This is my first Thanksgiving away from home. Even during four autumns in Ithaca, I always made it home for Turkey Day. It's a weird feeling, and it made me want to not do anything at all today. Not even go have dinner at the galley. Finally I had to go and do my homework, so I spent an hour and a half doing that.
Just over a year ago, as the 2002 Cornell football season was concluding, I remember saying on "Sports Roundup" (the sports talk show I used to do in college) that head coach Tim Pendergast needed to stay after posting a 4-6 record. After getting stomped 59-7 this past Saturday by Penn, and finishing their season at 1-9 (and 0-7 in the Ivy League for only the second time since the conference's inception), I thought, "Pendergast has to go." And sure enough, on Tuesday, he was dismissed, having compiled a 7-22 overall record (5-16 Ivy). This has brought renewed discussion of the role of the football program at Cornell. Some argue that since Cornell is known primarily as a hockey school when it comes to athletics, it's okay to have an atrocious squad on the gridiron. Others say that we should strive for excellence in everything, and the Cornell community deserves better than what's on the field right now. I fall into the latter category - while we certainly should not stoop to the levels of the majority of I-A teams to produce winning football, the records of the past few years are not acceptable.
