Rodney Dangerfield Has Nothing On Dartmouth

If Dartmouth beats Columbia Saturday it will earn more than its first win. The Big Green will also earn a little respect, something that is in precious little supply for the program these days. Even the school newspaper is jumping on the bandwagon. From today's Daily Dartmouth:

Although it may not have won many games, the 2007 Big Green was at least a threat, a competitive team that had a realistic chance of beating a team like Harvard, who finished second in the league last season.

So far this season, with the possible exception of the Penn game, Dartmouth football has not even realistically threatened any opponent.

Anyone who was at Colgate would dispute that notion (to borrow Barack Obama's favorite word).

The Harvard Crimson, which intends to take shots in its weekly overview of Ivy games, lands one this way:

If I may quote something I wrote in this space two weeks ago, and I may, “If you’re putting money down on a Columbia win…save it. But if you really must, Week 6 against Dartmouth looks promising.”

I stand by that statement wholeheartedly.

Ouch.

The Daily Pennsylvanian, in a story headlined Ivy Weekend Preview | National TV has worst of Ivies, writes:

(W)hat better way to show off the conference than with a showdown between a pair of 0-5 teams when Dartmouth travels to Columbia ...

Even the Versus TV network, which will televise the game, takes a shot. From its game preview:

Neither team has tasted victory this season, but Columbia has certainly put up a battle.

And Dartmouth? There's a little information followed by a little editorializing ...

The Big Green has posted only 13 points in a pair of league losses and, overall, is producing less than 290 yard per game. That’s not going to cut it against a Lion defense that limited Penn to 204 yards at Franklin Field in ideal weather conditions.

For a quick Manchester Union Leader capsule of the game, click here.

Columbia's game notes may be accessed here. And if you'd like to do your own scouting, Columbia has video highlights from its narrow loss to Penn posted here.

The Columbia Spectator has a story headlined, Dartmouth’s Jenny Looks to Build on Last Season’s Successes. The Spec also has a preview with comments from Columbia coach Norries Wilson about Dartmouth. Among other things he says:
(D)efensively, we’re going to have to stop the myriad of formations that they run,” Wilson said.

“They run a little read zone, they throw the ball halfway decent. Number three (Milan Williams), the running back, is a good player. They’ve got some young kids playing offensive line, or at least played this week, that did a good job.”

Friends of Dartmouth football – official and unofficial friends – are invited to join parents of Dartmouth players for a tailgate in Lot C near the stadium beginning at 12:47 p.m. sharp. (I don't make this stuff up ;-). Tailgaters will have to park elsewhere and then walk to the tailgate, which will be marked by, what else, green balloons.

In other business (as I used to write in the journalism world when I had to cover meetings with multiple items on the agenda) the Bryant University field hockey and women's soccer teams have traveled up from Rhode Island to play in Hanover in the past couple of weeks as the school makes the transition to Division I sports. With Dartmouth at least in the first phase of investigating a new football schedule, I thought to visit the Bryant website (and Wikipedia - guilty as charged) to see what's happening with the school's football program and learn a little more about the school.

Here's some of what I learned:

• Bryant's football team is indeed transitioning from Division II to Division I - FCS variety.
• The Bulldogs are currently 4-3.
• They drew 5,630 for last week's 20-7 win over Robert Morris.
• They are going to get crushed by UMass this weekend. (To be fair, the website said they are playing UMass. I made up the rest.)
• The Bryant Stadium looks like this.
• Bryant will be eligible for the Northeast Conference championship in 2012.
• Bryant College, with a student body of 4,983, became Bryant University in 2004.
• The school is in Smithfield, R.I., about 20 miles northwest of Providence.
• Bryant moved to Smithfield from Providence after being given 420 acres of land by alumnus Earl Silas Tupper, he of the eponymous containers.
• The Providence Journal wrote about Bryant's transition here.
• The phone line to the Bryant football schedule is the busiest number on campus. (OK, I made that up.)

And finally, football coaches do all kinds of stuff to break up the monotony of practices and built rapport with and among their players. Cornell's Jim Knowles is certainly no exception as this "lede" and explanation in the Cornell Sun tell us:

It was hard to take football head coach Jim Knowles ’87 seriously as he casually discussed the intricacies of Brown’s passing attack. He had a unibrow thickly drawn in and a dark mustache painted on his upper lip — not to mention a towel stuffed in the back of his shirt to give a hunchback look....

... The Red was having its weekly “Wacky Wednesday” practice and on this particular Wednesday, the coaches came dressed as each other.