Optimist-Pessimist Make A Final Visit

Posted on Big Green Alert premium yesterday was a new Optimist and Pessimist column offering a few ideas about how next season may – or may not – go for the Dartmouth football team.

A terrific New York Times story about the hurdles overcome by the University of Vermont club football team that Dartmouth played this fall included some thoughts from Big Green coach Buddy Teevens. A few excerpts:

“I admire the Vermont players because they appreciate just being on the field,” Teevens said. “During the game, their kicker kept coming to our sideline to borrow a tee to kick off because he didn’t have one. Finally, I said: ‘Here, take this tee and keep it. We have four or five.’

“You should have seen his face. It was like I gave him a million bucks.”

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... Teevens was so impressed with the enthusiasm and passion of the Vermont players that he promised to aid their effort by shipping extra equipment and blocking sleds to the team.

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Teevens ... said he hoped Vermont’s experience would lead other institutions that once had varsity football teams, like Boston University, to start club teams. Or perhaps other smaller area colleges would do it.

“They could form their own little league and I would play every one of them,” Teevens said.

While that will make Teevens popular in Vermont's largest city, someone in Windsor, "the birthplace of Vermont," isn't quite as happy with him. The local daily today printed a letter to the editor from someone in that town calling for the Dartmouth coach to resign after this year's 0-10 season. ...

Speaking of coaches, the Yale Daily News offers the following about what's happening in New Haven, where head football coach Jack Siedlecki, um, is no longer the head football coach:

The Athletics Department has not selected an interim coach for the team at this time. In the interim, (Athletic Director Tom) Beckett said major decisions affecting the football program will fall to him.

But all nine assistant coaches have also taken on additional responsibilities. Many of the assistants are working to maintain contact with recruits, and Anthony Reno, Siedlecki’s assistant head coach, has assumed the top role in recruitment.

The story says Yale hopes to have a new coach hired by the end of the month.

Don't look for the offensive coordinator at Penn to take the job. The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that Bill Schmitz will not be back with the Quakers next year. Coach Al Bagnoli:

"We appreciate his efforts during the last two years, and we wish him the best in his future endeavors."

At least they didn't say he "retired."

A couple of other coaches Dartmouth has faced in the past are also in the news. The Syracuse Post-Standard has a paean to Colgate coach Dick Biddle, who the story suggests should have been scooped up a few years ago by a bigger program but wasn't, and now probably won't be. From the story:

Biddle isn’t a young comer. And he’s not a great quote. And he doesn’t necessarily look like he’d be able to dazzle 18-year-olds in their parents’ living rooms. But he wins . . . and he does so with dignity . . . and as Hamilton isn’t exactly South Beach, he’s obviously daunted not at all by obstacles placed in his way.

Chip Kelly, whose offenses at New Hampshire flummoxed Dartmouth and a lot of other opponents before he became offensive coordinator at Oregon in 2006, is now in line to succeed Mike Bellotti as head coach at Oregon when Bellotti moves up to athletic director. The Manchester Union Leader writes about Kelly, whose hiring a couple of years ago was met by raised eyebrows out west, but who has quickly made believers out of the skeptics. From the story:

"Chip Kelly has brought incredible innovation to our offense and enhanced the excitement for our entire program," Bellotti said. "He was going to be in line for some head jobs and I feel like at some point in time I wanted to keep him here."

A quarterback playing in the shadow of Princeton Stadium has Dartmouth on his list of potential schools. As a 5-11, 175 senior at West Windsor-Plainsboro South High School, Connor Farrell completed 62 percent of his pastes, throwing for 2,551 yards and 25 touchdowns. From the Trenton Times:

Academics ranks above all," said Farrell, who has a short list of schools which includes Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, William & Mary, along with other Ivy League and New England Small College Athletic Conference schools. "While I would love to play football for the next four years, I know the next 40 years of my life after that are more important."

And finally, some of you have wondered what kinds of work I do when I'm not overwhelmed by Dartmouth football.

The answer is a whole lot of different things. They include, but are not limited to, freelance writing for a number of regional magazines (here's one story about the daughter of Reg Pierce '46 that's still up on the web), for newspapers and for news services for a couple of colleges. I recently finished a project for the Hanover Chamber of Commerce, do media relations for several local events and recently added a little marketing and consulting. (That sounds much more impressive than it actually is, but it's a start ;-).

Some of you also know that I've been trying to finish off a sports mystery for young teenage girls (helps to have one in the house). It's about 75 percent written and when things slow down (which I hope they don't) I'll wrap it up and see if anyone is interested in publishing it.

Another piece of the puzzle is helping people preserve their personal or family stories in a book, or by recording and engineering an oral history. I mention this because I've got to wrap things up now and get down to work on a presentation I'm doing tonight in the Etna Town Library. If you are curious, check out my web site, Remember When?