Video Of An Opponent's Recruits Posted

A year ago Dartmouth football posted video of its incoming recruits for the first time. I expect the same will be done for the incoming class once it is finalized and I'll link to it here. In the meantime, if you want a sneak peak at some of the players Dartmouth could face in its opener against Colgate, click here to see the Raiders' incoming freshmen. (And do check out the very first one, a quarterback. I've got just one word for him: contain.) ...

At Dartmouth's other central New York rival, Cornell quarterback Nathan Ford is batting cleanup for the Big Red baseball team. He's seeing time both at third base and catcher according to this story in the Cornell Sun.

It's point-counterpoint with opinion pieces on athletes and athletics in Columbia publications. This piece takes issue with last week's column critical of athletics both for style and content. From this latest effort:

Simply put, what came out of The Eye was not only disrespectful to the work of athletes at this school but a betrayal of the high standards of journalism at Columbia. Here's hoping that the magazine learns from its mistakes.

Still down at Columbia, Jake Novak of the Roar Lions Roar blog writes about the signing of quarterback Jeff Otis with the Oakland Raiders and wonders how a team that had three teammates under NFL contract (Otis, Wade Fletcher and Michael Quarshie) could have struggled so much on the field. His answer takes just one syllable and five letters: depth. (Or lack thereof.)

The great sportswriter Red Smith once opined that writing a column wasn't all that difficult. He said something like, all you have to do is slit your wrist and bleed into the keyboard. I'm here to tell you he was right. There were times when I was at the newspaper and there are times these days when I'm agonizing over freelance stories that it feels that way. Which is why I can only hope Penn basketball player Steve Danley had to struggle over his blog columns in the New York Times. It's bad enough that they are so well done for someone still in college. But if he didn't bleed over them life's just not fair. Find his latest well-crafted posting here.

A Dartmouth news release popped up on my screen yesterday announcing the following:

The College will host and co-sponsor two debates among the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Both events will be simulcast and streamed online by MSNBC and NECN and broadcast live by New Hampshire Public Radio, all of which are co-sponsoring the event. The 90-minute debates will be moderated by Tim Russert, NBC's Washington Bureau Chief and host of "Meet the Press."

Given New Hamsphire's primary position, that's hardly unusual. Now check out the lede to the same story by the Cornell Sun:

Dartmouth University will host two presidential primary debates ...

Argh! I can understand someone at, say, Cornell College in Iowa making the university/college mistake. But someone in Ithaca? ... Speaking of Cornell College, I always wonder how grads of that school respond when they are on a job interview and are asked if they know so-and-so from Cornell University. Reminds me of a friend who went to the University of Hartford. When girls would ask him where he went to school he'd answer HARtFORD, de-emphasizing the "t" and softening the "f" into something of a "v." If they heard Harvard instead of Hartford, it wasn't his fault. Not entirely, at least. ;-). But at some point, to quote Ricky Ricardo, he probably had some "splainin' to do."

And finally: You won't read many juicy eligibility issue stories quite like this one in the Daily Pennsylvanian. A Dartmouth coach gets a mention, by the way.