Non-Conference Nods

I have a widget on my Mac that has counted down the days until spring practice. It's at one ;-), so I reset it for Sept. 20, the date of the opener at Colgate. In case you are wondering, it's at 160.

Speaking of Colgate, a quick trip to the Raiders' website shows that announcement of recruits headed to Hamilton includes video clips. Like most of you (probably), I immediately checked out the running backs. I shuddered just a bit when I watched a tailback named Jordan McCord. He looked pretty good but beyond that, he scares me a little because his name sounds like a hybrid of Colgate's Jordan Scott and Yale's Mike McLeod, two runners who have caused Dartmouth some headaches the past several years and will be on the other side of the field again this fall.

Still on the subject of non-conference football foes, Holy Cross Magazine is featuring a round-table discussion on The Place for Athletics at Holy Cross. A few excerpts you may find interesting ...

Holy Cross admissions director:

When it comes to athletics, what I hear from alumni—especially when you get farther away from Massachusetts—is a kind of frustration. They see other schools that made different decisions along the way getting a lot of national recognition. The games are reported and televised. But when it comes to alma mater, they don’t see the games, they can’t read the scores. We’re marginalized or ignored. I don’t think the majority of alums are necessarily unhappy about the route we’ve taken. But when it comes to the athletic arena, they feel that their pride in the College isn’t able to be expressed as fully as they might like.

Holy Cross president:

Right now the Patriot League allows scholarships in every sport but football. And there are several schools that would like to institute scholarships in football.

Holy Cross director of athletics:

I’d love to have football scholarships, but I don’t think it’s practical or realistic right now. We estimate it would cost us a million-two to a million-five a year. Because if you add football scholarships, you would, of course, have to balance that with an equal number of women’s athletics scholarships. That’s a lot of money given all the other pressures we have right now. For that reason, I can live with the status quo as long as our peers do.

Discuss among yourselves ;-)

And finally this: Before heading to Massachusetts last Saturday for a family gathering, we spent some time in our basement making sure everything was up off the floor in the event that, as happens every 3-4 years, we got water in our basement when the end-of-winter thaw came. We returned home last Sunday to find everything dry. This morning ... not so much. Thank goodness we have stuff up off the floor because there's a lot of snow melt this year.