Saturday, December 30, 2006

Tournaments Pack 'Em In

Friday was a big night in Hanover with the women's basketball team playing No. 3 Duke before a Leede Arena women's basketball-record crowd of 2,153 and the men's ice hockey team taking on North Dakota in front of 4,500 at Thompson Arena. Neither team enjoyed much success in its own holiday tournament with the hoop team falling, 77-40, and the icers surrendering three goals in the final period of a 4-1 loss. ...

Traffic was horrendous and there were complaints about parking but to be honest, the combined crowd of 6,653 was less than Dartmouth football drew for at least three games this fall, so I'm not sure what the problem was. ... And as it turns out, the rumors of a massive protest at Thompson Arena proved to be greatly exaggerated. One lone English professor showed up to protest the Fighting Sioux mascot/nickname. ... Both the women's basketball team and the ice hockey team will be playing in the consolation games of their tournaments tonight. ...

In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek roundup of the year from the San Jose Mercury News, the Dartmouth football fracas gets this mention:
"Dartmouth and Holy Cross got into a postgame brawl, throwing books and pens and stuff."
Do you think this quote from a widely circulated St. Louis Post-Dispatch story hurts Harvard's chances of recruiting the best and the brightest football players?
Although 24 players from Harvard have played in the NFL, never has one game included three products of the esteemed academic institution situated in Cambridge, Mass. That will change Sunday, when Rams linebacker Isaiah Kacyvenski and quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick meet up at the Metrodome with Vikings center Matt Birk.
A high school football player from Pennsylvania has won a full scholarship to Columbia. Yeah, right.

As Lee Corso would say, not so fast my friend. This is a true story. Honest. The kid, who was a pretty fair tailback in Sharon, Pa., has won a full ride worth more than $160,000. Boy oh boy, Columbia means business this time, huh?

Now for the fine print: It wasn't an athletic scholarship. He isn't a recruit and it doesn't sound as if he's going to be playing football for the Lions.

Read all about it here.

No comments: