The Numbers Please

Ivy League home attendance numbers this fall with national ranking (out of 117), average and percentage of capacity as reported this week by the NCAA:

• 8. Harvard 17,360 (56.19)
• 21. Penn 11,284 (21.29)
• 25. Yale 11,071 (17.23)
• 38. Princeton 9,384 (31.28)
• 56. Brown 7,089 (35.44)
• 57. Cornell 7,075 (27.64)
• 76. Dartmouth 5,136 (34.24*)
• 93. Columbia 3,827 (22.51)

* Dartmouth's attendance was listed in the NCAA statistics as 25.16 percent of capacity. The NCAA did not use Memorial Field's current seating capacity of 15,000 in its calculations.

Dartmouth's Non-League Opponents:

• 46. Holy Cross 8,431 (35.88)
• 50. New Hampshire 8,000 (123.08)
• 71. Colgate 5,473 (53.54)

Leading the nation in overall attendance at the FCS level was Appalachian State, which drew an average of 25,161, listed as 151.12 percent of capacity. Montan (23,923) and Delaware (21,609) rounded out the top three. ... At the other end of the spectrum, drawing worse than any school in the country was St. Francis (Pa.), which averaged 1,0006, listed as 29.15 percent of capacity.

Former Dartmouth football co-captain Mike Rabil gets a mention in this San Jose Mercury News story about his lacrosse-playing brother Paul, who was honored as the nation's outstanding midfielder last spring as a Johns Hopkins senior. The younger Rabil is now a member of the San Jose Stealth of the National Lacrosse League. This excerpt suggests he has the same sense of humor as his bigger brother:

Although soft-spoken, Rabil carries a big shtick.

For their final project, the lacrosse players performed the famous Abbott and Costello routine, "Who's on First?" They earned ample applause and an A.

Now they hope their act plays well in San Jose where the Stealth has drafted a Rabil rouser.

The New York Observer writes about a "silver-haired, 6-foot-3 former West Point running back," in a story headlined The Wild Purple Heart of Chuck Pfeifer. From the story:

Chuck was shipped off to military prep school, then Dartmouth. The university gave him the boot after a year for having “too much testosterone” (specifically, putting an ax through his door) and so he joined the army, which was a route by which a rogue student could be readmitted into the Ivy League. His prowess on the football field helped him secure a spot at West Point.

Today's Daily Dartmouth has a story about the college endowment that begins this way:

Dartmouth’s reported endowment loss of six percent is lower than that reported by many of its peer institutions, some of which posted deficits as high as 25 percent.
Dartmouth has lost a smaller percentage of its endowment than both Harvard University, which announced on Dec. 1 that its endowment had dropped 22 percent in four months, and Yale University, which reported on Dec. 16 that its endowment had decreased by 25 percent since June.

The Daily D reports the college has found a unique way to kill two birds with one stone, offering PE credit for working on the annual snow sculpture. Students get credit and the annual sculpture in the middle of the green gets some much-needed help.

And finally, the three-ring circus that is the 40th annual Dartmouth Relays featuring begins today. In addition to masters, college and open events, there will be high schoolers from eight states and Canada descending on Leverone Field House. Among them will be that certain Hanover High School junior who will run a leg on an inexperienced sprint medley tonight, run the mile Saturday morning, and handle the third leg on a pretty good 4x400 relay Saturday night.