The Walk-On Or Ivy League Decision

Ivy League education and football vs. walk-on opportunity at the high-profile Football Bowl Subdivision school. That's a decision a lot of high school football players make each year and one that a Denver area recruit faced this year. His choice? He's going to try to make it with the home-state Colorado Buffaloes instead of the Big Green. From Scout.com:

Mario Conte of Denver Mullen was one of the key reasons for the Mustang’s 5A state title this year. The 5-11 180 pound defensive back seemed to always be around the ball on defense and had a knack for the big defensive play. Conte was invited to play at Dartmouth, but opted to stay close to home and play for the University of Colorado.

There is all kinds of Internet chatter reporting that Fordham is pushing the Patriot League to go scholarship in football or the Rams will jump ship. It's hard to know how accurate the talk is – sometimes what appears on one message board as an anonymous post morphs into a fact two message boards down the road – but this much has been clear for some time: The Patriot League is torn on the subject of football scholarships. Here's what one poster had to say on the FordhamFans board:

Fordham has told the PL we want scholarships instituted leaguewide by June 09 .. If the PL balks we are prepared and going independent for 2010 season. then find a new home for 2011 and beyond. this is not hearsay, the FU Head Coach and the administration has sat down with PL commissioner Carol Femovich.. Colgate is on the record as a supporter of scholly's.. rest of schools on on fence. Masella (HC)and Fordham grid alumni like the schools in the PL.. but 1aa football is passing the league by.. so we laid down the ultimatium.. and the alumni are in full support of scholly's or out!!

Not that scholarships are the answer to what ails you any more than a push to the big time. Just ask the folks at Rutgers, who are getting hammered over reports that the school lost $184,000 on its trip to the Papajohn.com Bowl. The Newark Star-Ledger reports that the bowl appearance ...

"triggered $268,365 in performance bonuses and other compensation for the head coach Greg Schiano and his staff. Rutgers was obligated as well to buy 10,000 tickets to the game, although it sold less than half of them, absorbing $214,000 in tickets."

The paper notes that the loss was "more than covered through the Big East Conference -- which pools playoff money ..."

I can't even remember what it was I was looking for yesterday (I guess I didn't find it) when I stumbled across several stories in the Time Magazine and Sports Illustrated archives.

From the SI Vault comes a storyf rom Oct. 18, 1971 about Bob Blackman's struggles after moving from Dartmouth to Illinois. The story includes this:

Blackman has trouble not talking to reporters about Dartmouth because they keep asking him an obvious question: are the Illini having so much trouble mastering his multiple offense because they aren't as smart as his players at Dartmouth? While at Dartmouth, Blackman was widely quoted as saying, "I don't want to be condescending, but Ivy League schools draw a superior student who can absorb and assimilate quickly."

The Nov. 9, 1970 SI had a story about Blackman's last (and unbeaten) Dartmouth team winning the legendary 10-0 showdown over Yale.

And then a Time Magazine story (not about football, by the way) that included this: "... (T)hese days the Hanover hills are ringing with academic reforms and resounding to the whoops of culture. " The date: Nov. 23, 1962.

The selection of Jim Yong Kim as Dartmouth's next president was featured in the JoongAng Daily, the English partner of the JoongAng Ilbo, which bills itself as, "Korea's leading daily."