Looking Back At The Glory Years

The Internet came up this morning (hooray) and before it drops out again ...

Sports Illustrated has opened up its "Vault," making old stories available online. It's a treasure trove of great reading that can take you away to another time and place. I'll help you this morning ;-).

For a look back at Bob Blackman's supremely successful tenure at Dartmouth and particularly the 1970 team, click here. From the story:

(W)hen Dartmouth was awarded the Lambert Trophy as the best team in the East, Penn State coach Joe Paterno felt obliged to register a tongue-in-cheek protest. Paterno suggested—through the press—that Dartmouth and Penn State play each other to determine which was really the top Eastern team. Responded Blackman, "Of course, Coach Paterno knows that under Ivy League rules we're not allowed to play in a postseason game, but if we were allowed to play a postseason contest, I would prefer to play a team that had a better record," a dig at the Nittany Lions' 7-3.

There's a Nov. 6, 1967 story on the Harvard-Dartmouth (oops, Dartmouth-Harvard) game that included this provocative thought:

"Harvard-Yale is a rivalry built on similarities and mutual respect," explained one Harvard man. "Harvard-Dartmouth is built on differences."

Speaking of Harvard, today wraps up "Harvard Month," on the Any Given Saturday message borad, the home page for a great many FCS (nee IAA) football fans. The Crimson got a lot of bang for its buck with its fact-a-day here. Here's hoping some enterprising Dartmouth fans step up and sponsor a "Dartmouth Month," on the popular site this year.

Last year it was Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens riding a bicycle across the country. Yale's Jack Siedlecki is going to have a different kind of adventure after his spring practice wraps up. He'll be joining fellow coaches Charlie Weis of Notre Dame, Georgia's Mark Richt, Randy Shannon of Miami (Fla.) and Auburn's Tommy Tuberville in a tour of military bases in the Middle East in late May. Read about it here.

Admissions announcements are to be available online at 5 p.m. today. The Boston Globe writes about the anxiety this time of year brings. A few outtakes from the Globe:

• "A shaky economy, record numbers of applications, and sweeping financial aid expansions that make it harder to predict what colleges middle-class families will choose."
• "Both colleges and applicants are muddling through an admission season in which many conventional assumptions have been thrown into question."
• "Dartmouth will wait-list 1,500, up 15 percent."

Today's Daily Dartmouth has an opinion piece headlined Hanoveropoly that describes the love affair the media has with our classic New England village, why Hanover is not what it portends to be and why not everyone (present company included) would call it a true college town.