Monday, March 23, 2009

21 Days And Counting ...

Dartmouth's spring football practice is slated to begin three weeks from today, April 13. Hopefully it will be a tad warmer than it was this morning. (It was 11.8 degrees when I headed out to get the morning newspaper.)

The top weekend headline for Dartmouth sports would be the women's basketball team dropping an 82-53 decision at Maryland before a crowd of 10,847 in the NCAA tournament. The feeling here is still that the Big Green could have been competitive with a lot of teams in the tournament, but getting stuck with a 16 seed condemned the Ivy Leaguers to one of the superpowers of the women's game on its home court, a bad combination. Find the understandably Marylandcentric Washington Post game story (written by a Dartmouth alum) here.

Big-time college coaches are awfully good at finding a way to get what they want without technically breaking rules and so it is with several SEC football coaches according to the Birmingham News. From the story:
The position of "graduate assistant" was created for young coaches just starting out, kind of like an internship. It's not supposed to be for veteran college coaches with years of experience who find themselves temporarily unemployed.
But that's exactly how it is being used at a few schools. The former Virginia offensive coordinator has been brought on as a graduate assistant at Alabama and the former Minnesota and Syracuse offensive coordinator has the same role at Tennessee. Also from the story:
And there are concerns that the proliferation of non-coaching staff positions with titles like "director of operations" or "director of player development" are little more than ways of getting around the NCAA limit of nine assistant football coaches per staff.
Speaking of big-time college football, you may have been reading in the past couple of weeks that Florida State may have to relinquish a number of football victories because of "major violations." An ESPN.com story points out that forfeiting wins could end the race between FSU coach Bobby Bowden and Penn State's Joe Paterno "for the most victories in the history of major college football ... ."

Now, understand that I'm a Penn Stater so maybe I'm seeing things through JoePa's Coke-bottle glasses. But I went back to Bowden's record at Samford, where he earned 31 of his 382 wins, and found myself scratching my head. While I find it hard to reconcile "major college football" with wins over Maryville, Sewanee, Millsaps and Rhodes, I'll reluctantly concede that those games have to be counted because there weren't NCAA divisions per se at the time. But Bowden's record also includes wins over the Tennessee Tech Freshmen, Gordon Junior College and the Memphis (Millington) Naval Air Station.

For grins, here are the wins posted by the two coaching legends in their first three seasons. Interestingly, they both won 24 games in that span:



BOWDEN

1959
1. Samford 14 – at Maryville 0
2. Samford 20 – at Sewanee 0
3. Samford 34 – Tennessee Tech Freshman 0
4. Samford 26 – Millsaps 0
5. Samford 14 – at Tennessee-Martin 0
6. Samford 16 – Rhoads 0
7. Samford 24 – West Alabama 0
8. Samford 20 – at Troy 19
9. Samford 52 – at Gordon Junior College 20

1960
10. Samford 14 – Maryville 0
11. Samford 56 – Sewanee 0
12. Samford 41 – at Georgetown (KY) 0
13. Samford 42 – at Millsaps 0
14. Samford 28 – Delta State 14
15. Samford 22 – at West Alabama 6
16. Samford 26 – at Rhodes 0
17. Samford 48 – at Troy 14

1961
18. Samford 60 – at Memphis NAS 0
19. Samford 64 – Georgetown (KY) 6
20. Samford 16 – at Wofford 13
21. Samford 20 – Delta State 14
22. Samford 18 – at Carson-Newman 7
23. Samford 34 – Rhodes 0
24. Samford 80 – at Troy 0


PATERNO
1966
1. Penn State 15 – Maryland 7
2. Penn State 30 – Boston College 21
3. Penn State 38 – at West Virginia 6
4. Penn State 33 – California 15
5. Penn State 48 – Pitt 24

1967
6. Penn State 17 – at Miami 8
7. Penn State 50 – at Boston College 28
8. Penn State 21 – West Virginia 14
9. Penn State 29 – at Syracuse 20
10. Penn State 38 – at Maryland 3
11. Penn State 13 – NC State 8
12. Penn State 35 – Ohio 14
13. Penn State 42 – Pitt 6

1968
14. Penn State 31 – Navy 6
15. Penn State 25 – Kansas State 9
16. Penn State 31 – at West Virginia 20
17. Penn State 21 – at UCLA 6
18. Penn State 29 – at Boston College 0
19. Penn State 28 – Army 24
20. Penn State 22 – Miami 7
21. Penn State 57 – Maryland 13
22. Penn State 65 – Pitt 9
23. Penn State 30 – Syracuse 12
24. Penn State 15 – Kansas 14 (Orange Bowl)


Find Paterno's game-by-game record here and Bowden's here.

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