Sack, Fumble Recovery For Gargiulo

I listened to the first half of last night's Calgary Stampeders season-opener before sleep took over. Anthony Gargiulo '06 had one tackle to that point, but it was nullified by penalty. So I was pleasantly surprised to hit the 'Net this morning and find out that I missed some excitement in the second half of the Stamps' 37-9 thrashing of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

Gargiulo had two tackles, including one of his team's two sacks, and also recovered a fumble to set up a touchdown. The stats can be found here. The mention of the fumble recovery is here. There's a game story here.

Good stuff and I look forward to seeing what Anthony has to say on his blog.

Sportspage magazine has a column analyzing what it calls the top 100 mascots/nicknames in the nation's colleges. It's not surprising that only one Ivy League nickname made the list, coming in at No. 60. Can you guess which one? It's at the bottom of this posting. ;-)

A rising senior tight end at Hanover High School by the name of Carl Cutler has accepted a scholarship offer from Syracuse and I'm thrilled for the kid but completely blown away for a whole host of reasons:

* In 25 years in this area I can count the number of players who went on to what used to be called Division I-AA schools on my fingers. Until recently, I could count the number who went on to I-A schools on my thumb. (And he quit the team.) Recently there have been three or four players who walked on at I-A schools but scholarship recruits? Not really.

* I found out about this rarest of the rare in the local weekly newspaper. Now, there's a chance something was in our local daily (my old employer) during the few days when we didn't spend much time looking at the paper, but I don't think so. If that's the case, it's really sad to be scooped by a weekly.

* The football player in question was listed by one service as being interested in the following schools: Syracuse, Boston College, Connecticut and Dartmouth. As they try to figure out ways to build attendance at Memorial Field, to have a kid who turned down a Syracuse scholarship play at Dartmouth would have been something. For the kid to have been from Hanover would have been everything. So close...

* A quote from the kid: “I just love Syracuse because it reminds me a lot of Hanover..."

Green Alert Take: I live in Hanover and I've been to Syracuse. I gotta say that one doesn't work for me ;-)

***

The only Ivy League nickname to make the list: The Penn Quakers. Come to think of it, there may not be a league in the country with a worse collection of nicknames. I suppose that's what you get when you have been playing the game for as long as they have in the Ancient Eight and aren't much on messing with tradition. ... Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my. ... I'll bet the Dartmouth North Stars would have made the list!