Still Working on biggreenalert.com

I met again Friday with my web guru, who believes he'll have the "new and improved" www.biggreenalert.com site up and running within a week. The goals of the new site include better navigation, better integration of photographs, fewer password problems and the ability to use a credit card to pay for a subscription. (I'll be accepting checks as I did last year, but a lot of you asked about paying by credit card or PayPal, so I'll be offering those options as well this year.)

The charge once again will be $50 for a full year's coverage of Dartmouth football. (Last year's coverage included at least one newspaper-length story every day from the first day of camp through the postseason banquet plus bonus coverage through the recruiting season. On Fridays and Saturdays alone during the season there were as many as five stories.)

Signup and renewals will begin once the new site is up. For those of you who have already renewed for the coming season, I'll have you ready to go the day the site goes live.

I'll keep you posted here as the new site gets closer to coming online.

This blog will continue with links and limited commentary. Game previews, game stories, features, Q&A's and analysis will all be premium content available only on www.biggreenalert.com. Please share a link with those who might be interested in subscribing because the only way I can continue to dedicate the time I do to Dartmouth football is by building my subscriber base.

Now on to a few links on a quiet Sunday ...

It took a little time, but the Patriot League presidents showed they understand something the Ivy League presidents don't when they gave football teams the OK to go to the I-AA playoffs in 1997. Here's what they understood: What's fair for one is fair for another. From an anniversary column about the Patriot League:

"Football coaches lobbied their ADs and the league for years, trying to convince them to break the shackles with the Ivy League and permit the champion to be eligible for the NCAA Division I-AA playoffs. After all, they argued, every other varsity sport was allowed to send teams to postseason play."

Not allowing an athlete to turn pro in one sport and maintain Ivy eligibility in a second sport is yet another outdated and unfair Ivy League policy. Athletes such as talented wide receiver B. J. Szymanski, who gave up Princeton football to play minor league baseball, Texas Rangers' infielder Mark DeRosa, who gave up the starting quarterback position at Penn to play baseball and San Diego Padres' pitcher Chris Young, who had to give up Princeton basketball to play baseball, should never have been put in the position to have to choose. The Ivy League is the only conference in the nation that forbids athletes from turning professional in a second sport as this New York Times article on Notre Dame wide receiver/minor league pitcher Jeff Samardzija reminds us.

And one more article on Jay Fiedler as he works his way back from shoulder problems to play with the Tampa Bay Bucs.