The Halfway Point Of Spring

Hard as it is to believe, Dartmouth spring football hits the halfway point with today's practice on Memorial Field. The temperature could hit 80 degrees (which is even harder to believe) with a chance for a thunder shower. Check Green Alert Premium tonight for a wrap on the day's session.

No question, injuries and other problems have depleted the Dartmouth offensive line this spring and have Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens thinking creatively about the format to use in the limited scrimmage this Saturday as well as the Green-White game on May 3. But things could be worse. At Nicholls State down in Louisiana, the last practice and spring game were canceled because of injuries. Find a brief story here.

I interviewed former Dartmouth running back-turned-lacrosse captain Chad Gaudet yesterday for a freelance story that I will (hopefully) finish later today. It will appear on the Dartmouth men's lacrosse web site and after it does I'll post a link. Chad spoke openly about the injury that cost him his once-promising football career and about the satisfaction he gets these days on the lacrosse field, where he has developed into one of the best faceoff men in the country.

Not much to link to out there today. For a nicely done, short video presentation about Princeton's spring game, click here.

The Columbia Spectator touches on an age-old debate: Do you give extra help to programs that are winning because there's the very real chance that the help will be rewarded, or do you give extra help to programs that are struggling because they need it more? It's not an easy question and it's one that I've heard coaches and administrators debate at Dartmouth many times over the years. The columnist for the Spectator offers this opinion:

While still placing the majority of the cash flow towards the revenue-driven men’s basketball and football programs, it would do the department well to move more of its capital toward promoting teams like baseball—and perhaps even the powerful heavyweight rowing program or our nationally ranked fencing program.

A columnist for the Daily Texan used an inventive way to take a look at the history of the University of Texas football program. He climbed into a time machine and interviewed the first Texas coach back in 1894. Not surprisingly given the times, the Ivy League got a mention. Here's part of the fictional interview between the writer (DT) and Coach Wentworth:

DT: So Mr. Wentworth, how did your first season behind the reins of one of the most successful college football programs in America go?

R.D. Wentworth: This is only the second year of the team's existence and last year there wasn't even a coach, so I don't know what you mean by "program." All in all, I'd consider this season a success. We won six and dropped one, and were fortunate that nobody died during any of our games. Luckily, we didn't play Yale or Harvard, or else those numbers may have changed a lot.

DT: Oh, the Ivy League used to be good at something besides being pretentious?

RDW: Used to? I don't see how we'd ever beat them.

It's not sports, but it is the Ivy League and it's a good "read." Check out this Harvard Crimson piece about a high school dropout turned award-winning psychology professor at Harvard who specializes in happiness research. From the story:

“I think it’s the only class you’ll see where people clap for literally five minutes at the end of each class,” Beatrice H. N. El-Hage ’11 says. “They wait to walk out. At the end of every class I hear people talking about how good the lecture was.”

And finally, with yet another day of sun and unseasonably warm temperatures on tap, there's a good chance the last snow in the shaded sections of our yard here on the shoulder of Moose Mountain will melt away. I'll let you know ;-)