UPDATE: The Columbia game story has been posted on the Daily Dartmouth site.
The Ivy League's weekly awards are out and Dartmouth quarterback Mike Fritz, a strong candidate for offensive player of the week honors, was named to the honor roll. Princeton quarterback Jeff Terrell won the offensive award for a big game against previously unbeaten Harvard.
No question Terrell deserved the honor, but so did Fritz.
Terrell threw for 223 yards and ran for 32 with two touchdowns in the air and one on the ground. He completed 17-of-33 throws (with an interception) and his 32 yards came on 16 carries.
Albeit not against the same level of competition, Fritz ran for 120 yards on 14 carries, completed 14-of-21 passes for 133 yards with one interception.
Fritz accounted for 253 yards on 35 plays for a team winning its first game of the year. Terrell accounted for 255 yards on 49 plays for a team avoiding its first loss of the year. Do I hear a vote for co-offensive player of the week?
Picking players for weekly honors is a thankless task. I know; I've been a weekly selector for the New England Gold Helmet Award for the past few years and will be the selector for this week's games. One factor I always take into consideration while I agonize over who to pick is whether a player or his school has won the award previously. If I'm choosing between two otherwise equal performances that can help break a tie.
In the Terrell-Fritz case, Princeton has had three defensive players of the week and one special teams player. The only school to have no offensive, defensive, special teams or rookie of the week is Dartmouth. Add it up and while I wouldn't have overlooked Terrell (who hasn't been named offensive player previously this year) I'd have made he and Fritz co-players of the week.
I'm getting a little tired of the Dartmouth-Holy Cross postgame fracas story and will be cutting back on links referencing it. On first reading a Sunday column in the Manchester Union Leader the melee, I decided it was more of the same. But an email from a subscriber included the full text led me to reread it. I decided to post a link because of the suggestion at the end. Writer Jim Fennell suggests if it's true one Dartmouth player was most responsible for what happened that he step forward and admit it. Fennell also suggests that if such a person isn't ready to step forward that his teammates encourage him to do so. I rather think the whole thing is over, it's not going to happen again and it's time to move on. But to each his own. The column can be found here.
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