Gearing Up On Diamond As Well As Gridiron

Each day on the way to football practice I walk past the Dartmouth baseball field and watch the construction progress. Now, with the first concrete poured for Biondi Park at Red Rolfe Field, the drawings for the new facility are coming to life. The two circles in fourth picture down will be the pitcher's mound and batter's box. The bottom picture shows the new configuration of the outfield fence, which will eliminate the triangle in deep center. (Click photos to enlarge)

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Dartmouth's game notes have been posted here. (A word of warning: Don't take the depth chart too literally.) ... Cornell's notes have been up for a while but there's now an introduction that leads into the notes here. ... The Utica paper has a roundup of area college football that includes a capsule on Colgate-Dartmouth here.

All Dartmouth games will be carried on WFRD with veteran sportscaster Bob Lipman (voice of the New Hamshire Fisher Cats minor league baseball team) doing play-by-play and former Big Green captain Wayne Young '72 handling color commentary. The Dartmouth Sports Network home page is here.

Dartmouth takes a couple of shots in other school newspapers as football coverage kicks off. The Columbia Spectator writes, "(I)t’ll again be a struggle for Dartmouth to get out of the Ivy League cellar." The Spec writes of the Big Green's, "history of week offenses." (Dartmouth was actually third in the Ivies in scoring ast year at 27.0 points per game.)

A Cornell Sun story includes this about last year's Cornell game in Hanover: "There were the seven turnovers — five of them fumbles — and 59 points given up to Dartmouth, a team the Red usually dominates."

That didn't sound right to me so I went back and checked. While Cornell has indeed won five of the last seven games, the Big Red hasn't really dominated on the scoreboard. The scores of those five games: 21-19, 28-25, 28-24, 14-7, 21-10. That's a winning margin of 2, 3, 4, 7 and 11 points for the Big Red. The average: 5.4 points.

The Sun writes a little about Cornell coach Jim Knowles' decision to remove the C from the sides of the Big Red Helmets until the team earns it back: "So, the coaches took away the C and went back to the basics. Full pads, full scrimmage, full contact, every day. For once, this was your father’s football."

It will be interesting to see how the full-contact approach works. Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens took the opposite tack this preseason with really limited contact. How that will turn out remains to be seen but there was certainly one advantage in Hanover: no one was seriously hurt during camp. I fact, I'm not sure I can remember more than one or two trips by the trainers onto the field to help a player.

The Daily Pennsylvanian has a full football supplement today that includes a story about transfer quarterback Kyle Olson, who may or may not – no one seems to know – start in the Quakers' opener. The story includes this surprising nugget:

Unconvinced by the throwing options he had at hand, (Penn coach Al) Bagnoli made a specific effort last year to recruit a junior college quarterback.

"We wanted someone with preferably game experience playing last season," he said. "That's why we went the JC route. We wanted to get a kid that played at a high level, that actually has 20 games under his belt.

Now, to steal a line from a certain former NBC sitcom, "Not that there's anything wrong with that," (as long as the transfer is academically qualified, which I'm sure he is), but it really is refreshing to hear an Ivy League coach who's not afraid to sound like, well, like a football coach.

Maybe it's something in the water in West Philly, but while a number of his contemporaries won't say boo about the financial aid issue facing the Ivy League, Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky isn't afraid to speak up. He's quoted in this DP story that confirms there's no league-wide policy change on tap.

Reggie Williams as head of the NFL Players Association? This Yahoo column makes the case for the former Dartmouth and Cincinnati Bengals linebacker.

Twins from the Tampa area have heard from Dartmouth recruiters. They are referred to in this story as, "speedsters who can play any of the skills positions." Sounds good to me ;-)

Remember the posting a while back that Dartmouth will be giving football programs away for the first time this fall? UNH is taking a completely different approach. From the school website:

The program features two parts. First, fans can buy the football yearbook for $7 which includes bios on top players, feature stories, a record section and much more. This will be sold at every game as long as supplies last.

In addition, an insert will be printed that includes rosters and game notes specific to that day’s contest. The insert will be included free when a fan buys a yearbook, or fans may purchase just the insert only at any home game for just $3.

I'm not sure I'd pay $7 for a program but I'm absolutely sure I wouldn't buy one this week and buy another the next.

And finally, that certain Hanover High School junior will be running tomorrow in something called The Black Bear Invitational. It's been a while since she's been in a race and it's safe to say she's champing at the bit.

That certain freshman, meanwhile, will be on the sidelines in uniform tonight when Hanover football takes on archrival Lebanon. The Hanover team photo has been posted online and you can find it here. I asked that certain frosh why he was standing off to the side (top row, far right) and he confirmed what I suspected: the photographer moved him over so they could see him.