While You Were Away

UPDATE: The Harvard Crimson takes a look at an interesting class of football recruits including one who applied to Harvard three times and another who will be the fastest player on the team the day he pulls on a uniform.

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While you were enjoying a long weekend, a very tired Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens was wheeling his way over the Green Mountains and home from his cross country bicycle ride. Scroll down a bit and read his reflections on the 20-day odyssey from San Diego and his efforts to raise cancer awareness along the way. If you are so inspired and haven't yet done so, please consider a gift in honor of Teevens' ride to The Prouty bike ride/walk, which benefits the Norris Cotton Cancer Center. (Click here to make a gift in Buddy Teevens' name.)

Throughout his trip Teevens met people who shared stories about friends and relatives who battled cancer and on Friday I stumbled into one of those stories myself. I was in Alumni Gym talking with a former Dartmouth coach about Teevens' ride and The Prouty. This fellow told me he, too, would be raising money for the Prouty this summer. He looked me in the eye and said, "I was just diagnosed ..." He told me the type of cancer but I was so shocked that it slipped right by me. What I recall very clearly was what he said next: "I'm going to beat this thing. I'm going to do a Lance Armstrong."

Pulling the blog together is like a job most days except for one thing: There's no paycheck. I won't lie to you. While the past three weeks weren't remotely as hard for me as they were for Buddy Teevens, they were a grind. The paycheck was watching the Prouty donations rise and knowing that the money so generously given would help people like the coach I ran into in the bowels of Alumni Gymnasium. As of this morning, Buddy Teevens' ride had inspired $12,228 in gifts to the Prouty, making him the event's No. 1 fundraiser. Like Teevens, I can't thank you enough for your generosity.

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A couple of Dartmouth opponents are in the news. Allen Lessels of the Manchester Union Leader writes about UNH players planning to work out on campus this summer and ...

Then Ricky Santos and Co. will get down to the business of the 2007 season and eventually trying to qualify for the NCAA playoffs for a fourth straight year. No Colonial Athletic Association team -- the league changed its affiliation from the Atlantic 10 to CAA after last season -- had made the playoffs three years in succession until UNH did it last year.

The Express-Times down in the Lehigh Valley pegs Holy Cross as an up-and-comer in the Patriot League in this story. There's also a mention about the 2007 Colgate prospects.