One Football Foe Advances, One Crashes

Wonder who the next coach at Yale might be? The New Haven Register's Portal 31 blog tosses out a few names. Some of those same names show up in a Register column. ... One of the names that shows up in both places is that of Mark Whipple, the former Brown coach, architect of the Whip-lash offense and current Philadelphia Eagles assistant. It baffles me why some FBS hasn't taken a shot at Whip yet and I suppose I'd be surprised if he were interested in Yale. But I'll tell you this: Keep your fingers crossed that he isn't. Interested in Yale, I mean.

The climb to the next Ivy League title would get even harder for Dartmouth if Yale brings in an innovator like Whipple.

You know it's coming. You know there will be people who look at Villanova's 55-28 whomping of Colgate and say something along the lines of, "That's why it's a good thing the Ivy League doesn't go to the playoffs."

But hey, at least Colgate got the chance. Listen to head coach Dick Biddle:

"We couldn't match up against them. We couldn't stop the run. We gave up big plays in the passing game. We didn't tackle very well. Sometimes that happens. It wasn't a lack of effort. We felt like we wanted to control the ball but couldn't. But I have no complaints."

But I have no complaints.

And listen to tailback Jordan Scott:

"It (career) kind of went by pretty quick. I've been blessed with a great coach and he's always put us in the best position to win. I've had great teammates and great lines in my time there. I enjoyed it though it's a little bittersweet to go out like this. It's been a great season and a great memory for me."

...(I)t's a little bittersweet to go out like this.

No complaints. A little bittersweet. Was it disappointing? Clearly. Did they get pushed around? Absolutely. Do they wish they had stayed home and watched another CAA team play instead of them? It doesn't sound like it.

New Hampshire advanced in the playoffs with a 29-20 win over Southern Illinois that showed once again the importance of special teams. The "lede" of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells you everything you need to know:

The Wildcats turned a blocked punt into a touchdown, kicked five field goals and returned three kickoffs beyond midfield in their 29-20 victory over the Salukis in the first round of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.

UNH will be playing the University of Northern Iowa for the third time in four years in the FCS playoffs.

Did you see Notre Dame last night? Yikes.

And finally from the futbol field, pick your poison. Would you rather play a soccer game without your starting goalie or without your leading scorer? That's the question of the day in North Carolina where No. 1-ranked Wake Forest will play host to Dartmouth in the third round of the NCAA soccer tournament. The Demon Deacons will be without their starting keeper, who suffered a concussion in their first tournament game. Dartmouth, meanwhile, will be without leading scorer Lucky Mkosana, who broke a bone in his foot in the Big Green's win over Boston College in last week's game. Find a story in the Winston-Salem Journal.

That's right. A fall Ivy League team is in the third round of a postseason tournament. Whither football?

Colgate Can Be Grand, Grand, Grand

The Syracuse Post-Standard has a column about Dartmouth opponent Colgate playing today in the FCS playoffs against Villanova. It sounds as if Dick Biddle's crew is going to have its hands full, although that's not why I mention the column. Nope, it's the following nugget from the story. (The italics are mine):

Not that favored 'Nova - which has lost only to Division I-A West Virginia (48-21) and the FCS's top-ranked-at-the-time James Madison (23-19) in its 9-2 season - is inclined to cooperate, but the Raiders are one productive afternoon removed from having three (3) 1,000-yard rushers in their backfield.

Given the level of opponent, it's probably not going to happen, but if Colgate had played Georgetown (the game was cancelled because of illness) and the Raiders had played the same backfield in that game that they should be playing today, they would be close enough that it probably would happen. Here are the season numbers:

• Senior tailback Jordan Scott – 1,077 yards (despite missing all or most of four games)
• Freshman tailback Nate Eachus – 872 yards (with just eight carries toal in the first six games)
• Sophomore quarterback Greg Sullivan – 865 yards

Worth noting is that while Colgate has an outside shot at having three 1,000-yard rushers in the same backfield, Dartmouth has had three in school history, and they came in consecutive years:

• 1989–David Clark '90 (1,063 yards)
• 1990–Shon Page '90 (1,087 yards)
• 1991–Al Rosier '91 (1,432)

Back to Colgate ... Sullivan gives a lot of credit to his offensive line, although his ballhandling and decision-making were obvious in the Raiders' win over Dartmouth back in the opener when he ran for 136 yards and Scott ran for 239. Here's what the modest QB had to say about the run game in today's story:

I'm not making this up, but I have done very little when it comes to the success of this team. This is all about the offensive line and the coaches. I mean, I'm not the fastest of kids. All those misdirection plays we run help me get into the lanes because otherwise I'm not quick enough. All I really do, honestly, is manage the game. Really, that's it. When I say I haven't done much, I'm just being honest."

Colgate is listed on the Dartmouth schedule for two more years – and Sullivan and Eachus will be in uniform for both of them.

Speaking of potent offenses that Dartmouth had to face this fall, another one will be on display in Carbondale, Ill., today when New Hampshire takes on Southern Illinois in the playoffs. SIU coach Dale Lennon has been impressed by video he's seen of UNH quarterback RJ Toman. He told The Southern newspaper:

"Their quarterback has really come into his own. He's the playmaker, the trigger guy. That's where a lot of their success has come."

Toman is another sophomore, meaning that like Eachus and Sullivan, he'll be around for a while longer.

And finally, Dartmouth football players and athletes who were on campus training in 2006 and 2007 will get a huge kick out of this Youtube video impression of former strength coach Dan Nichol (although the guess here is that most of you have already seen it). Nichol is now head strength and conditioning coach at Maine, which also will be in the FCS playoffs today.

Playoffs Starting ... But Not For Ivies, Of Course

The FCS championships start up this weekend and The Sports Network expects two of Dartmouth's opponents to bow out quickly. TSN's predictions: Southern Illinois 31, New Hampshire 28, and Villanova 35, Colgate 14.

No word on how Ivy League champions Brown and Harvard will fare. Oh yeah, they aren't allowed to go to take part in the playoffs like every other Ivy League sport can.

Should have linked to this the other day, but the official Dartmouth release on the All-Ivy League team has been posted. Find it here.

In case you didn't see the Green Alert premium interview with Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens, here's what he had to say with regard to how the voting turned out:

On All-Ivy League voting that, among other things, saw safety Ian Wilson named to the second team and McManus named to the honorable mention squad as a receiver: “I felt badly for Ian. He deserved first team but people on the outside can’t evaluate attitude and the impact he had on our team. Timmy merited a look at the first team when you think about the numbers he put up despite working three games at quarterback. They could have been a lot better. I was happy for Milan (Williams, honorable mention tailback) and (punter Brian) Scullin. He had the opportunity and made the most of it this year.”

Have you heard of RUWT? I hadn't either. The acronym stands for Are You Watching This? I don't watch all that much sports on TV, but it's a neat idea. Here's what the RUWT website says it does:

RUWT? Sports monitors all the channels on your TV looking for an instant classic in the making. When it finds one it'll alert you via email or text message with the score, time left, the reason why the game is good (No-Hitter, Close Finish, Big Upset), and the exact channel number you need to turn to catch the finish.

And the site explanation includes this:

So how does all of this work? RUWTbot, our game-watching, slightly militant robot, is in charge of making sure you're not the loser at the water cooler that missed the big game. He knows, for every cable and satellite provider in every ZIP and Postal code in the U.S. and Canada, exactly what games you can watch. If it's a game you don't get, he won't bug you.

Say It Isn't So ...

The non-conference hits just keep on coming. First it's Colgate pulling the curtain back and revealing Nate Eachus, a top-notch replacement for tailback Jordan Scott who not only was named the Patriot League Rookie of the Year, but also earned Patriot League first-team honors.

Now word out of Worcester is that record-setting Holy Cross quarterback Dominic Randolph could be back for a fifth year. From the Worcester Telegram:

Randolph was injured in the first half of his first junior varsity game his freshman year and did not play in any of the Crusaders’ games that season, so he has one year of eligibility left. Gilmore said he would qualify for a medical redshirt by NCAA standards, but the Patriot League has an academic component that has to be fulfilled for student-athletes to extend their eligibility.

Randolph apparently has withdrawn from the East Coast Bowl postseason game in order to protect his potential eligibility.

Dartmouth coach Buddy Teeens got a nice nod in a Times Picayune story about the legendary former Tulane football secretary, Ms. Fitz. From the story:

Fitzpatrick's favorite head coaches were Buddy Teevens ("such a gentleman"), and then Jim Pittman and Mack Brown.

You had to know this was coming at some point. A story out of San Francisco has a not-so-nice nod:

Buddy Teevens and Tyrone Willingham, the only two former (Stanford) Cardinal coaches with head coaching jobs this season, are both winless in 2008.

Teevens just finished an 0-10 season at Dartmouth, the first winless campaign for the Big Green since losing their only game in 1883.

Willingham has one game remaining in his season and career at Washington. After losing the Apple Cup to Washington State in double overtime, Willingham has an 0-11 record. The Huskies are the only winless team in major college football and need a win on Dec. 6 at California to avoid the school's first winless season since 1890.

The Yale Daily News has finally caught up on the, um, retirement of football coach Jack Siedlecki. The comments on the story range from ridiculous to perhaps enlightening, as is so often the case on Internet message boards.

This was a big day in Jay Fiedler's '94 NFL career. On this day in 2003 he passed for three touchdowns and ran for another to help the Miami Dolphins to a 40-21 win over Dallas in the annual Thanksgiving Day game.

Be thankful for family and friends today.

Yale Football Coach To Be Replaced

Jack Siedlecki is out as Yale football coach after going 6-4 this fall. Depending on what you read he was dismissed or reassigned or has decided to retire. Unless I missed it, fired doesn't show up in any of those reports, but let's go with that one.

(An aside: At the newspaper I once received notice that a coach had resigned. When I asked the athletic director if he considered not accepting the resignation, the silence was deafening. Siedlecki, you can be sure, did not resign.)

From the Portal 31 Yale football blog, part of the New Haven Register:

Yale lost seven of its last eight against Harvard, the worst run against the Crimson since a 1-8 mark from 1910-1922. The bottom line is that if you are the head coach at Yale, you have to beat Harvard. It is as simple as that. Outside of a three-year win streak against Harvard from 1998-2000, his only other win over the Crimson came in 2006 with a convincing 34-13 victory. Going 4-8 against Ohio State will get you fired at Michigan, going 4-8 against Oklahoma will get you fired at Texas. Going 4-8 against Harvard will get you reassigned at Yale.

Siedlecki was 23-7 over his final three years, including a glittering 17-3 in the two seasons prior to this one. The complete New Haven Register story is here.

The $12.2 million reconstruction of the west (home) stands at Memorial Field slated to have begun on the Monday after the final home game earlier this month has officially been put on hold for at least a year, a victim of the global financial crisis. From a college statement on the project:

Instead, Dartmouth will address the immediate maintenance needs of the stands during the spring and summer of next year so that it will be ready for the fall season.

A 6-1, 205 outside linebacker/tight end from Catholic Memorial in Massachusetts has Dartmouth as one of the Ivies on his radar. The Boston Herald writes of Josh Boyd that he is ...

... valedictorian of his class, the captain of the football and wrestling teams, and finds himself in the enviable position of having his pick of Ivy League schools to attend next fall. The list of possible destinations? Harvard, Brown, Columbia and Dartmouth.

Back to Yale for a second, the band has been suspended for its show at Harvard as reported in the Yale Daily. The Harvard Crimson has a more detailed story. No word on what the suspension entails, but the guess here is that if Yale is invited to a New Year's Day bowl game, the band will not be allowed to accompany the football team. (Insert laugh here.)

An Alert reader shares the news that the Patriot League all-star team has been announced and no fewer than 11 of the 14 players on the first team offense were from either Colgate or Holy Cross, the two teams Dartmouth played. Bad news for the Big Green: that freshman Colgate tailback, Nate Eachus, made the first team so Dartmouth will see plenty of him until the contract with the Raiders runs out after two more seasons. Not surprisingly, Eachus was the rookie of the year in the Patriot League.

Off the field of play, Dartmouth is being sued again regarding the composition of the board of trustees. The Boston Globe has a short story and there's another story in the Daily Dartmouth.

And finally, I saw former Dartmouth quarterback Josh Cohen at last night's basketball win over Furman and asked if his younger brother Jake, a talented 6-foot-10 high school basketball player in Pennsylvania, has decided on a college. Turns out he had. Recruited by Stanford, Northwestern, Penn State and Nebraska among others, the younger Cohen decided on Davidson. Find a story about him here.

Safe travels everyone. Oh, and do check in Green Alert Premium tonight for a piece out of my sit-down with coach Buddy Teevens yesterday. He had some interesting and provocative things to say.

Extra Points

The season is over but the hits just keep on coming. From a story about the Penn program in today's Daily Pennsylvanian:

Programs stuck in neutral will have a hard time shifting gears without an honest look at what is wrong with the status quo, and the only time that sober assessment can be made is in the offseason.

If you want an example, look no further than Dartmouth. I will bet cash money that coach Buddy Teevens will not lose his job after this season even though the Big Green went 0-10, their first winless season since 1883, when they went 0-1. I'd be equally willing to bet that their situation will not improve appreciably next year. Shocker.

In addition to Colgate's Dick Biddle, Brown coach Phil Estes is a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award for the top coaching job in the FCS this year. The Sports Network has the full story.

RC Willenbrock, the talented kicker and lacrosse player from Cherry Creek High School in Englewood, Colo., has made a "solid verbal" commitment to Dartmouth, according to this Rivals.com post. Here's what kicking guru Chris Sailer had to say about Willenbrock:

RC is a tremendous talent. He has a huge leg and unlimited potential. Perhaps the strongest leg in the class of 2009. D1A kicker without a doubt.

A Rocky Mountain News story last September said: "...(A)nyone who has seen Cherry Creek's R.C. Willenbrock boot it off the tee knows he belongs in any discussion of the state's strongest legs." ...

Willenbrock's web page can be found here. For a 2007 highlight video, click here.

All-Ivy League Announced

The All-Ivy League team was released this morning and there's not much in the way of surprises for Dartmouth.

Senior safety Ian Wilson was chosen to the second team.

Sophomore receiver Tim McManus and senior tailback Milan Williams were named honorable mention along with punter Brian Scullin.

I would be interested to see where freshman defensive back Shawn Abuhoff finished in the balloting for rookie of the year.

Harvard quarterback Chris Pizzotti is the player of the year while Harvard corner Matthew Hanson is the rookie of the year.

The Ivy co-champions were well-represented. Brown had five players on the first-team offense and three more on the second team. Harvard had three on the first-team offense and two on the second team.

Harvard had four players named to the first defense and three on the second team. Brown had three on the first team and three more on the second.

Earning All-Ivy mention of some sort:
Harvard - 18
Brown -15
Yale - 14
Penn - 11
Princeton, Columbia - 8
Cornell - 7
Dartmouth -4

Abuhoff Wins Rookie Of The Week

Freshman corner Shawn Abuhoff was named the Ivy League rookie of the week for his play at Princeton. From the Ivy League release:

Abuhoff finished off a fantastic freshman campaign with a season-high 10 tackles, three of which were solo, in Dartmouth’s 28-10 loss to Princeton. He also returned a pair of kickoffs for 43 yards and brought back three punts for 10 yards.

Sophomore safety Peter Pidermann and senior linebacker Joe Battaglia were named to the Ivy honor roll. From the Dartmouth release:

Joe Battaglia (Manlius, N.Y.) finished his career with a career-best 12 tackles, five solo, to lead the Dartmouth defense; and junior Peter Pidermann (Hialeah, Fla.) returned a kickoff 85 yards for a touchdown -- which followed up Abuhoff's 94-yard return last week -- and contributed five
tackles from his free safety position.

Later tonight on Green Alert premium: Random Thoughts And Observations. Coming Wednesday: Postseason Q&A With Buddy Teevens.

Wrapping It Up

2008 Ivy League Standings(click to enlarge)

The Daily Dartmouth has a story out of the Princeton game that includes this thought on the future from freshman corner Shawn Abuhoff:

“We need to hit the weight room, get stronger and mature. We have a very young team. We are very optimistic about next year.”

Abuhoff should be a strong candidate for the Ivy League rookie of the year after leading Dartmouth in interceptions (3), passes defended (8) and passes broken up (5), finishing sixth on the team with 43 tackles, leading the Big Green with a 30.8 kickoff return average (including a 94-yarder for a TD) and averaging a team-best 8.3 yards per punt return.

The Daily Princetonian's take on the game can be found here. Understandably there's little on the Dartmouth side of things.

As expected, two Dartmouth opponents are headed to the NCAAA playoffs. Colgate will play at Villanova and New Hampshire will visit Southern Illinois. Find the bracket here. Obviously no Ivy League team is going, but if I'm correct, Brown would have gotten the automatic bid by virtue of its win over co-champion Harvard when they played back on Sept. 27. Find a story on the UNH bid here.

No idea if this kid is going to try to play football but a Northfield (Minn.) high school lineman named Yujie Sun has an interest in Dartmouth according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The paper says, "Along with playing both ways along the line, he trains as an Olympic-style weightlifter." From the story:

Sun is considering pre-med as a focus in college. His mother recently took a job with the FDA, so he said he'll likely join his family on the East Coast when he decides on a school.

"Maybe Dartmouth,'' he said. "I'm sure I'll find a good school out there.''

Kudos to Casey Cramer for scoring his first NFL touchdown yesterday for the Miami Dolphins. The former Dartmouth tight end caught a two-yard TD throw in the back of the end zone from Chad Pennington in a shootout loss to the New England Patriots. ...

I had a chance to see Anthony Gargiulo (and a number of other Big Green alums) at the Princeton game Saturday and to be sure, it was an interesting weekend for the former Dartmouth defensive end. First he watched the Big Green finish the first full winless season in school history. Then the Calgary Stampeders, the team he played for last year and would have been on this fall if not for a horrible injury, won the Grey Cup as champions of the CFL.

Saturday Recap

Princeton Packet game story
Trenton Times game story
Trentonian game story

The Dartmouth Sports Information game story
The Princeton Sports Information game story

Dartmouth-Princeton box score

Brown 41, Columbia 10
Never would have thought the Lions would give up that many points, even to Brown

Harvard 10, Yale 0
Harvard holds Yale to five first downs and 90 total yards

Penn 23, Cornell 6
Penn wins with a defensive back playing QB and throwing for 22 yards

New Hampshire 28, Maine 24
UNH heads back to the NCAA playoffs

Colgate 28, Holy Cross 27
Colgate outrushes Holy Cross, 283-19

Feeling Right At Home

The forecast in Princeton today:

Partly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of snow showers. Brisk with highs in the upper 30s. Northwest winds 15 to 20 mph.

If may feel a little chilly in the stands, but after this week on the practice field in Hanover it will be almost balmy for the players.

Thanks to an Alert reader for pointing out something on the future Dartmouth football schedules that I had missed. Starting in 2011 the home-road rotation will see the venue of the Penn and Yale games switched. After the change, Penn will be a road game when Brown and Harvard are on the road. Yale when Columbia, Cornell and Princeton are road games.

To achieve the switch, Dartmouth will play host to Penn in 2011 and 2012 and travel to Yale both years.

That switch brings about two improvements:

• First, it softens the "even years" travel burden a bit. Instead of traveling to Columbia, Cornell, Princeton and Penn in the same year, it will be Columbia, Cornell, Princeton and Yale.
  

• Second, it's a plus from a marketing perspective to have the Yale and Harvard games at home in alternating years. While having two of the bigger draws in Hanover in even years can help attendance, having neither at Memorial Field has made the odd-numbered years less appealing on the schedule.

Speaking of which, the non-league opponents starting in 2012: TBA, TBA and TBA. But don't be surprised if there isn't a change before then he whispered quietly. ...

Jake Novak over at Roar Lions Roar in his weekly predictions about the Dartmouth-Princeton finale:

...(Y)ou have to lean towards the Tigers because they are at home and they have a great runner in Jordan Culbreath. But with 0-10 staring them in the face, the Big Green will give Princeton a fight.

Even ESPN's Chris Fowler has noticed the Ivy League could, that's could, finish in a four-way tie this year. He writes:

You probably have not spent much time pondering the convoluted scenarios in Chris Berman's beloved Ivy League. But it is possible that four teams could share the crown at 5-2.

The value of the UNH game to Dartmouth is dubious. If you believe The Sports Network, it's not so valuable for UNH either. Not this year, at least:

Many feel that even with a New Hampshire loss to the Black Bears, the Wildcats are already comfortably in the 16-team field. However, with a weak non- conference slate that includes wins over the likes of Dartmouth and fledgling FBS Army, the prospects of a playoff bid aren't written in stone with a New Hampshire.

My how times have changed. In a Boston Globe story about Harvard's 29-29 "win" over Yale in 1968, Crimson captain Vic Gatto is quoted saying:

"Dartmouth was the team we loved to hate back then. The Yale guys seemed so much like us."

The Globe also has a story about the Kennedys and Harvard football on this 45th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

Looking Ahead To Princeton

The Daily Dartmouth on Saturday's game at Princeton:

Point comparisons aside, Princeton offers what is perhaps the most realistic chance, statistically, for the Big Green to gain a win since its matchup with Columbia.

Of course, there's a lot at stake for both teams, as the Daily Princetonian writes:

The game marks the first chance Princeton has had at a five-year win streak over the Big Green since the Tigers dominated Dartmouth from 1949-1952, during which Princeton boasted a national championship in 1950 and the 1951 Heisman Trophy winner in Dick Kazmaier ’52.

But the Tigers’ opponent have history on the line too. One would have to go back 125 years to find Dartmouth’s last winless season. In 1883, the Big Green went 0-1 following a 5-3 loss against Williams.

The Harvard Crimson's weekly prognosticator has one final chance to take a shot at Dartmouth and makes the most of it:

I’d like to reassure you Dartmouth, by telling you that it’s almost over. But honestly, I’m starting to think you enjoy it.

Prediction: Princeton 28, Dartmouth 10

The official Dartmouth sports information preview is available here and a PDF of the full game notes can be downloaded here.

While there will likely be a great many empty seats at Princeton's fabulous stadium, there won't be any at The Game. From a Harvard release:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The 125th playing of “The Game” between Harvard and Yale on Saturday is officially sold out. Select student tickets remain and are being distributed on campus.

Given that Harvard Stadium is currently listed as having a seating capacity of 30,323, it's a pretty safe bet that there will be more people at The Game than at the other three Ivy League games combined.

Speaking of Harvard, add quarterback Chris Pizzotti to the Walter Payton Award list for the top offensive player in the FCS (I-AA). That means Dartmouth will have faced four players on the list at some point this season: Colgate's Jordan Scott, Yale's Mike McLeod, Holy Cross' Dominic Randolph and Pizzotti. And frankly, Brown's Michael Dougherty wouldn't look out of place on that list. Check out this promotional PDF Harvard put together for Pizzotti's candidacy.

Sign up for an account with Bleacherreport and you, too, can be a sportswriter. But just because someone has a forum doesn't mean you should believe what he/she writes without challenging it – present company included. That said, this Bleacherreport column on Columbia's football fortunes flat-out has it wrong.

If you haven't read the USA Today investigative report on the academic issues in major college football, it paints a very scary picture.

Thursday Thoughts

Most of the seating is in now for Dartmouth's Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park. Here are a few pictures taken Wednesday afternoon. (Click to supersize)



If I've got it right, the blacktop pad down the line in right is for one of the grandstands currently in the football end zone. Another set will be down the left field line (below).

One of the best things about visiting any ballpark is walking up the portal and getting that first glimpse of green. Here's one of the still unfinished entryways to the new Dartmouth facility.

---

Today's DDDD (Daily Dose Of Dartmouth Diss) comes from the Daily Pennsylvanian. In a story that takes a look around Ivy League football, the DP writes:

Mathematically, at least, three of this weekend's four Ivy matchups have title implications.

The one exception is Dartmouth at Princeton - but there's something even larger at stake.

The Big Green (0-9, 0-6 Ivy) are on the verge of their first winless campaign since 1883.

Ouch.

The Baltimore Sun has a Q&A with a high school senior who has visited Dartmouth, Colgate and Bucknell, among other schools. Graham Spicer is a placekicker who has gone 36-for-39 on PATs this year and 3-for-5 on field goals heading into their regional championship game. As it turns out Spicer scored a perfect 800 on his math SAT, but only after getting a 760 the first time because of "careless mistakes" and "a matter of losing concentation." That brought about this Q and this A:

Did your coach have a few words to say about the concentration lapse? I know football coaches stress the need for concentration on the football field.

Focus is really important in football, especially in kicking. You only have one chance to get it right. Taking a test is a little different. Both require focus, but if you lose your focus for a few minutes during a test, you can make it up - either during that same test, by going back over your answers if you have time, or by taking it again. Focus is more important, I think, in kicking. You can take the SATs as many times as you want.

Great answer that says something about football/sports reinforcing the importance of getting it right the first time.

---

The Dartmouth family has lost a wonderful and loyal friend with the passing of Alden "Whitey" Burnham at age 85. Whitey coached soccer, lacrosse and wrestling at Dartmouth, leading the Big Green to Ivy League titles in soccer in 1964 and lacrosse in 1964 and '65. He moved into athletic administration in 1969, retiring two decades and, oh, a million friends later.

Whitey was one of those people who brightened your day each time you saw him, and not just because he usually had something funny to say.

Whether it was an auction or a banquet, Whitey was always in demand to be the emcee. I remember one time when he was having trouble with a microphone and he told the audience, "I've been in front of more dead mic's than an Irish undertaker." I laughed the first time I heard him say it and I laughed just as hard the 10th time I heard him say it. And so did everybody else.

Whitey had a line for every occasion, including an end-of-season banquet for a team whose coach was in jeopardy. Introducing the coach, Whitey said of the fellow, "He doesn't know whether he found a rope or lost a horse."

Whitey Burnham was a proud graduate of Springfield College who remembered fondly – and is still fondly remembered – at the University of Delaware, where he began his coaching career. His list of honors and accomplishments (perhaps topped by membership in the National Soccer Hall of Fame) is almost as long as the list of people who called him a friend. I was proud to be one of them.

Burnham Field, the Dartmouth soccer facility, is named in his honor.

I clearly remember sitting in with YT when he took time out of his day to chair a mock interview committee we had for a young sports information intern who had nervously bombed his first real job interview. Whitey looked the intern in the eye and said to him kindly, "Always remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression."

That's something Whitey Burnham never had to worry about.

And oh yeah, the kid got the very next job he interviewed for.

Ouch

Before I zip out to practice (dressed warmly, you can be sure), this from Jake Novak's Roar Lions Roar blog, which has been favorable to Dartmouth football this difficult year:

16 years after the last 0-10 season in the Ivies, Dartmouth appears to be headed for the same fate at 0-9 and heading on the road to Princeton for the final game of the year.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about why I thought the Big Green would avoid the 0-10 mark. But now, I really don't see how they will avoid it.

There's more if you want to keep reading ...

Preposterously Entertaining

Now that's the kind of wording the folks who write ad copy for Broadway and the movies would kill for. It's straight out of the New York Times review for the new documentary "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29."

A Wall Street Journal story yesterday about the film started this way:

There were only 40,280 in the stands that day to witness one of college football's enduring classics, but that number has grown as the years have gone by.

"I swear," says former Yale quarterback Brian Dowling, "the number of people who have since told me they were there seems like a quarter of a million. We must have set an all-time record for attendance."

This is indeed a great time to be a fan of Ivy League football history with the new movie joining the thoroughly entertaining 8: Ivy League Football and America.

I haven't "reviewed" that movie yet because, frankly, I'm a little worn out between a long football season and a very, very busy fall of freelancing (a good thing, by the way). I'll get around to it, promise.

In the meantime, here are upcoming airings of 8: Ivy League Football and America, that I stumbled across on the RUWT Sports? (Are You Watching Things?) site:

• NESNHD Nov 23 5 PM
• NESN Nov 23 5 PM
• NESN Nov 25 2 PM
• NESNHD Nov 25 2 PM
• NESNHD Nov 27 4 PM
• NESN Nov 27 4 PM

First Look: Princeton

Princeton's preview of Saturday's game against Dartmouth has been posted. It includes a note that I hadn't realized:

Princeton’s four-game win streak over Dartmouth is the longest in this series for the Orange and Black since the 1949-1952 stretch.

Ouch.

The full Princeton game notes with stats and capsules of the Tigers' games can be found here.

I found this on the Tiger Blog:

The football season ends with the 88th meeting between Princeton and Dartmouth, and fans who bring a non-perishable food item to benefit the Mercer Street Friends Food Bank will get free admission to the game.

Assuming it means what it says, I suppose we'll be packing some cans in on Saturday. With cross country and high school football over, that certain Hanover High junior, that certain freshman and that certain blogger's extraordinarily understanding wife will be making the trip. We'll be heading down after school Friday.

The Columbia Spectator has a look at the final week of the Ivy League season and brings up the possibility of the four-way tie that an Alert reader might have been among the first to point out back on the Nov. 11 blog.

Today's trivia: Did you know that there are more meteorologists per capita in State College, Pa., than anywhere else in the world? It helps that the meteorology department at Penn State is world-class and that it spawned AccuWeather, which is headquartered in State College. And why do I bring that up, besides being Penn State Proud as they say? Because here's the AccuWeather forecast for Princeton Saturday:

High: 39 °F RealFeel®: 26 °F
Partly sunny, brisk and cold

The San Francisco 49ers website has a lengthy feature on Jeff Kemp '81, the former Dartmouth quarterback who filled in for Joe Montana during one season of his 11-year NFL career. There's some good stuff in the story.

The Yale Daily News cites statistics from the latest Chronicle of Higher Education in a story on compensation for Ivy League presidents. From the story:

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was the highest-paid Ivy League president in that year, receiving a compensation package worth a total of $1,411,894. Amy Guttman, president of the University of Pennsylvania, was second at $1,088,786, according to the Chronicle, which on Monday released its annual report on the compensation of university presidents.

And this ...

James Wright, the president of Dartmouth College, was again the lowest-paid Ivy League president with $569,761 in total compensation.

And finally, a quote passed along by that certain Hanover High junior, who has heard someone agonizing over the pain inflicted on him by a specter called The Pessimist:

"The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised."

-George F. Will

Ratings And Rankings

The latest Sagarin Rating is out and if you are a Dartmouth fan it's not pretty. Here's how Dartmouth and its opponents are rated, with a few other schools mixed in for perspective:

88 New Hampshire
89 Colorado State
90 Tennessee
91 Louisville
92 New Mexico
93 UCLA ...
120 Harvard
129 Holy Cross
143 Yale
145 Brown
147 Colgate
148 Tulane ...
156 Pennsylvania
181 Princeton
192 Cornell
201 Columbia
221 TennesseeTech
222 Duquesne
223 Dartmouth
224 Morehead State
225 NC Central
226 Georgetown
227 Marist
228 Davidson
229 Drake
230 Alabama A&M ...
245 Cambell

Sagarin suggests game predictions can be made by using the ratings (not rankings) for each team. He has Dartmouth rated at 35.08 this week and Princeton at 46.06. Assuming a 3-point home field advantage, he would have the Tigers favored by almost exactly two touchdowns.

How has Sagarin fared so far this fall? He's had every Dartmouth outcome correct, although the margin has been a litle greater than anticipated in all nine games.

The FCS Coaches Poll is in and the four Dartmouth opponents in the voting should surprise no one:

11. UNH
16. Harvard
22. Colgate
31. Holy Cross

The Sports Network Poll shows two more Dartmouth opponents collecting votes:

11. UNH
19. Harvard
21. Colgate
26. Holy Cross
40. Brown
45. Yale

Thanks to an Alert reader, we've been all over the possibility of a four-way tie in the Ivy League for a couple of weeks now. But it's late in the year and I'm getting lazy, so instead of sketching it out for you, I'm going to lift the full scenario from the Yale press notes. (C'mon, that's why they put them out there ;-)

For the first time in 52 seasons of Ivy League history, four teams could end up sharing the football championship. Harvard is tied for first with Brown (6-3, 5-1) while Yale and Penn (6-3, 4-2) are tied for second. Brown hosts Columbia (2-7, 2-4) while the Quakers head to Cornell (4-5, 2-4). Here's what can happen.

1. If Yale wins and Brown falls, the Elis, Crimson and Bears would be tied for first. Penn could share the crown with a win.

2. If Harvard and Brown win, both schools share the title at 6-1. Yale could share second if Penn loses.

3. If Yale and Brown win, the Bears have the outright title.

4. If Harvard wins and Brown goes down, the Cantabs have the outright championship.

On the non-conference front, New Hampshire can earn an NCAA playoff berth Saturday. From The Sports Network:

The winner between New Hampshire and Maine will capture the CAA North Division crown and can count on a call from the selection committee on Saturday.

If New Hampshire falls, they will have a long, sleepless night to see if they get into the field after losing two of their last three games. If Maine comes up short, they will be done with four losses.

It's rubbing salt in the wound a little but here's the AP lede on Maine's game last Saturday:

Jared Turcotte ran for 121 yards and three touchdowns as Maine rolled over Rhode Island, 37-7.

Turcotte, of course, was the Maine high schooler that wanted very much to come to Dartmouth. While you have to be disappointed the 6-foot-2, 232 redshirt freshman isn't in Hanover, he also expressed some interest in Brown, so Big Green fans should also feel relieved that at least they didn't see him first-hand on Saturday.

Also from TSN:

Holy Cross (7-3, 5-0) hosts Colgate (8-2, 4-0) on Saturday with the PL title and the auto bid on the line.

In futbol, the Dartmouth men's soccer team is a perfect illustration of how helpful playing a tough schedule can be. While the Big Green tied with Penn for the Ivy League title, Dartmouth has a bye in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament and then a home game next Tuesday. The Quakers, meanwhile, not only have to play in the opening round, but also travel. Harvard also made the field, meaning that while no football team will be going on, three Ivy League soccer teams will be playing on, including at least one that will at least be in the second round. Good for soccer, but something is wrong folks.

And finally, a story in the Brown Daily Herald caught my eye. The lede:

For the first time in recent memory, the majority of grades Brown students received last year were A's, according to data from the Office of Institutional Research.

The proportion of A's given increased to 50.6 percent in 2007-08, 1.1 percent higher than the previous year and a new peak for a figure that has risen significantly over the last decade. Since the 1994-95 academic year, the proportion of A's given has increased 15.8 percent.

Here's my question: Why didn't this happen when I was in college?

A couple more notes from the story:

In 2004, Princeton became the first Ivy to cap A's, setting a goal that only 35 percent be awarded.

And this, which makes a lot of sense to me (but then I wasn't one of those "A" people:

Valen Johnson, author of "Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education" and a professor at the University of Texas, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that a more talented student body shouldn't alter the grades students receive.

"Grades are a comparative measure of student performance among students at the same university," he wrote. "If a college admits particularly talented students, then a C must be defined relative to that university's student pool."

Abuhoff Top Rookie Again

Freshman corner/return specialist Shawn Abuhoff has been named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week. From the Ivy League release:

Abuhoff set a school record with 190 kickoff return yards, including the first touchdown return (94 yards) in seven years for Dartmouth in the Big Green’s 45-16 loss to Brown. His 94-yarder is the sixth longest kickoff return in school history as well. The long return came in the first quarter, the first Dartmouth touchdown in the opening quarter all season. With one punt for 11 yards, Abuhoff ended the game with 201 all-purpose yards. He also added three tackles (one solo) from his cornerback position.

Named to the honor roll were senior linebacker Andrew Dete, sophomore receiver Timmy McManus and freshman quarterback Conner Kempe.

It's Abuhoff's second such honor and the fourth time in nine weeks a Dartmouth player has taken home the award. Here's the 2008 list so far:

Sept. 22 — Foley Schmidt (Dartmouth)
Sept. 29 — Kalasi Huggins (Columbia)
Oct. 6 — Matthew Hanson (Harvard)
Oct. 13 — Adam Chrissis (Harvard)
Oct. 20 — Matt Hamscher (Penn)
Oct. 27 — Matthew Hanson (Harvard)
Nov. 3 — Shawn Abuhoff (Dartmouth)
Nov. 10 — Conner Kempe (Dartmouth)
Nov. 17 — Shawn Abuhoff (Dartmouth)

Brown Revisited

Not much new in the Daily Dartmouth look back Saturday's loss to Brown. ... The Brown Daily Herald offers this quote from defensive back Nkosi Still:

"Our defensive line over-powered their offensive line, thus putting great pressure on their QB, so the ball was coming out pretty fast."

Recruiting news and speculation will start to appear more frequently in the media in coming days but there's already an interesting note in the Benton County Daily Record. "Northwest Arkansas' News Source," reports that Malachi Blankenship, 6-foot-1, 185 quarterback from a "home-schooled" football team in Oklahoma, has been "offered by Dartmouth and is also being looked at by Air Force and Wofford."

Blankenship threw for almost 3,500 yards and 33 touchdowns this fall for the NOAH (Northeast Oklahoma Association of Homeschools) Jaguars. You can learn more about the team and hear from the QB in a video clip on this page prior to their appearance in the mythical "home school national championship" game. ... The Tulsa World reports that Blankenship completed 23-of-30 passes for 274 yards and a TD in that game, a 41-34 win over Dallas HSAA. (The story is in the fourth column from the left, under the photo.)

The Dartmouth Review has a sweet anecdote about the Dartmouth football team and college president John Sloan Dickey from the fall of 1982. From the column:

... (I)n 1982, after suffering a debilitating stroke that impaired his ability to communicate in the normal manner of speaking and writing, a retired Dickey attended an early-fall football practice at Dartmouth College with then-president David McLaughlin. At the end of practice, the entire team approached Dickey, who sat in his wheelchair, with a green blanket covering his lap. The team captain told the two presidents that he wanted to present them with a gift. At that point, the football team began singing “Men of Dartmouth.” McLaughlin recalls, “Mr. Dickey looked at me accusingly, but as the team broke into the singing of ‘Men of Dartmouth,’ he reached up, removed the well-used 1929 reunion cap that he was wearing, and with tears in his eyes, placed it over his heart.”

In the same way that children can be remarkably perceptive and honest, young adults and college students can intuitively know the makings of a good leader. The members of the football team, on that fall day in 1982, certainly knew a good leader when they saw him, and paid tribute accordingly.

And finally, I've received a number of emails and heard a few comments after last week running more pictures of Dartmouth's new baseball field along with this thought about the press box: "I'm no architect, but if I'm going to be honest, I'd have to say it's the only disappointment I have so far with the gorgeous park." While that was intended to be my opinion and my opinion only, I've been reminded that work around the grandstand is not yet done and that I may well feel differently when it is completed.

To give you an idea of how it is supposed to look when it is done, here's the artist's rendition from the outside and from the field (click to supersize):

Four-Way Tie Not Probable ... But More Probable

A four-way tie for the Ivy League title remains a possibility with one week remaining. Given resurgent Columbia's strong showing against Cornell, another solid defensive effort by Yale and Harvard's struggles against Penn, it could happen. Probably won't but could.

The standings:
Brown 5-1
Harvard 5-1
Penn 4-2
Yale 4-2
Princeton 2-4
Columbia 2-4
Cornell 2-4
Dartmouth 0-6

Here's what needs to happen:
Columbia has to beat Brown
Yale has to beat Harvard
Penn has to beat Cornell

If that happens Brown, Harvard, Penn and Yale would share the title at 5-2.

The Providence Journal didn't send anyone to Hanover for a game involving a first-place team, a comment about the current state of newspapers as well as Ivy League football. Here's what the Brown sports information office sent along.

Saturday's Roundup
Harvard 24, Penn 21
Penn's late-season hero at QB runs for 174 yards but is intercepted in the end zone on potential winning drive at the end

Columbia 17, Cornell 7
Big Red road woes continue

Yale 14, Princeton 0
Terrific defense and struggling offense a bad mixture for Princeton

New Hampshire 52, Massachusetts 21
UNH win is less of a surprise than the score

Holy Cross 27, Lafayette 26
Holy Cross and Colgate (off this week) to play for the Patriot title

Dave Coulson of The Sports Network covered the Penn-Harvard showdown Saturday. Although his story was a "gamer," the Ivy League's prohibition against the playoffs got these mentions:

"Harvard sponsors 43 sports and the athletes get to play for national championships in 42 of them," said Jay Mills, the former Crimson offensive coordinator and now the head coach at Charleston Southern. "It's really a shame that they don't get to compete for a national championship in football."

And ...

Obviously, this issue isn't about the balance between athletics and academics.

One Harvard official said on Saturday: "The college hockey season seems like it lasts for eight months. You would think they could let the football team play for a few extra weeks."

It Was A Record-Setting Day

In the unlikely event that last week's loss to Cornell wasn't enough of a downer for you, a story in the Ithaca Journal brings up a fact that I either missed or successfully put out of my mind. By completing 25 of his 30 pass attempts against Dartmouth, Big Red quarterback Nathan Ford set the school record for passing efficiency in a game at 83.3 percent. There's an eerie and unfortunate symmetry in Ford's game. Today Dartmouth faces Brown quarterback Michael Dougherty, who last year set his school's completion percentage record against the Big Green (82 percent) when he hit on 41-of-50 attempts.

Jake Novak over at Roar Lions Roar seems most of the season to have had faith that Dartmouth was better than the record would indicate. But he's not about to pick the Big Green in this afternon's game against the Ivy League tri-leaders from Providence. Jake writes:

Dartmouth is just too weak at too many key positions to win this game. The Big Green's best chance to avoid the dreaded 0-10 will be next week against Princeton.

The College Sporting News site handicaps the Ivy League race with two games remaining.

Someone at CondeNast Portfolio.com knows college nicknames. A story that begins this way, Add Dartmouth College to the growing list of institutions hammered by the economic slump, is headlined Big Green downsizes. The story continues:

Of course, there is some small irony in that the government official charged with tackling with the economic crisis is a Dartmouth alum: Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

Paulson was an All-East offensive tackle for the Dartmouth football team, where he earned the nickname "Hammering Hank." His possible successor at Treasury, Timothy Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is also a Dartmouth graduate, as is the C.E.O. of one of the biggest companies to be buffeted by the crisis, Jeff Immelt of General Electric.

Doesn't mention that Jeff Immelt was a Big Green lineman like Paulson.

One Project Wrapping Up, One On Hold

Progress continues on Dartmouth's new baseball facility. The prefab press box was hoisted into place several days ago. I'm no architect, but if I'm going to be honest, I'd have to say it's the only disappointment I have so far with the gorgeous park. (Click to supersize photos)

Speaking of facilities, the new West Stands at Memorial Field are on temporary hold. Demolition had been set to begin on Monday, but the current economic climate has forced the college's hand. A letter to the "Members of the Dartmouth Community" from Provost Barry Scherr and Adam Keller, Executive Vice President, Finance and Administration included this:

We will delay some projects for two to six weeks in order to conduct further analysis to assess the feasibility of moving forward: the Visual Arts Center, the renovation of the West Stands at Memorial Field and Buchanan Hall.

The Daily Dartmouth has a story here. There's also a podcast in which, "Keller explains that College’s endowment is being impacted by the country’s financial crisis. Keller talks about planning underway to trim the College’s budget."

Now on to some football. The Daily Dartmouth takes an optimistic look at Saturday's game against a talented Brown team. From the story in The D:

The Big Green seems tailored to beat Brown: A strong pass defense and an improving offense could force the Bears to rely on their weak running to win.

That's a notion they might debate down at Brown, so it's time to check out what the Brown Daily Herald has to say about the game. Let's see. Here's a story where Brown columnist picks NFL games. There's a story about last weekend's women's rugby championships and another about field hockey honors. And one about winter sports heating up. Football? Um, nothing. Nada. Zilch.

When it comes to Saturday's game, who are you going to believe, the Providence Journal or the Harvard Crimson? The ProJo writes:

Danger signs should be posted along Interstates 95, 93 and 89 between Providence and Hanover, N.H., and all over the Dartmouth campus, to catch the Brown football team’s attention.

The Crimson, which seems to be having a lot of fun at Dartmouth's expense this fall, takes the opposite point of view, writing (italics are mine):

In the thick of a heated three-way battle for the Ivy League championship, the Bears get to sharpen their claws against Dartmouth.

Normally columnists will warn about “trap games” in which good teams mail it in against seemingly overmatched opponents, which in turn take advantage of this sluggishness and pull off an upset.

Don’t worry Brown, it’s alright (sic). Mail it in. You could actively try to lose this game and it wouldn’t matter.

Ouch.

The Boston Globe has an interesting story about Holy Cross quarterback Dominic Randolph. I'd forgotten this, but the heralded QB is a perfect illustration of how unpredictable the recruiting process can be. The story notes:

Randolph started just two games at quarterback in high school, instead playing mostly wide receiver. Fast forward, and Randolph is again a candidate for the Walter Payton Award (given to the best offensive player in the FCS).

And finally, Newsday reports on the shortest parade of the year in New York City, a march down six blocks of 5th avenue after the Cornell-Columbia football game. From the story:

(The) Parade may last only 12 minutes, but it'll feature Cornell's Big Red Marching Band, cheerleaders and Gov. David Paterson as grand marshal.

Countdown To Brown

The game notes prepared by Brown's sports information office are up. Find them here. A quick perusal of the notes came up with a few scary numbers on Bear quarterback Michael Dougherty. He is currently:

• 8th in the nation in completions
• 11th in passing yards
• 13th total offense

The notes remind us that against Dartmouth last year he set a school record by hitting 82 percent of his passes on 41-of-50 passing for 403 yards. Of course, Big Green quarterback Tom Bennewitz also had a big day against the Bears, completing 28-of-38 throws for 312 yards. Brown won the shootout, 56-35.

The official Dartmouth sports information preview can be accessed here. ... For the full Dartmouth game notes, click here.

A headline in the Sacramento Bee:

Oh, darn – basketball star settles for UCLA
LANE WAS DUMPED BY DARTMOUTH, HIS PARENTS' SCHOOL, BUT HE DIDN'T CARE

This one should get you thinking about where the Ivy League is today.

Steve Lane '83, who played one year of football at Dartmouth, has a 6-foot-10, 205-pound son named Brendan who, given his size, made a pretty good choice pursuing basketball.

As the Bee story tells it, Steve and wife Leila, also a Dartmouth grad, "figured that having a son who is a good student and one of the top high school basketball prospects in the country might spark some interest from their alma mater, especially for a program that made its last NCAA basketball postseason appearance in 1959."

Lane told the paper: "That was kind of a funny deal. They basically sent him a rejection letter: Go to a prep school and try again next year."

Here's the next line from the story: "Dartmouth's loss is UCLA's gain."

I don't share the story to suggest in any way that Dartmouth made a mistake. Perhaps the younger Lane wasn't academically inadmissible. Perhaps the Dartmouth coaches knew it would be futile to put too much effort into recruiting a kid who would sign with UCLA.

No, I include the story for another reason. This single sentence from the story:

Steve Lane admits that he knew by the end of his son's freshman season that Brendan might be too good for the Ivy League.

While you think about what that means, the forecast for Saturday: a balmy 54 degrees at kickoff with showers throughout.

Recruiting Target From A Familiar School

Brophy Prep in Phoenix has been very kind to Dartmouth in recent years and the Arizona powerhouse could end up sending still another player this way.

From Scout.com:

Defensive end Seyi Adebayo has two Ivy League offers. Adebayo (6-3 215) tells us via text message that Columbia and Dartmouth have extended offers.

The recruiting service lists Adebayo at 6-2.5, 212 pounds. It has his 40-yard dash time at 5.43, which is curious. You can see video of him in action here.

The hits just keep on coming. When the Columbia Spectator calls you "hapless," it's a serious ouch. From today's Spec:

In Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell found that the most effective remedy for a four-game losing streak was a matchup against Dartmouth, the Ivy League cellar-dweller. The Big Red blew out its hapless opponent by a final score of 37-14, scoring the first 30 points in a game that was never seriously contested.

From a Sports Network look at the Ivy League race:

It isn't often that Harvard and Penn root for Yale, but that is exactly what those two Ivy League teams were doing on Saturday when the Bulldogs traveled to first-place Brown.

Knowing that Brown only had to beat Columbia and Dartmouth - teams with just one combined win - in the final two weeks to wrap up the Ivy League crown, almost everyone knew that the last real chance to stop the Bears belonged to Yale.

West Stands Project To Begin Monday

Thanks to a regular reader for sharing a link to the Dartmouth Office of Planning, Design & Construction information page on the $12,200,000 Memorial Stadium (sic) and West Stands Renovation, which is slated to begin this Monday! The page includes a link to a Nov. 3 construction update with these key dates:

Construction begins Nov. 17
Demolition – November-January
Foundation Excavation – January-April
Site Utilities – December-March
Foundation Construction – February-April
Installation Precast Stadium – April-June
Pressbox Construction – June-August
Restroom Construction – June-August

The historic brick front of the grandstand will remain as is. For renditions of what the stands will look like, click here.

The page lists the new seating capacity for the home stands as 4,736. With the renovated visiting stands listed as seating 3,260, the permanent seating at Memorial Field next fall will be 7,996. With the portable bleachers in the end zone seating capacity will be in five figures again.

The one that got away ...

Reading about Maine's win over Massachusetts Saturday, a familiar name turned up. Jared Turcotte is the 6-foot-2, 232-pound running back from Lewiston, Maine, who had his sights set on Dartmouth several years ago (although he also had some interest in Brown). Instead, he ended up at Maine and is a redshirt freshman for the nationally ranked team now.

Against UMass Saturday, Turcotte led the Black Bears with 84 yards rushing on 13 carries. (story) Getting his chance because of injuries, Turcotte has shown why he was so highly regarded coming out of high school, running 70 times for 461 yards (second on the team), averaging a whopping 6.6 yards per carry (first) and rushing for four touchdowns (t-first). As big as he is, he has broken a 71-yard touchdown run. He's also first on the team with 21 catches for 237 yards.

Nathan Ford, the Cornell quarterback who hit a 96-yard TD pass against the Big Green last Saturday, had no idea his name was going to come up in an episode of the TV show The Office. The Cornell Sun has a Q&A with his reaction.

The Gridiron Power Index – an unofficial BCS-type measurement of teams in the former I-AA – is out, and here's where Dartmouth and its opponents sit:

11. New Hampshire (11.13)
19. Harvard (19.75)
29. Colgate (27.75)
32. Holy Cross (30.75)
41. Brown (34.75)
48T. Yale (40.00)
50. Grambling (40.50)
67. Princeton (51.38)
70T. Cornell (52.88)
93. Columbia (68.38)
106. Dartmouth (75.50)

In case you are curious ...
107. Alabama State 2-7
108. NC Central 2-7
109. Drake 5-4
110. Marist 3-7
111. Alcorn State 2-8
112. NC A&T 3-8
113. Morehead St. 4-6
114. Texas Southern 4-6
115. Indiana State 0-10
116. Davidson 3-6
117. (t) Mississippi Valley State 3-6
117. (t) Howard 1-8
119. Savanah State 4-6
120. Wagner 3-7
121. Arkansas Pine Bluff 1-9
122. Iona 3-7
123. St. Francis (Pa) 0-9
124. Valparaiso 2-7
125. Campbell 1-8

Ivy Race Gets Interesting

Picked to finish near the bottom of the Ivy League standings in 1995, the Dartmouth football team lost its opener to Penn and then dropped to 0-2 in the Ivies with a loss to Cornell. But after the Big Green rebounded with a couple of wins over Yale and Harvard I took a look at the schedule and saw something interesting. If a few games went the way they reasonably could be expected to go and Dartmouth won out, there would be the first four-way tie for the Ivy League title in school history with the Big Green, Penn, Cornell and Princeton sharing the title at 5-2.

I wrote the story for my paper and was amazed when it came within seconds of happening.

After all the other games fell exactly the way they had to, Dartmouth had Princeton on the ropes on the final Saturday in Hanover with the four-way tie in the offing. Until, that is, Princeton drove the length of the field and Alex Sierk kicked an 18-yard field goal with four seconds remaining to tie the game, 10-10, and give the Tigers the outright Ivy League championship. (This was before the overtime rule was instituted.)

The final 1995 standings:
1. Princeton 5-1-1
2. (t) Cornell 5-2
2. (t) Penn 5-2
4. Dartmouth 4-2-1
5. Columbia 3-4
6. (t) Brown 2-5
6. (t) Yale 2-5
8. Harvard 1-6

Why do I bring that up this year? There's an outside chance, once again, for a four-way tie. It doesn't involve Dartmouth, of course, except in an auxiliary role. An Alert reader (pun intended) sent along this scenario:

THIS WEEK
Yale has to beat Princeton
That would make Yale 4-2.
Harvard has to beat Penn
That would make Harvard 5-1 and Penn 4-2.

NEXT WEEK
Yale has to beat Harvard
That would make Yale 5-2 and Harvard 5-2.
Penn has to beat Cornell
That would make Penn 5-2

With three teams at 5-2, the fly in the ointment is Brown. To make it a four-way tie, the Bears would have to lose one of their final two games, against Dartmouth Saturday or at home next week against Columbia.

Could it play out this way? The only serious upset it would take involves Brown.

Not everyone agrees. The Daily Pensylvanian calls it a "three-horse race," in a story that includes this:

The Bears have the cushiest remaining schedule, as they take on Ancient Eight bottom-feeders Dartmouth and Columbia to close out their 2008 slate.

Ouch.

The weekly Ivy League football preview is out (link). It includes a scary note I knew but had managed to not think about, and a promising note about the recent series with Brown. First, the scary:

Dartmouth has lost 10 straight games, equaling the longest skid in school history. The Big Green dropped 10 consecutive contests in the 1998-99 seasons (last five of 1998 and first five of 1999).

And then the promising:

The Big Green has won the last two meetings at Memorial Stadium (sic).

The Brown Daily Herald has a story up about the Bears' loss at Yale. It concludes this way:

The team will now turn its attention to Dartmouth (0-8, 0-5 Ivy), who it will face on the road next week, before returning home for the final game of the season against Columbia (1-7, 1-4 Ivy).

With wins over those two teams, the two weakest teams in the Ivy League, the Bears can still guarantee at least a share of the Ivy League title.

"The most important thing these last two weeks is going to be for us to keep our heads up," (tailback Dereck) Knight wrote. "We have no power over what happens in other games, but we can make sure we finish the season 2-0, and that will guarantee us first place in the league."

The weekly polls are up. The Sports Network Poll has Dartmouth opponents ranked this way:

13. UNH
19. Harvard
23. Colgate
30. Holy Cross
44. Penn

The FCS Coaches Poll has them this way:

12. UNH
19. Harvard
24. Colgate
32. Holy Cross

Away from the sports pages, yesterday's Daily Dartmouth had a story about the Dartmouth endowment falling 6 percent ($220 million) in the first quarter of the fiscal year. From the story:

In order to maintain a balanced budget, the College will not lean on large-scale tuition increases and will not try to identify new revenue sources but will instead focus on reducing expenses, (Dartmouth President James) Wright said in an interview with The Dartmouth. The Board will hold on to its core values, although it recognizes the need for a balanced budget in the long run.

“If our budget is out of balance slightly for a year, that is acceptable, but it cannot be out of balance over any period of time,” he said.

Financial aid, which the Board identified as a “core value of the College,” will not be affected by budget cuts, (Ed Haldeman ‘70, chairman of the Board of Trustees) said.

The New York Times has a piece about the financial crisis and colleges (with several references to Brown) that includes this from Douglas Bennett, president of Indiana's Earlham College:

“If you are truly need-blind, you can go broke,” Mr. Bennett said bluntly during a telephone interview. “It is like writing a blank check to the world.”

And finally, I don't think I mentioned this earlier but that certain Hanover High junior cross country runner came home from the team awards dinner with a nice plaque as the team's Rookie of the Year. Now it's on to indoor track. I'm hoping that a certain HHS freshman will join his sister on the distance team because I think he can be pretty good.

Kempe, Dete, McManus Honored By Ivy League

Freshman quarterback Conner Kempe is the Ivy League rookie of the week after throwing for 256 yards in his first collegiate start. Senior linebacker Andrew Dete (11 tackles) and sophomore wide receiver Timmy McManus (10 catches, 122 yards) have been named to the Ivy League honor roll.

The Agony Of Reading About It

I'm hesitant to criticize Ivy League newspapers for the same reason that I don't think it's right to point fingers at Ivy League football players who play for the love of the game. That said, an editor at the Daily Dartmouth might have suggested a different lede to today's game story than the one that appeared in the paper:

The Big Green kept its losing streak alive on Saturday against Cornell, losing 37-14 in a blowout in Ithaca, N.Y.

I'm sure it wasn't intended that way, but it almost has that, "pulled out a loss," feel to it. (I've seen that, thankfully not in The D.)

And while I think it's important for a school paper to cover the variety of sports, I must admit to surprise that when a Brown football team bidding for its first undefeated Ivy League season is upset at Yale to slip into a tie for the conference lead, the Daily Herald has stories about field hockey, men's soccer, volleyball and women's ice hockey with nary a word about football. It's probably coming tomorrow, but yikes.

A Cornell Sun story about Dartmouth-Cornell takes a look at the Big Green's decision to abandon the run and starts this way:

When (Coach Buddy) Teevens handed the reigns to freshman quarterback Conner Kempe, he was giving him more than just his first collegiate start, Teevens was giving Kempe the opportunity to be Colt Brennan for a day.

The Yale Daily News has a story abut the Bulldogs' 13-3 win over Brown. That Yale beat Dartmouth's next opponent wasn't nearly as much of a surprise as the fact that the high-flying Bear offense was grounded. From the story:

There’s no need to worry about keeping up with a high-powered offense if you boast one of the nation’s best defenses — and Yale’s crucial victory over Brown on Saturday proved yet again that defense is the name of the game on the gridiron.

The Daily Dartmouth has a story about two-sport athletes at the college. One who is mentioned and quoted is lacrosse standout Jimmy Mullen, who is playing football for the first time since high school as a Big Green senior. The paper quotes Mullen and then adds this interesting tidbit:

Mullen did not play in Saturday’s game against Cornell, because he was busy completing medical school interviews, but plans to join the team for the remainder of the season.

The new Sagarin ratings are out and they are not pretty. Here's how Dartmouth and its opponents are ranked this week:

104 New Hampshire
135 Harvard
150 Colgate
152 Holy Cross
156 Brown
162 Pennsylvania
165 Yale
181 Princeton
189 Cornell
210 Columbia
226 Dartmouth

Sagarin has Dartmouth with 29.29 rating points and Brown with 51.47. Giving Dartmouth the suggested three points, Sagarin favors the Bears by about 19 points this week. He had Cornell by 17 last week and the Big Red won by 23. Here's how Sagarin's predictions have fared this fall:

Sagarin: Cornell by 17
Result: Cornell by 23

Sagarin: Harvard by 22
Result: Harvard by 28

Sagarin: Columbia by 5
Result: Columbia by 8

Sagarin: Holy Cross by 14
Result: Holy Cross by 18

Sagarin: Yale by 11
Result: Yale by 27

Sagarin: Penn by 12
Result: Penn by 13

Sagarin: UNH by 18
Result: UNH by 36