Getting In The Swing Of Spring

How's your bracket looking?

While basketball is in full swing, football – the spring variety at least – is picking up among Dartmouth's opponents. Penn is already on the field (click for all-access video report), Holy Cross got going last night (story), Brown will kick off two weeks from today (story) and Yale will be on the field two weeks from Monday (spring schedule). ... Last I heard, Dartmouth was expected to start April 13, but I'm still awaiting confirmation on that.

Find the Penn spring prospectus here, and the Holy Cross prospectus here.

Former Dartmouth football player Harry Wilson's son Russell, a quarterback and baseball player at North Carolina State, is back in the news as he fights his way back from a knee injury last fall and tries to win back his job. SI.com has a story about Russell that includes this:

The firmness of his handshake, the look in his eye and the tone in his voice suggest he could, after he turns 35 in 2023, decide to run for president. For Wilson, capturing the electorate would appear as effortless as capturing first-team All-ACC last year. After meeting him, it makes perfect sense that young Russell, barely out of sixth grade, took the wheel after his father -- who also suffers from extreme complications from diabetes -- lost consciousness while driving to a baseball tournament. Russell got his father to the hospital and disobeyed dad's orders that he leave and play in the tournament.

Wow.

Harry Wilson '77, has a lot of reasons to be proud. Consider this from the story:

Harrison, an attorney, hasn't been able to work since the stroke. Wilson's mother, Tammy, busts her hump as a manager at a health insurance company, but mom and dad still must care for kid sister Anna, an 11-year-old softball/basketball star who may continue the Wilson two-sport legacy. Though he hasn't played the sport full-time for two years, Wilson could be a hot commodity when he's eligible for the baseball draft in June 2010. Though his parents have told him to only worry about what's best for him, he sure wouldn't mind helping them.

"Having that basis financially definitely helps, especially in my family right now," Wilson says. "That's what I have in the back of my head. My dad is sick. My mom is working hard. And they've got my little sister. I want to help them out the best I can."

Here's something I learned watching the NCAA Tournament that I did not know before. UT-Chattanooga found a novel way to deal with the Moccasin mascot/nickname that some might find offensive. The school shortened the nickname to Mocs and has been pushing a new mascot – a mockingbird, which happens to be the state bird of Tennessee. That's what I call thinking on your feet!

Reminds me of the school whose song said something about "sons of." When it went coed the school reportedly changed the line to, "scions of." At least that's the way I heard it. Sneaky.

The U.S. News & World Report rankings for 2009 are out and for as easy as it is to nit-pick 'em, they are the rankings that people give the most weight. Dartmouth has settled in again at No. 11 among national universities. Here's the top-25:
1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Yale
4. MIT
4. Stanford
6. Cal Tech
6. UPenn
8. Columbia
8. Duke
8. Chicago
11. Dartmouth
12. Northwestern
12. Washington (St. Louis)
14. Cornell
15. Johns Hopkins
16. Brown
17. Rice
18. Emory
18. Notre Dame
18. Vanderbilt
21. California Berkeley
22. Carnegie Mellon
23. Georgetown
23. Virginia
25. UCLA

... and 47. Penn State ;-)

Is it possible the U.S. News people have a sense of humor? How else to explain Lehigh being No. 35 among national universities and archrival Lafayette being ranked No. 35 among liberal arts colleges?

Now, I'm sure it was just by happenstance but someone, somewhere, got a kick out of that. Kind of like the NCAA basketball committee pitting Akron against Gonzaga. I mean, the Zips against the Zags? What are the chances? Zero?