Dear Coach Norries Wilson,



Like every other Ivy League football writer, I heard your rant after the Penn game two weeks ago. In it (for those reading who might not have heard), you blast writers from your school’s newspaper. You take on the Penn and Columbia administrations. Basically, you rip on everyone and everything that isn’t Penn coach Al Bagnoli or your own players.

All this is understandable. But when you took on writers, and called them out on their understanding of football, my ears perked up.

You’ve taken over a program without much of a winning tradition at Columbia, and you haven’t had a real chance to bring in your own recruits. It’s going to be a long, difficult road to bring football respectability to Columbia, and doubtless there are people in the administration there who wonder if it’s even worth the effort. But you’ve also brought three wins in your first season, which is more than many expected, and your Lions are more competitive than previous editions.

Your comments about the league not wanting a strong Columbia team got blown out of proportion, but are to a certain extent true. It’s not that there’s a league-wide conspiracy, but as you pointed out, no one wants to have to play another tough game each year. Everyone likes to see Columbia as a cupcake game, and you want to change that.

And beyond that, you’ve won in a lot of places. At Minnesota, as a player. Most recently, at Connecticut, where you helped create a rising program. So it’s understandably frustrating to lose, and lose often, and so I can see why you might feel that Columbia football is disrespected by other schools, and by your own newspaper and administration.

But the real reason I’m writing this is not to defend you. It’s to warn you, or fairly appraise you of what I (and many of my football-writing colleagues) can and can’t do.

I can recognize zone coverage. I can recognize man-to-man, and I recognize blitzes. I know that as a punt returner, you plant your heels on the 10-yard line and don’t back up. I know the difference between a slant, a post, and a quick out.

But there’s a lot I can’t do, as well. For starters, I can’t draw up a scheme on either side of the ball much more complex than what I see on Madden. You’re right about that. If you asked me to set up protection schemes, or “draw up a front,” as you challenged writers to do, I would likely fail.

But I can recognize when these things aren’t working. If there’s a lot of pressure on the quarterback, or a ton of sacks, it’s pretty clear that something isn’t right with the protection, and rest assured that I will ask you about it. You answer should (in theory) tell me whether it was an issue with game planning, or a physical mismatch, or a mistake in execution on a particular play.

In fact, that’s the reason we ask these questions. Because we’re writers, and aren’t with you for game planning and drawing fronts and coverages and zone blitzes, we need to know these things to accurately assess (and report) the game.

It’s also something we don’t discuss enough as reporters with our readers and the people we cover. On a certain level, our jobs are very easy: we get to sit around and watch sports while eating the free press-box food. But there’s an element of difficulty in that many of us never played the sports we cover, or at least not past a Pop Warner level. The vast majority of us are fans-turned-reporters, where we throw on veils of objectivity and try to explain what happened instead of blindly cheering.

All this puts us in a precarious position. Coach, you can come after reporters for not spending their lives playing or coaching football, or argue that our lack of technical understanding makes us somehow less competent. But when there are breakdowns on the field, we have to find out the reasons behind them. Sometimes we can figure it out, but we ask you to make sure. Because the only thing worse than being yelled at for asking questions would be blaming a mistake on the wrong person or problem.

We’ll be there on Saturday. We’ll only write negative things if they’re clearly warranted, and hopefully your paper will follow the same policy. Our knowledge should be plenty up to the task, because you’ll help us with the details.

Sincerely,

Brad