Friday Night Lights

True confession time: I really enjoyed the book Friday Night Lights, but never saw the movie and haven't seen the TV show. So, why bring it up? Turns out the wife of the coach in the movie and on the TV show is a Dartmouth grad named Connie (Womack) Britton, Class of '89. Find a little blurb about her here. ... Friday Night Lights, by the way, was written by H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, a Penn grad who was on the school paper when former Dartmouth coach John Lyons played for the Quakers.

As you can tell from that first note, these are the dog days of winter for a football fan. The Super Bowl is in the rear view mirror, spring football is still a ways down the road and the cold weather is starting to get old. But just when things seem hopeless for the fan, the NFL Combine pops up on the radar this week. The Boston Globe has a lengthy piece on Zak DeOssie, the first Brown player ever invited to the event. This is a terrific story and well worth pulling up. The athletic trainer's comment about the difference between being categorized as "smart" if you are an Ivy Leaguer who runs a 4.61 in the 40 and "fast" if you run a 4.59 was revealing.

There's a column in USA Today about Illinois dropping its mascot. The piece is written by Jon Saraceno, who was in my first writing course in the journalism program at Penn State. Jon was one of just a few undergrads in that course and it quickly became clear to me he was going to be pretty good. I guess I was right.

There was an article in Virginia's Daily Press yesterday about Hampton upgrading its football schedule. Among the new opponents: Princeton. Thanks to a regular reader for this excerpt from a story that is no longer on the paper's site:

"Hampton's 11-game '07 schedule also includes a contest on Oct. 6 at defending Ivy League co-champion Princeton. The Tigers went 9-1 and were No. 18 in the final rankings. The Sports Network labeled the Tigers 'The Best Team You Never Got to See' because Ivy League schools do not compete in the FCS playoffs."

Did you know the chairman of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee is a former Dartmouth basketball coach? OK, OK, so he happens to be a Princeton grad, former Princeton standout and current Princeton athletic director and the story appears in today's Daily Princetonian. But he never coached at Princeton ;-)

From the I'll Believe It When I See It Department, the New York Times has an item in its basketball notes column hinting that an Ivy League tournament could be in the works. Right. And I suppose the Ivy League is going to go to the NCAA football playoffs next. .... Speaking of which, did you vote yet?