rival, Fordham, produces a lot of sportscasters (Vin Scully, Mike Breen, Bob Papa, Spero Dedes) but barely registers as a blip on the college football radar. 

Sure, you could move out of New York City to find football. Hofstra gave us Wayne Chrebet—but they’re really more of a Long Island thing. Rutgers restored its excellent program to a Bowl Game level of play last year, but it’s the state school of New Jersey, 60 miles away. As soon as you exit the city limits for college football you might as well head all the way to Syracuse. 

Like USC and UCLA use Hollywood, like Da’ U (University of Miami) uses South Beach, why can’t NYC-based schools use Manhattan as an effective recruiting tool to create high powered Division I programs here? Never will New York City become a college town. That won’t happen. But how exciting would it be for some bohunk from Choctaw, Oklahoma, a corn-fed lineman from Massillon, Ohio or some scat-back from Midland, Texas to consider the prospect of living in New York City while playing big time college football for four years? We’ve got to be able to make that happen. 

SULLIVAN: Big time college football not existing in New York City is a mystery for the ages. We have the players, we have the colleges, yet not one school promotes a major football program. It is like college football is treated like NASCAR in New York.

I just don’t get it. New Yorkers love their football. Why do we have to suffer the USC-Texas-Florida State’s being the powerhouses of college football? It’s a shame. New York should rule college football. Damn it, this is New York—we have everything in this city and yet we have no decent college football squad.

Well, I have the answer. My idea is to start a college program on Rikers Island and then have the inmates play on the football team. Yes they would only be able to stay for a season, but think of the mayhem we could create in the college football world. It would be our own version of “The Longest Yard.”

Those bad-ass poseurs in the Florida schools would get rocked by our boys from The Rock. Think outside of the box. Give low-level felons a chance to succeed at something and we might get newly productive members of society. Rikers College. I like the sound of that. And though I never liked the man, former Mayor Rudy Guiliani said it best, “Our city can kick your city’s ass.”

HOLLANDER: For once you’ve stumbled onto something—maybe something brilliant. What you’re proposing would give the rehabilitative aims of our city’s correctional facilities a much-needed shot in the arm while simultaneously jump-starting big time college football here. When young men take a wrong turn in life, the jailhouse ought to be a place where the paternal hand of our justice system provides them with a productive space to channel their heretofore misguided energy. Frankly, most successful college football programs today, while producing excellent football players, fail to produce good citizens.

After one of his players was shot in the buttocks while a teammate returned fire in a late July gun battle near campus, University of Miami head coach Larry Coker said he would adopt a new policy “discouraging” his players to own guns. Coker acknowledged that many of his players legally owned licensed firearms so a no-gun rule was unenforceable.  

Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden requires his players to register their guns with the coaching staff, checking them out for “hunting purposes” only. “If they go hunting, they check the guns out,” says Bowden. “Does that slip by sometimes? I don’t know. I don’t keep up with it that much.”

At Rikers College there would be little question of who has the guns. These young men would be focused on one thing: football. I can see it now: kids, all over New York, wearing the orange jumpsuit of their favorite convict. In no time at all, Rikers Island would become absent from MSNBC Investigates and gain prominence on ESPN College GameDay. And brother, talk about home field advantage!

SULLIVAN: Yes! You see my vision. The Big Orange in New York would no longer be those weenies up at that tundra called Syracuse but rather it would be our street criminals proudly wearing the Orange of the New York City Department of Correction uniform: The Riker Rocks.

Syracuse gets all the hype because many sportswriters, commentators, et al went there. Well, I know more guys who went to Rikers than Syracuse and it’s in New York so we could have the most original, society-changing football team ever created coming right out of our fair New York City.