Calder Silcox | Fire coach Norries Wilson? Be careful, Columbia Spectator

By Monday morning, students headed to class at Columbia were likely over their football team’s homecoming loss to Penn. After all, it’s been 15 years since the Lions have beaten Penn, and 11 years since Columbia’s last win at its own homecoming. Football losses in upper Manhattan are a dime a dozen.

But as students scurried to class, they were reminded of the loss not only in their student newspaper’s sports section, but on the opinion page, where the paper’s staff editorial carried a simple message: fire coach Wilson.

THE BUZZ: Columbia Spectator calls for firing of coach Norries Wilson
RECAP: Ragone, Penn rally past Lions on their homecoming

For the second time in as many seasons, The Columbia Spectator implored the school’s athletic administrators to fire football coach Norries Wilson. Last year, the Spec’s editorial board waited until the end of a 2-5 Ivy season to make its stance clear. This time, halfway through the season and no wins to show for the Lions, the paper restated its argument.

“Coach Norries Wilson is largely the one to blame for these pathetic results, and as such must be fired at the end of this season,” The Spectator wrote.

Sound familiar? The situation is reminiscent of one Penn faced two years ago when its men’s basketball team trudged through seven-consecutive losses before winter break.

As the losses piled up, The Daily Pennsylvanian sports section — of which I had been an editor for a grand total of a week — became more and more critical of Miller. Columnist Eli Cohen took the coach to task after each game, calling him “helpless” after loss number six.

By loss seven, the DP was closing up shop for winter break and basketball columnist Ari Seifter pulled the trigger. Seifter stated plainly, “I think that if Miller doesn’t have the answer to the program’s current woes, Athletic Director Steve Bilsky should find someone who does.”

That piece ran Monday, Dec. 14, 2009. By noon that day, Miller was packing up his personal belongings and Jerome Allen had been appointed interim coach.

By no means was the DP solely responsible for Bilsky taking action — it was likely the result of pressure building from not only us, but alumni and others involved in the program.

But in my naiveté of being in charge of the section for just a few short days, I failed to understand the full depth of the claims we were making.

It wasn’t until after Miller was axed that I realized that my sports section was calling for Penn to fire someone, to take away his livelihood. That’s not a demand to be taken lightly.

Coaches should be held to the same performance standards as any university employee, and it’s the paper’s job to hold the school accountable.

In this respect, sports brings out the worst in us. We want ineffective coaches fired mid-season (or after the season, as The Spectator says). We want quarterbacks benched after two lousy games. Each of us knows what play should have actually been called with the clock running out.

I’m not saying The Spectator was wrong in calling for coach Wilson to be fired. The paper’s editorial staff is in a better position to evaluate that situation than I will ever be. But having been through that experience once before, that decision should be handled with the utmost consideration.

CALDER SILCOX is a senior science, technology and society major from Washington, D.C., and is Senior Sports Editor of the DP. His email address is silcox@theDP.com.

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