Many Happy Returns

Jake Novak over at the Columbia football blog, Roar Lions Roar, reports that if linebacker Corey Cameron is awarded a fifth-year of eligibility, Columbia (2-8 overall, 2-5 Ivy League) will have eight starters returning on each side of the football, including four players who received All-Ivy recognition.

Those are solid numbers, although obviously they do not guarantee either success or improvement. Dartmouth in 2008 was a case in point. The Big Green listed a healthy seven starters back on offense and an equal number back on defense last fall (albeit none with All-Ivy on their resumes) and the team slid back.

To quote Thomas Magnum, PI, I know what you are thinking: "How many starters does Dartmouth have back for next year?"

That, my friends, is a matter of semantics because defining a "returning starter" is a tricky proposition when you are coming off a season dotted with injuries and/or instability in the lineup.

Is the linebacker who started the first two games before being hurt (Zech Glaize) the returning starter? Or is it whoever started the most games in his place (Casey Frost)? If it's Glaize, add one to the tally of returning starters because he's a junior. If you go with Frost, a senior, that's a graduated starter.

Even at a position where no one is graduating and so by definition you can say a starter is returning, you may not be able to name him. In Dartmouth's case, is the starter the quarterback who was under center the first five games (junior Alex Jenny) and then finished the last one, or the quarterback who came on to start the last three (freshman Conner Kempe)?

Perhaps the best way to gauge the 2009 Dartmouth team, then, is by looking at the number of clear-cut starters who have been lost. They are:

Offense
Tackle Alex Rapp
Wide receiver Eric Paul
Wide receiver Phil Galligan
Tailback Milan Williams

Defense
Interior lineman Rehan Mutalib
Defensive end Malcolm Freberg
Linebacker Andrew Dete
Linebacker Joe Battaglia
Strong safety Ian Wilson

Given those numbers, you can extrapolate seven starters back on offense and six on defense. But again, I wish you good luck naming some of them.

The good news is that the easiest place to do that is on the offensive line, where experience is so critical. Left guard John O'Sullivan (five consecutive starts to end the season), center Austin Fletcher (eight starts, including the last six), right guard Alex Wodka (10 starts), right tackle Alex Toth (10 starts) all return.

On the other hand, with coach Buddy Teevens promising a complete review of every aspect of the program, tapping anyone as a returning starter at this point might be considered foolhardy.