Monday, December 18, 2006

The New SAT And The 100 Meters ...

Big deadline today for a freelance piece (which actually helps pay the bills), so I can't spend much time blogging (where that nifty little tip jar thingie over to the right just sits there and mocks me ... hint ;-) ...

From a story about Harvard landing a 6-foot-5, 260-pound guard: "He maintains a 3.86 GPA and has scored 1,940 on the new SAT." Green Alert Take: A 1,960 on the new SAT? I have no idea what that means. This is like when track gave up the 100-yard dash for the 100-meters. I knew exactly how fast he was when a local high school football star near where I grew up ran a 9.5 for 100 yards. I have no idea what an 11.1 is over 100 meters. Ditto for the 440 and the mile vs. the 400 meters and the 1600. And don't get me started about metric measures in the shot put or high jump. Any wonder why track in this country is struggling?

Former Dartmouth tight end and USA Sevens rugby player Joe Killefer gets a mention in this story.

I stumbled across this St. Louis Dispatch story about a 14-year-old 6-foot-6 high school freshman basketball player getting a scholarship offer from Illinois and giving coach Bruce Weber a non-binding commitment. (I found the story because one of the only other players from the small, private school to play in college sat the bench for a while at Dartmouth.) Green Alert Take: I've read about early commitments before and always thought they were a little crazy. Having a daughter who is the same age as this kid I can now appreciate just how ridiculous this stuff is. I'd like to see a story following up on kids like this four years later.

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