11:30 a.m. update: For a Boston Globe story on Harvard tackle James Williams, click here.
Although there are still 17 days until the first Dartmouth practice, this is kickoff week for the 2008 Big Green Alert premium.
There will be a summary posting from the Ivy League media day in New Haven, Conn., on this blog Tuesday morning, with complete coverage on the regular Green Alert site that afternoon/evening.
In-depth previews of each Ivy League team (drawn from media day interviews as well as other sources) will begin on the regular site this Wednesday. The full preview schedule:
This Week
- Wednesday-Brown
- Thursday-Columbia
- Friday-Cornell
- Monday-Harvard
- Tuesday-Penn
- Wednesday-Princeton
- Thursday-Yale
- Friday-Colgate
- Monday-Holy Cross
- Tuesday-UNH
- Wednesday-Practice reports begin
And if you haven't yet signed up for Green Alert premium, don't wait. For the next three-plus months this is essentially a full-time job, one that only your subscriptions allows me to do. Your Green Alert subscription will include a professionally written, newspaper-length story every day of the week from the first day of practice until Nov. 24. Those stories will include but are not limited to:
- On-site reports after every practice (two reports during double-sessions with the first posted before the afternoon session begins) from the preseason through the final game
- An in-depth game preview on Friday
- Predictions and analysis from around the Ivy League on Friday
- A professionally written, newspaper-length game story on Saturday night
- A game sidebar on Saturday night
- A Sunday follow story
- Monday Optimist-Pessimist column
- A postseason wrapup, including awards
- Full spring practice coverage
- A look at the recruiting class in the spring
- Offseasons features and columns as merited
Jake Novak over at the Roar Lions Roar blog has some thoughts from filmmaker Erik Greenberg Anjou, whose documentary, EIGHT: Ivy League Football and America, premiered April 24, at the Yale Club in New York City. Erik writes:
Ironically, it was the very moment itself when the league became official (there was no Ivy League prior to the '50's, just Ivy League schools) that the Ivy League football programs began their eventual march to inter and intra-cultural obsolesence.Erik has become a friend in the past couple of years but I would argue there's one wrong word in my friend's sentence. There was nothing ironic about the change starting when the Ivy League became official. The march to inter and intra-cultural obsolescence was intentional.
I particularly like what Erik has to say about how to reverse that march:
There was a reason why in the glory days the Ivy League football hero was a cultural icon. He was a charismatic, high achieving intellectually active man of action. He kicked ass on the football field, but was socially engaged. He was the president of a fraternity or singing group or academic organization. The leadership he displayed on the field was a metaphor for and precursor to what he achieved off of it.I could be wrong but it seems to me that has been a large part of Buddy Teevens' push since returning to Dartmouth.
So, we must develop not just football players, or scholar-athletes, but men who will take charge of and interact with and stimulate the culture at large. Create the next generations of George Shultz's and Hank Paulson's.
Have I been moaning about all the rain lately? Yup. And with good reason according to media reports. One says that in the southern New Hampshire area (we are too far removed from the bigger cities of the south to get our own reports ;-) there's been 13.82 inches of rain in the first two months of summer. That's six inches more than average and two inches more than a normal summer. The National Weather Service reported 17 rainy days in June and 16 in July. August is on pace to beat both of those numbers. No wonder my vegetable garden is a mess ... .
Tragically, New Hampshire just recorded its fourth drowning death since July 25. (link)
Have you been checking in on the Summer Olympics? In part because of trees growing up, our satellite service goes AWOL in the rain (or any hint thereof) but NBC is the one station we can get over the air., so I've caught a few hours. (The picture can be miserable, but we're not complaining.)
I think it was that certain Hanover High freshman-to-be who suggested that the only sports that should be in the Olympics are those in which it is at least arguable that an Olympic gold medal is the most important goal in the sport. I can't disagree. Tennis? Sorry. Soccer? See ya. Baseball? Not for big leaguers. Basketball? College kids, yup. Redeem Teamers, nope.
And finally, don't forget to check out the Perseid Meteor Shower, which turns the night sky into theater starting tomorrow.
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