Monday Roundup

Anyone notice the college football season has begun? It was Catawba 21, Winston-Salem State, 21-7 on Saturday.

Matt Dougherty of the Sports Network makes his Fearless 2006 Predictions here. He has the Ivy League ranked as the ninth of 12 conferences in terms of strength. (That's staggering when you think about it.) One step ahead of the Ivy is the Patriot. The only leagues below the Ivy in his rankings are the Big South (Coastal Carolina, Gardner-Webb, Liberty etc.), the MEAC (Hampton, South Carolina State, Morgan State etc.) and the SWAC (Grambling State, Southern, Mississippi Valley State).

Matt goes out on a limb ;-) and picks Penn, Harvard and Brown to battle it out in the Ivies. He writes: "Columbia suffered through a brutal 2005 campaign and doesn’t have much hope, and Dartmouth still has a lot of progress to make after limited improvement last year."

A quote from Colgate's Geoff Bean in an Express-Times preview of the Patriot League that might have ruffled a few feathers in a proud conference: "The Patriot League is considered a junior Ivy League. It's an honor to play in the Patriot League."

Colgate coach Dick Biddle is "a man of mystery" on campus. Interesting story (what I could bring up of it) in the Syracuse Post-Standard. As the story says, Biddle can be a man of few words, but I've always enjoyed talking with him. He's a straight shooter who pretty much tells it like it is.

Northwestern and Miami of Ohio play Thursday night and keeping a close eye on that game will be the coaches and players from UNH, who will have a date Northwestern in a couple of weeks. Said UNH quarterback Ricky Santos in a Union Leader story: "Hopefully we can start game-planning because we're going to need a couple of weeks to prepare for them. They're going to be the biggest opponent this university has ever seen."

Hitting starts today on Memorial Field (unless track installation forces practice to Chase Field). Check back tonight to see how a very important session ("You never get a second chance to make a first impression," went.