Media Clips of the Week: All About the Fordham Rams

The YES Network's Chris Shern talks Fordham Football

It’s only Monday, but it's safe to say we found our media clips of the week.

This past Saturday, Fordham football player Sam Ajala set a school record with 282 yards receiving as the Rams, ranked eighth in the Football Championship Subdivision, improved to 8-0 for the first time with a 52-31 victory at Yale. Not surprisingly, the media has taken notice. Here are a few excerpts from this past weekend’s coverage:

“There appears to be new blocks of granite at Fordham.”

-Fox Sports

“The successful start has raised echoes of the great Fordham teams of the 1930s, featuring linemen known as the Seven Blocks of Granite. One of those “blocks” was Vince Lombardi, who would become a renowned coach. Appearances in major bowls followed in the early 1940s, but Fordham dropped football in 1954, and it returned as a varsity sport only in 1970, at a lower level.”

-The New York Times

The Rams, 1-10 two years ago before Moorhead took over, are now 7-0 -- their best start since 1930.

-ESPN 

“…if the Fordham scouting report was required reading last week, the [Yale] Bulldogs realized that their opponent Saturday was offensively inclined and prolific.

-The Hartford Courant

If Lombardi, who went on to become maybe the most famous football coach in history, and the rest of the blocks were still around, they might have had a hard time recognizing the game being played by Fordham these days. There’s no doubt, however, they’d love the results.

-Washington Post via Associated Press

“The most successful college team in the tri-state area can be found at Fordham University.”

-YES Network

Watch the full YES Network segment, which includes interviews with Coach Joe Moorhead and students, here.

-Gina Vergel 

Gabelli School of Business Kicks Off International Business Week

New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin will headline Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business’ International Business Week with an appearance at the Rose Hill campus on Tuesday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m.

Sorkin, the author of Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System -- and Themselves (Viking, 2009) will speak at the McGinley Ballroom.

Too Big to Fail, which details the backroom machinations behind the financial crisis of 2008, won the Gerald Loeb best business book of the year award in 2010. It is also the source for a currently in production HBO film starring Paul Giamatti as U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

International Business Week also features the following events:

Meet International Students at Fordham: Sunday, February 6 at 4 p.m. McGinley Ballroom

Social Business Fair Trade Market: Wednesday, Feb. 9 at 4 p.m. O’Keefe Commons

Global Etiquette Dinner: Thursday, Feb. 10 at 6 p.m. Tognino Hall, Duane Library

For more information and registration, visit the Gabelli School of Business blog.

—Patrick Verel

NY Times on Famous Fordham Dorm Rooms

The New York Times City Room blog has an interesting article on "Dorm Rooms With Bragging Rights," and Fordham has some:

Fordham University in the Bronx can also hold its own. The eight students who ended up with E6 of Martyrs’ Court in 1983 learned that they had inherited the third-floor suite once occupied by Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo, later known as Alan Alda. As big fans of his hit television show “M.A.S.H.,” they thought it only fitting to hold a party the night of the final episode with makeshift tenting and drinks poured from an improvised still. Everyone from the BBC to The New York Post was there to chronicle it.

“I went once to the University of Virginia and they had Edgar Allan Poe’s old dorm room blocked off with glass, so you could see it but not use it anymore,’’ said Joe Trentacosta, a host of the farewell party. Being able to live in the famous room, he said, “makes you feel more connected to the school.”

Anyone wanting to live in Mr. Alda’s room now would need an engineer’s help to find it. Seven double rooms numbered L200 to L206 have displaced the eight-man suite on the floor plan. But the shared bathroom — L207 on the map (pdf) — and old plumbing are intact.

(There is no point even looking for traces of the heartthrob from Fordham’s class of 1977, Denzel Washington. University officials confirm that he commuted.)

The article by Alison Leigh Cowan and David Walter will likely appear in tomorrow's (Friday, May 28) print edition, as well.