BGA Overtime had a conversation with Dartmouth offensive line coach Keith Clark last night. In 2019 the Big Green won a share of the Ivy League title with an almost entirely rebuilt offensive line. That's the charge again this fall.

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From Dartmouth social media:

"The unit identity is SWAT. Shadow, watch, attack and terminate."

Assistant Coach Kevin Bracken previews the secondary!#GoBigGreen | #TheWoods 🌲 pic.twitter.com/zDCAZ4OSeS

— Dartmouth Football (@DartmouthFTBL) September 10, 2026

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The Tampa Bay Times has an advance for South Florida's game at Army that features a photo of Dartmouth grad transfer running back DJ Crowther scoring a touchdown. Find the story HERE.

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From a story out of Laramie headlined Wyoming Couldn't Take Bogar Off Field During Career Outing (LINK):

Esaia Bogar was on the field last Saturday for 60 of the Cowboys' 67 defensive snaps.

That's never part of the game plan, Aaron Bohl admitted. It also, in part, is why Dartmouth transfer Thaddeus Gianaris was limited to just three plays.

"You just couldn't take him off the field," the third-year defensive coordinator said. "Which is encouraging."

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David Shula, the former Dartmouth wide receiver and most recently receivers coach for the Big Green, is briefly profiled in a piece about his son, Chris, in The Sporting News headlined Chris Shula family tree: Meet NFL Hall of Fame grandpa Don, wife and daughter and more from coaching roots. Find the story HERE.

Green Alert Take: As someone who loved The Sporting News as a young baseball fan, it's sad what has become of the "Bible of Baseball." And don't get me started about Sports Illustrated.

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There's not much on it, but the 2026 Dartmouth football Wikipedia page was updated a couple of days ago. Didn't know there was such a page? Find it HERE.

While we're at it, Sammy McCorkle has a Wikipedia page HERE, and there's a Buddy Teevens page HERE.

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EXTRA POINT

From The Honor Summit website (LINK):

(T)wo pillars of light will rise from the highest peak in the Northeast as a powerful symbol of resilience, gratitude, and unity. Inspired by the dual beams that honor September 11, The Honor Summit pays tribute to the lives lost, the first responders who answered the call, and the veterans whose courage continues to protect our communities. 

Lights will shine from September 9 - 12, going on at 8 p.m. to midnight. 

As the crow flies, our Vermont hillside home is almost exactly 50 miles from New Hampshire's Mount Washington. We can't quite see the 6,288-foot peak from our property, but if clouds permit, we may be able to see the lights. If not, we'll find a place to look and reflect, something I find myself doing this morning.

I remember clearly sitting at the keyboard as I am right now and getting a phone call from my mother, shaken by what she was seeing on television. I hadn't heard what happened, and immediately went to the TV, horrified.

I will never forget driving down our quiet, peaceful dirt road under the most beautiful crystalline blue skies later that day worried about what kind of world we were handing to our children. I'm sure my mother, who was a young girl growing up in occupied Copenhagen during World War II, once felt the same way.

We can only hope our children's children never have to live through anything like what we lived through 25 years ago today, and that when they look up at crystalline blue skies it is in more peaceful world.

Transitively Speaking

BGA Overtime took a look back at Monday's scrimmage with coach Sammy McCorkle last night and, if everything goes as planned, should have stories of interest the next couple of days. Be sure to come back tonight.

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BGA mentioned it yesterday and now it is SI's turn to bring up the famous Fifth-Down Game in light of the Michigan-Western Michigan result. Find the story headlined Looking Back at College Football’s First Replay Controversy HERE.

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For the record, if Western Michigan had beaten Michigan, Dartmouth would have needed just three games to show it's better than the Big Ten team. This is what it took to show that last year (LINK):

Dartmouth beat Central Connecticut State 35-28
Central Connecticut State beat LIU Brooklyn 10-7
LIU Brooklyn beat Eastern Michigan 28-23
Eastern Michigan beat Louisiana 34-31
Louisiana beat Marshall 54-51
Marshall beat Old Dominion 48-24
Old Dominion beat South Florida 24-10
South Florida beat Florida 18-16
Florida beat Texas 29-21
Texas beat Michigan 41-27

Here's all it would take this year:

Dartmouth beat Monmouth
Monmouth beat Western Michigan
Western Michigan beat Michigan

Green Alert Take: Uh, that's all it would take? For the record, Monmouth is a 27.5-point underdog Saturday at what figures to be a fired-up Western Michigan. And Dartmouth would have to beat Monmouth. Oh yeah. There's still that little matter of Michigan not being ready to concede last week's game to Western. But hey, it's fun to think about.

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As long as we're talking about Dartmouth opponents . . . .

On the subject of future Dartmouth opponents, the Big Green's Week One opponent is playing the national FCS game of the week per The Analyst. That's right, No. 9 Lehigh (2-0) is playing host to No. 16 William & Mary (2-0). The Mountain Hawks are 6.5-point favorites.

Elsewhere, Merrimack (0-2) visits Maine (1-1) Saturday at 5 p.m., and the aforementioned Monmouth Hawks(1-1) are at Western Michigan (0-1) Saturday,.

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Once "grad transferring" started becoming popular, then-Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens made it part of his pitch to recruits. Come to Hanover, he'd tell them, and if you want, we will make sure to save you a season of eligibility. That way, you can not only get a Dartmouth degree, but also play a final season elsewhere while getting your MBA or other degree paid for. Sammy McCorkle adopted that same approach when he became head coach.

With the NCAA rules now allowing all players to play five years over five seasons, what Teevens and McCorkle offered is freely available across the Ivy League, and it is making a difference. Consider this from a piece in The Crimson headlined In With the New: Previewing Harvard Football’s Freshman Class (LINK):

Included in the class are three of the school’s top nine highest-rated recruits in program history, including the school’s highest-rated defensive end and running back in the recruiting rankings era.

That level of talent is not easy to come by, but after substantial changes to eligibility regulations, Ivy League football is entering a new chapter of recruiting and player management.

In June, the NCAA’s Division I Cabinet unanimously voted to adopt an age-based, five-year window of player eligibility beginning with the players’ initial full-time college enrollment or the start of the academic year following their 19th birthday, whichever comes first.

Under the previous eligibility rules, some Harvard players with Power Four aspirations would redshirt their freshman season, before playing three years in the Ivy League and saving a year of eligibility for a graduate transfer.

Because of the opportunity for these guys to have an extra year of football, the vision is to come here, play really well, get your Harvard degree, set yourself up for life after football, then go grad transfer and play Power Four football,” (Harvard coach Andrew) Aurich said.

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One last (?) story about Dartmouth alum Bond Almand's  65-day, 11,178-mile bicycle ride to last night's NFL season-opener in Seattle. MSN picked up an Outside Magazine story headlined The story of a cyclist, 32 NFL stadiums, and one very important football that includes this (LINK):

There was ... the task of getting to all of these different stadiums, many of which are marooned deep in sprawling, car-centric cities. Cities that were more daunting than any climbs. "Would you rather: live in a suburb of Houston for 6 months," Bond wrote for a ride through Houston, "Or subject yourself and your entire family to the punishment of Titan Prometheus for 1,000 lifetimes? Give me Prometheus."

Green Alert Take: Titan Prometheus? Yup, he's an Ivy League kid.

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Back on the subject of grad transfers, NFL Draft Diamonds has a video interview with Zyion Freer-Brown, the former Dartmouth linebacker now at The Citadel HERE.

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And finally, if you have been on campus anywhere in the last couple of years, you've been in the middle of what seems to be an unending construction zone. Dartmouth News has a piece updating work being done on campus that includes these bits from around the athletic facilities (LINK):

 • At the West Stands at Buddy Teevens Stadium at Memorial Field, part of the grassy area and hardscape have been restored; work continues on Crosby Street.

• Crosby Street, where workers are installing an underground distribution piping vault at the intersection with East Wheelock Street as part of the conversion to a more efficient hot water distribution system for campus heating and cooling, will remain closed through 2026, with final restoration efforts to follow next year.

• Architectural renovation and energy upgrades that are part of the energy transition project are substantially complete at Berry Sports Center, as are an addition and renovation at Corey Ford Rugby House.

• Similarly, at Floren Varsity House, the building is open for regular use, with some punch list work, after improvements to the football locker room, equipment room, a classroom, and strength and conditioning spaces.

• Energy upgrades to the Lewinstein Athletic Center, such as new hot water radiators that have been installed and solar panels that are being installed on the roof. Lewinstein reopened for regular use on Sept. 1, and construction in limited areas remains ongoing.

• At Thompson Arena, home to the men’s and women’s ice hockey teams, renovation work continues with the installation of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. The project is on track for substantial completion in October.

Green Alert Take: If you haven't been on campus in the last couple of years, I can promise that you wouldn't believe all the work going on.

Green Alert Take II: As noted above, Crosby Street, which crosses in front of the main entrance to Buddy Teevens Stadium, has been closed for a year. Now that it has been shown that Hanover can survive with that road closed, how about if Dartmouth petitions the town once Crosby is opened again to shut it down for five weekends each fall? Or at least on Homecoming? Close that road, truck in a few tables, and it would be an absolutely fabulous tailgating venue.

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EXTRA POINT
A couple of days ago Mrs. BGA turned on closed captioning on one of our TVs, and the captions came up in Arabic, not English as they usually do. OK, maybe one of us accidentally switched the settings on the TV, right? Except, I turned on closed captions for our other TV the next day, and they came up in Arabic as well. Sure, one of us might have done something by mistake to one of the sets, but both?

I'm not sure what happened. Maybe it was some kind of surge with our Wifi or something, but we set them both back to English and they haven't misbehaved since.

First our robot vac and now the TVs. Maybe there's something to those dire warnings about AI in the news the last couple of days. :-(

The New 5th Down Game? Don't Count On It

Dartmouth will be back at practice this afternoon and BGA Overtime will have coverage tonight HERE.

But while I have you, a short story.

I was asked the other day by someone around the program about how BGA got its start. The back story is I had become increasingly disillusioned with the newspaper and was considering giving up daily journalism in favor of freelancing. This was 2005, and when I bounced the idea off a high school friend who was an author and successful freelancer, he warned that the hardest part of the job, at least when you are getting started, is simply finding the work.

Thinking about that, I hit on the idea of starting a subscription site covering Dartmouth football online. I'd been the beat reporter for all Big Green sports for 15 years or so and knew my way around the program. I figured if I could make a go of it, I could lock in almost four months of guaranteed work each year. With Mrs. BGA's blessing, I decided to try.

Believe it or not, I first tried the idea on Kirsten Teevens at a spring Dartmouth practice on Blackman Field, and she encouraged me to pitch it to Coach Teevens. We'd known each other since his first tenure in Hanover, so he trusted me and gave me an enthusiastic "Green" light. A former Dartmouth captain who had started several very successful businesses not only offered helpful pointers, but came up with the name, Big Green Alert.

I've been at it ever since, both on the (formerly) paid site and here, where this is the 9,058th post. (There were at least 365 more on another platform before I converted to Blogger, but who's counting? ;-)

BGA never quite took off the way I hoped, and freelancing opportunities (particularly those I used to get from the college) have pretty much dried up, but loyal and generous subscribers have enabled me to keep this thing going for 22 years. When I thought I was going to finally hang it up a couple of years ago, I took down the paywall, but you wouldn't let me walk away. So a huge thank you for that, as one more year of Big Green Alert picks up speed.

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I read this yesterday regarding the Michigan-Western Michigan debacle:

The NCAA said on Tuesday night that the association does not have a protocol for overturning the outcome of a game, and that the FBS Oversight Committee doesn't have that authority, either. Once the referee declares the game is ended, NCAA rules state, the score is final.

OK, so the NCAA is throwing up its hands. How special would it be if Michigan stepped up on its own and turned the game into the 21st century version of the famed Fifth Down Game? (If you don't know the story, click HERE to learn more.)

Green Alert Take: Yeah, in this big-money era of football it's not going to happen. But wouldn't it be something if it did?

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Dartmouth's social media has highlights from the second and final scrimmage of the preseason:

The Last Scrimmage. Week 1 is around the corner🕰️#GoBigGreen | #TheWoods pic.twitter.com/U9Zvx2XoRI

— Dartmouth Football (@DartmouthFTBL) September 8, 2026

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Jake Novak, who has converted his daily blog into an audio format, has made his Ivy League prediction. Here's how he sees the year playing out:

Dartmouth
Yale
Harvard
Brown
Cornell
Columbia
Princeton
Penn

You can listen to Jake's reasoning – with a lot of his thoughts about Dartmouth – HERE.

Green Alert Take: I haven't posted my prediction yet, but here's a hint of what's to come. Jake and I disagree dramatically about Princeton. ;-)

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The New York Post has a story headlined The 10 most influential women in NFL for 2026 season and one of them happens to be a former Dartmouth hockey player (and the daughter of a former Big Green quarterback). Find the story HERE.

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The FCS Coaches woke up and released their weekly poll a day later than STATS, but it was worth the wait for Dartmouth, which received four votes.

	FCS Coaches	W-L*	Pts	Prev*
1	Montana St. (25)	2-0	648	1
2	Montana	2-0	591	3
3	South Dakota St. (1)	1-1	582	2
4	Illinois St.	2-0	575	4
5	Tarleton St.	2-0	551	5
6	UC Davis	2-0	519	6
7	North Dakota	2-0	448	9
8	Lehigh	2-0	425	10
9	Stephen F. Austin	2-0	417	11
10	Youngstown St.	1-1	372	7
11	Tennessee Tech	2-0	357	13
12	South Dakota	2-0	352	12
13	Rhode Island	1-1	333	8
14	Mercer	2-0	316	15
15	Austin Peay	1-1	237	14
16	William & Mary	2-0	216	19
17	Lamar	1-1	195	16
18	Villanova	1-1	163	17
19	Yale	0-0	142	18
20	South Carolina St.	2-0	132	22
21	Richmond	2-0	130	23
22	West Florida	2-0	102	NR
23	Northern Arizona	1-1	101	20
24	Idaho St.	2-0	75	NR
25	Abilene Christian	0-2	71	21
	Dropped Out: Central Arkansas (24), Southern Illinois (25)
	Others Receiving Votes: Wofford, 53; Cal Poly, 44; Southern Illinois, 41; Prairie View A&M, 32; Elon, 31; Colgate, 25; Campbell, 23; UT-Rio Grande Valley, 15; Alabama St., 13; Jackson St., 13; Robert Morris, 13; UIW, 13; Harvard, 12; Furman, 10; Southern Utah, 10; UT Martin, 10; Southeast Missouri St., 8; Central Arkansas, 6; Chattanooga, 6; Portland St., 5; Western Carolina, 5; DART-MOUTH, 4; Monmouth, 4; East Tennessee St., 1; Eastern Washington, 1; San Diego, 1; The Citadel, 1.

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And finally, a very loyal reader (whose own daily blog I sorely miss) shared a link to a story about Division III Mount Union having its 85-game regular season winning streak snapped with a 24-23 loss to Wheaton. (LINK)

Scoring a touchdown with 22 seconds left, Mount Union was on the verge of forcing overtime only to have the extra point blocked.

This from the story puts the streak in perspective:

Before Saturday, the last time Mount Union lost a non-playoff game was on Nov. 12, 2016, when John Carroll scored a 31-28 win. Most of the members of that Mount Union team are now in their 30s.

 

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EXTRA POINT
It worked! Roba the robotic vacuum cleaner is back at work!

As noted here yesterday, the vac was acting crazy, moving in tight circles, cutting out on its own and disobeying its remote control. My plan was to try to pull the battery to try a hard reset and see if that would fix things.

I removed a bunch of screws (more than I needed, it would turn out), and figured out how to get at the battery compartment. I then carefully pried the battery out and managed to disconnect it without accidentally breaking any of the thin wires soldered to the control board. I let the battery sit for 30 seconds or so, then reconnected it and reassembled the whole thing. (In the interest of full disclosure, I lost two teeny-weeny screws and had to replace them with a couple of salvaged from something else I never got properly back together.)

Once the thing was reassembled I hit the power button and voilà, it started up. Then the real test. I put it on the floor and . . . no more crazy circles. Off it went doing its thing.

Before heading to bed last night I reset the timer for remote cleaning for 4 this morning. When I got up, Roba had finished its work and was back charging up for its next shift in the wee hours tomorrow.