Bright lights, big city, lousy football program.

Such has been the traditional wisdom regarding Columbia, which has not brought the Ivy title home to New York since 1961—when the school shared the championship with Harvard—and has not had a winning league mark since a 5-2 campaign in 1996.

But with new coach Bob Shoop’s arrival on the scene, the energy running through these oft-maligned Lions has reached levels unimaginable just a year ago.

“He’s an outstanding young coach,” Crimson coach Tim Murphy said. “He brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to the table.”

And that energy has translated into significant improvement in a very short period of time. After winning just two games all last season, Shoop’s revitalized squad brought home a victory in two of Columbia’s first three games.

“I certainly can sense the players on the field are playing with more confidence and playing with more belief,” Yale coach Jack Siedlecki said. “They think they have a chance and that’s key.”

From his days as a wide receiver at Yale, Shoop has had the infectious competitive drive that his teammates and now his players can’t help but catch.

“He was a great player here [at Yale],” Siedlecki said. “[Former Yale] Coach Carm Cozza tells a really funny story about him. They threw him a ball near the end of the game, and he was supposed to go out of bounds with it. Cozza was furious when he turned it back inside before he took it in for the touchdown. [It] turned out to be the game-winner.”

Now that drive has taken a Lions program desperately in need of rebuilding and placed it on a fast track back towards successful competition within the Ivy ranks.

Before overhauling the team, however, Shoop first attended to the coaching staff, clearing house—bringing back only offensive coordinator Rick Skrosky—and bringing in a young, new group of experienced teachers to introduce his style to the players.

“The staff he put together is young,” defensive coordinator Tim Weaver said. “He and I are the old guys on staff, and I just turned 35.”

Despite the staff’s collective youth, most have served as coaches at Division I-A schools, headlined by Shoop, who left behind his role as secondary coach at Boston College to take on his current position at Columbia. Prior to BC, Shoop held positions on the staffs at Army and Virginia, as well as Division I-AA powers Northeastern and Villanova—where he served as defensive coordinator during the Wildcats 12-1 season in 1997—and his alma mater, Yale.

“I think we all understand the expectation level is really high and really changed,” Skrosky said. “And that’s the thing we’re continuing to sell. [We’re telling players] this isn’t good enough any more and we’re setting the bar high.”

Achieving that level and maintaining it will depend heavily on the defense that Shoop has carefully pieced together from several other stalwart defenses.

“[What we’ve got is] a lot of the Boston College defense, some of the Tampa Bay defense, some of the Harvard defense,” Weaver said.

While those programs seem completely dissimilar and are hard to imagine working in unison at first glance, the final product is simple—an aggressive defense that brings the pressure straight at an opposing offense.

In keeping with his high level of competitive energy, Shoop is willing to take chances to procure victory.

“[When] he coached for Carm, Bobby always wanted to onside kick on the first play of the game,” Siedlecki said. “Kids buy into that. He’s willing to take some risk.”

Sure enough, Shoop tried to steal the ball right out from under the Bulldogs’ nose on the opening kickoff last weekend.

That is what Shoop’s defense is all about—calculated risk. With a defensive corps that lacks the talent and depth to just sit back and wait to respond to what an opposing offense presents, Columbia has been transformed into a squad that brings the pressure and brings it often.

“They play a lot of two-deep coverage,” Princeton coach Roger Hughes said. “He does a great job of working his scheme to the talent of the players he has. He [isn’t] putting kids in positions where they can’t make plays.”

Instead, with his style of four-three defense, he’s putting them in a position where they can’t help but make them.

“They’re playing with a lot of blitz and a lot of blitz stuff coming out of the secondary,” Siedlecki said. “They’re trying to do a lot of movement up front. He’s got them playing and they’re making some plays.”

Though the chances of being burned deep with single coverage dramatically increase, on balance the rewards the Lions are reaping have more than covered the cost of the damage.

“I’m sure they’ve created more turnovers than they have over the last couple of years,” Siedlecki said. “The one thing they haven’t done is created interceptions. But they have created a lot of fumbles.”

The assertiveness of his defense, however, has not been unleashed haphazardly thus far, but has been complemented by the meticulousness which Shoop brings to the program.

“There’s not a stone unturned,” Skrosky said. “We’re 2-5 and on a little slide, but there’s no question we’re a better program.”

Described as the first one in the office in the morning and the last one out that evening, Shoop has thrown more than his full weight behind propelling Columbia back towards respectability. From rehabilitating winter workouts from their joke status prior to his arrival, to walking through the first practice with his team in the Dodge Fitness Center, to making sure somebody’s in charge of socks at practice, minutiae are Shoop’s priority.

“He’s obviously very bright,” Skrosky said. “He does his homework and everything. I don’t think he’s ever unprepared for anything.”

And that has trickled down not only to his team’s performance on the field, but also to the way in which both players and coaching staff carry themselves.

“If you asked me what I’m going to be doing May 12, 2004, I’ll know what I’m doing,” Skrosky said. “That kind of permeates through to the rest of the team.”

Together, it all breathes new life into a program desperate for a new start and gives a second chance to players who had come to not only expect, but even accept defeat.

“He’s an aggressive guy and he’s willing to take a chance,” Weaver said. “It says to the players we’re not trying to keep games close, we’re not trying to lose by a little bit. We’re trying to win.”

And that’s something no one on the Upper West Side of Manhattan has been able to say for a long while.

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.