Media Day ... Finally

2008 Dartmouth media guide front and back covers

I'm off to New Haven at 6 this morning. That's plenty of time for the 10 a.m. start of media day festivities, but I've been caught in traffic before and I'd much rather be early than late. (Those of you who knew, loved and sometimes feared the late sports information director Kathy Slattery Phillips will understand ;-) ... A few quick thoughts coming out of media day will be posted here when the event breaks up, and a full story will appear this afternoon on the Green Alert premium site before I leave Connecticut for the drive home.

In a change from previous years, the Ivy League media poll was already posted this morning. There were no real surprises. The poll looks like this (first place votes in parentheses):

1. (T) Harvard (8) — 124
1. (T) Yale (8) — 124
3. Brown — 99
4. Penn (1) — 85
5. Princeton — 58
6. Cornell — 54
7. Dartmouth — 47
8. Columbia — 21

The Ivy League football E-guide has been posted and is available here. And you are supposed to be able to watch the media day festivities live here.

Not much more time to surf before heading out the door. The Sports Network has its look at top running backs in FCS and the Big Green will face backs ranked No. 3 in the nation (Yale's Mike McLeod) and No. 7 in the nation (Colgate's Jordan Scott) as well as No. 17 (UNH's Chad Kackert). Throw in Penn's Michael DiMaggio (No. 8 among new starters) and Dartmouth will see highly regarded running backs in each of the first four games.

I think Jordan Scott is undervalued in the poll and that while Kackert has great promise, his numbers won't compare to those put up by the others simply because the UNH backfield is as deep as it is. Colgate and Yale will saddle up and ride Scott and McLeod while UNH has more horses in the barn.

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If you were a subscriber last year and haven't re-upped yet for this season you may have noticed your password is still working. Turns out it's really, really hard for me to say goodbye. Unfortunately, for accounting and computer reasons I'm going to have to deactivate accounts shortly. Really. That's the bad news. The good news is I can always reactivate the account. ;-).