Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Previews are Coming ... Promise

The Ivy League football media day is set for Aug. 8 at Yale. Previews of each Ivy team will begin the next day on the regular Green Alert site. I'm holding off on the previews until hearing from each coach and being able to ask a few questions because the dichotomy between what is written in the press guide and what the coach has to say can be stark. ... In the meantime, if you want to get a look at the first of the Ivy press guides, Cornell has posted its 2006 guide for downloading here. ... The Big Red, by the way, has hired Bret Colbert as an assistant coach. Bret's father, Bob, was a Dartmouth assistant in 1990. ... The UNH football team has local media excited as this column in the Rutland Herald notes. After making your way through the high school and other notes at the top, writer Tom Haley waxes on about the "Vermont Wildcats," a reminder that several of the best UNH players, most notably WR David Ball, are from the state with the Green Mountains not the White Mountains. ...

I've brought this up before, but the Colgate team Dartmouth upset last fall hadn't yet taken the wraps off phenom running back Jordan Scott who ran for 1,364 yards in 2005. He set Colgate and Patriot League rushing records despite not starting until after the loss to the Big Green. In this story coach Dick Biddle says Scott reminds him a little of Jamaal Branch. Uh oh. ...

Player rankings at any level and any position are always suspect ... and always fun to discuss. The rankings are even more suspect in I-AA football where TV games are rare and few people have seen games in different regions. One of the few who does get around a bit is former Dartmouth sports information intern Matt Dougherty, director of I-AA football for The Sports Network. While ranking offensive linemen and defensive players is a challenge, Matt does his homework and so you may want to check these rankings out. Matt has Yale's Ed McCarthy (6-5, 302) as the nation's top offensive tackle in I-AA, Harvard's Mike Berg (6-2, 260) as the No. 6 defensive tackle, Brown's Steve DeOssie (6-4, 240) as the No. 8 linebacker and Columbia's Tad Crawford (6-3, 195) as the No. 10 safety.

And bear with me. My thoughts about the Dartmouth quarterback situation are coming. I spent six tough hours yesterday cutting about five weeks worth of very green, very long grass and then helped coach a summer baseball team, so I didn't get to the my analysis yesterday. I'm working on it as soon as I hit "publish" on this post.

I'll also have some pictures of Memorial Field construction on the site later today.

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