Green Grad Gets Shot On Detroit Staff

Sunday's Boston Globe had a lengthy story about the new head coach of the Detroit Lions, a former Bill Belichick assistant named Jim Schwartz. Dig deep into the story and there's this nugget about one of Schwartz' new assistants in the Motor City:

First-year Lions coach Jim Schwartz on why Hudson (Mass.) native Matt Burke was his choice to be linebackers coach: "Like the rest of us in coaching, he was willing to make sacrifices in order to coach. When you have a degree from Dartmouth, you have other paths in life that you can walk, but you choose to make football your profession, and that's why we brought him to Tennessee. He was my right-hand man at Tennessee, worked with me down there for five years. The players had a lot of confidence in him. He grew in that job. This is a chance he has earned."

Burke '98, had been a defensive assistant/quality control coach with the Tennessee Titans. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound defensive back was a Dartmouth classmate of Lloyd Lee, the former linebackers coach for the Chicago Bears who was reported to have interviewed for a position with the Lions.

Does the name Budd Schulberg ring a bell? In its section listing "Prominent Dartmouth Living Alumni," the Dartmouth football media guide will tell you that Schulberg '36 is an "author and Oscar Award-winning screenwriter." Given that this past weekend was Winter Carnival, a story about the 94-year-old Schulberg in The Independent is particularly timely. From that story:

As a young screenwriter, Schulberg collaborated with F Scott Fitzgerald. "Around 1939 I was working on a script called Winter Carnival. It was set in Dartmouth, New Hampshire, where I went to college," Schulberg says. "The studio announced they'd assigned another writer to work with me. When I asked who, they said: 'F Scott Fitzgerald.' I said: 'He's dead, isn't he?' They said: 'No. He's in the next room, reading your treatment.' I went in. He said: 'I'm afraid I don't think this is very good.' I said: 'I don't either.' So we went to lunch."

Today's Daily Dartmouth has a story about the Big Green cheerleading squad, which has had more of a presence at basketball games this winter than in quite a few years.

And finally, posting may be a bit spotty this week. With school out, we're hitting the road over the next few days with that certain Hanover High School junior as we check out colleges and meet a few cross country/track coaches. Incidentally, we'll be starting our tour in the same place Dartmouth football has kicked off even-year seasons for the past decade or so. The irony, of course, is that she could end up going to school there right about the same time the Big Green stops playing there.