Strength Of Schedule

Dartmouth's official preview for the Cornell game can be found here. It includes this note:

According to the NCAA, the Big Green have played the eighth most difficult schedule among FCS schools, based on the cumulative record of each school’s opponents. By the end of the season, Dartmouth is projected to have the fifth most difficult schedule, the third time in four years it would rank among the top 10. Teams ahead of Dartmouth include the top-two ranked teams in James Madison and Appalachian State, as well as the Green’s next opponent, Cornell, which is fourth.

I've written about the NCAA's flawed schedule statistics on Green Alert premium. It would be a mistake to put too much weight on the NCAA strength-of-schedule ranking for obvious reasons, but clearly the Big Green hasn't played an easy non-league schedule. Here's how the Ivy League's non-league schedules have stacked up, using the NCAA methodology of records only:

1. Dartmouth 19-6 (UNH 7-1, Colgate 7-2, Holy Cross 5-3)
2. Harvard 14-10 (Lafayette 6-2, Holy Cross 5-3, Lehigh 3-5)
3. Cornell 14-11 (Colgate 7-2, Bucknell 4-4, Lehigh 3-5)
4. Penn 13-11 (Villanova 6-2, Lafayette 6-2, Georgetown 1-7)
5. Princeton 13-13 (Colgate 7-2, Lehigh 3-5, Citadel 3-6)
6. Columbia 13-14 (Lafayette 6-2, Fordham 4-4, Towson 3-6)
7. Yale 10-14 (Holy Cross 5-3, Fordham 4-4, Georgetown 1-7)
8. Brown 10-17 (Holy Cross 5-3, Stony Brook 3-6, URI 2-8)

Where those numbers fall down, of course, is when Bucknell's 4-4 helps Cornell's strength of schedule while The Citadel's 3-6 drags Princeton's down. Interestingly, Dartmouth is the only school not to play a non-league opponent with a losing record at this point.

A PDF of Dartmouth's game notes can be found here.

As long as we're on a numbers binge this morning, here are the latest rankings in the Gridiron Power Index, the compilation of various rankings of the 125 FCS schools:

9-New Hampshire
19-Harvard
28-Brown
34 (t)-Colgate
37-Holy Cross
52-Penn
60-Yale
61-Princeton
74-Cornell
99-Columbia
105-Dartmouth

I think the GPI is a good idea, but I must admit to having problems with Dartmouth and Columbia being ranked below Bryant (98). I know who I would pick if they played and it wouldn't be Bryant.

The Daily Dartmouth has a review of the Ivy League football documentary 8: Ivy League Football and America. From the review:

“Eight” impressively takes advantage of archival football footage throughout the film. It contains short clips of games from the late 1800s, which were some of the first shots ever taken with a motion-picture camera.

The Daily Pennsylvanian has a very well done story this morning about how college athletes fare in the job market. A few excerpts from the kind of story I should have written when I was at the newspaper but never did:

"(Athletes) have the kind of qualities that employers are looking for - things like teamwork, commitment, motivation, determination," said Helen Cheung, associate director of Career Services for the College of Arts and Sciences. "This is the thing we tell (them) all the time: Brag about it."

And this:

For those athletes whose GPAs are less than stellar, Cheung and her cohorts at Career Services have some advice, delivered periodically at a workshop called "Managing the Skeletons in Your Closet" - held near Franklin Field with an evening start time amenable to most varsity practice schedules.




"You want to own up to it," Cheung said of some students' GPA woes. "An employer realizes that they spend 50 hours a week in practice or in competition. They realize that this person doesn't have as much time to study or to join other clubs."

A very interesting strategy that makes sense to me.

Coming in a bit: a few more baseball field pictures