Nebraska will try to get back on track this week after Saturday's disappointing loss at Illinois. The Fordham Rams will come to Lincoln on Saturday for an 11 a.m. game on the Big Ten Network.
To get more perspective on the Rams, we caught with long-time Fordham media relations director Joe DiBari in this week's "Ask the Expert" breakdown.
You guys played a shortened spring season at Fordham and had a quick turn to go into this 2021 season. What did you learn about Fordham over the spring and what are they hoping to improve on here in this fall season?
"I think the spring season was good for us because we normally have the normal spring practice schedule. This is just a glorified spring practice schedule for us. We actually had three-- We had scheduled four games, one of them was canceled due to COVID. It was great because all the guys who played, it didn't count as a year of eligibility, so a lot of them are coming back, would have been seniors last year are coming back this year. I think our offense really started to gel. It's been a couple of years now under coach (Jon) Conlin with Tim DeMorat at a quarterback. I think that we really saw that in the spring, how they were clicking. The added bonus is they got Zach Davis back, who was a 1,000-yard rusher in 2019 that was injured.
"He actually sat out while he was rehabbing in the spring. He didn't play at all. We really have a powerful 1-2 punch at running back with a Trey Sneed and Zach Davis coming in. I think on the other side of the ball I think defensively, we've really picked it up, especially on the turnover battle. I think we intercepted eight passes in three games in the spring. The defense really picked it up and they brought that energy.
"We just finished up with our last scrimmage last week. On both sides of the ball, like I said, they return lots of experience. It'll be interesting to see what happens going forward."
How difficult was 2020 for Fordham to deal with all the COVID-19 protocols in New York City?
"We were strictly online classes. Now we did bring back the student-athletes. They were on campus and they were able to practice in the spring, but all the classes were online, so they would go back to their rooms and do classes online. For practices, they split it up by position so that in case somebody did test positive, it wouldn't take the whole team out of action for two weeks. It would just be that position. Then as they slowly started getting accustomed to everything and numbers started improving for us on campus, we did go through a stretch in February where we came back in the spring and we had some in-person classes.
"However, in February, we did hit a certain threshold that required us to go back online strictly for two weeks, basically shutting the campus down for two weeks. We were lucky, in that two-week period, we came out of that. The numbers came down, so we were able to go back to in-person classes and practices, but it was tough. It was tough on the players because you didn't know from day to day, we could've gotten a spike in, and we were doing a wealth of testing on campus. We had a huge tent set up on campus. We're not a big school per se. Our undergraduate enrollment is probably about 7,000, but we had a huge tent set up and you were required to be tested on a regular basis.
"We would get the results pretty much on a daily, if not weekly basis. I think, for the student-athletes, it was, 'Am I going to be able to practice tomorrow? Am I not going to be to practice next week?" I think once we came out of that two-week shut down in February, things seem to have calmed down a little bit, and we were able to get back into more of a rhythm. Like I said, by mid-March, they were back to practicing. I don't want to say normal because I don't know if we'll ever get back to normal, but they were more normal than they had been in the past practicing getting ready for our first game, which was the last Saturday in March."
Fordham will get $500,000 to travel out to Lincoln here on Labor Day weekend. What does this game mean to the budget? You just don't see games typically get scheduled on this short notice but obviously, 2020 changed a lot of people's thinking with getting budgets and finding ways to gain revenue.
"We were supposed to play at Hawaii in September of 2020, and unfortunately, that game was canceled. That would've been my first ever trip to Hawaii, so I lost out on that one. I remember, actually, I vividly remember we were getting ready for a baseball game here, I guess it was in May, and I got a call from my Deputy Athletics Director, and he said, 'What are you doing Labor Day weekend?' I said, 'Well,' because we already had a football game scheduled that weekend, I said, 'Well, we've got a game.' I said, 'Actually, it's my anniversary on that Sunday too, thanks for asking.' He said, 'Well, what do you feel about going to Lincoln, Nebraska?' I was like, 'What?'
"That's how quickly it came together. That was on a Friday and I guess we officially announced it on Monday. Financially, obviously, we are an FCS team. We, on a good day with good weather and a good opponent, we'll draw 6,000, 7,000 people to our stadium. We're not a revenue-generating team, so obviously, any additional revenue that we can take in is great, and we actually had already had. We're going to be playing two FBS teams this year. Two weeks after Nebraska, we go down to Florida Atlantic and play them."
What were your thoughts after watching Nebraska play Illinois on Week 0?
"I did see some highlights and read some of the articles on the game. I mean, obviously, Nebraska is Nebraska. That was a disappointing loss for them last week but they're Nebraska, we're Fordham. I don't know how many people remember but Fordham in the '30s and '40s was a football powerhouse back when Vince Lombardi played here and we had the seven blocks of granite. We went to a couple of bowl games, and that was prior to the NFL, really taking off so Fordham football was the New York City football team.
"Obviously, it's a much different game now for us playing at the level we're playing at. I think that, obviously, we recognize Nebraska is a tough team. We're going out there and we're going to play our game, but we also recognize just that the quality of the athletes they have at Nebraska is probably obviously going to be the best. Fortunately, it's our first game of the season but it's going to be the best team we're going to see this year."
What would define a successful trip out here for Fordham if you were to lay that out?
"Well, personally, I would say, everybody makes it back healthy. That would be probably number one obviously, but no, I think it's just going to be such a great experience for our players. I've been talking to some of them, and we actually do have one player on the team, Trey Sneed who transferred from Rutgers who played there with Rutgers. I was talking to him during camp, and he was trying to explain to us what it's like going out because this will be the largest, assuming it's 85,000 to 90,000, it'll be the largest crowd to ever see a Fordham football game, even going back to those Vince Lombardi teams in the '30s and '40s.
"I guess that I think our players are just excited to be able to get in front of a crowd in a group like that. Some of our guys have played at pretty prestigious high schools, but again none of them have played in anything that's going to be like that, the atmosphere they're going to experience on Saturday. It's going to be great."
