Draft Dreams

You'll have to excuse Dartmouth freshman center Austen Fletcher if he seems a little preoccupied this weekend. His older brother Alex, a fifth-year senior last year at Stanford – where he was a Buddy Teevens recruit – is an NFL draft prospect who is hoping his phone rings Saturday or Sunday. Scott Wright's well-regarded Draft Countdown has the 6-foot-2 1/4, 297-pound Alex Fletcher rated as the ninth-best center available and a possible late-round choice. Wright's site even mentions Austen here. FoxSports has him as a "likely second-day pick."

The ESPN draft site has an in-depth look at Fletcher that notes his "brother, Austen, is an offensive lineman at Dartmouth University." Where is the person who wrote that from? Kazakhstan?

Find Alex Fletcher's Stanford bio here.

Dartmouth gets a mention in a Rivals.com story about a 6-foot-4, 205-pound receiver from Montana. Matt Miller (who had 932 yards receiving and 15 touchdown catches along with 663 rushing yards and six TDs on the ground) "has scholarship offers from Stanford, Boise State, Oregon State, Arizona State, Wyoming, Colorado State, Washington State, Oregon, Montana, Montana State, Harvard and Dartmouth."

No wonder Harvard's been so good the last few years. Scholarships! Glad to see Dartmouth is catching on ;-)

There's a heartwarming story out of New Haven where the Register writes about the Yale football team joining the growing bone marrow donation effort. From the story:

Thursday, the Yale football players will discover there are some things more important than beating Harvard, something more precious than a game-winning touchdown catch. They will be given a crash course in the game of life.

Leading the game plan will be a soft-spoken, eternally optimistic member of the women’s hockey program, who is in the midst of the battle that has captured the hearts of the Yale athletics community.

Mandi Schwartz will not be at the Yale Commons between 11 a.m.-3 p.m. on Thursday as countless volunteers show up to take part in the marrow donor donation drive. She will be nearly 2,000 miles away in a hospital bed near her Wilcox, Saskatchewan, home undergoing her fifth and final round of chemotherapy as she continues her fight against leukemia.

However, as each willing participant allows his or her cheek to be swapped with the hope it will be a match for Schwartz and others like her in need of a stem-cell transplant, her presence will be hard to miss.

And finally, the blog and Big Green Alert premium will be on semi-hiatus (is there such a word?) from tomorrow morning through Sunday as those two certain Hanover High School kids and I head out to Penn State for the Blue-White Weekend festivities. Working every single football Saturday since well before they were born, I've never been able to share what a regular season game at Beaver Stadium is like with the kids, who seem to have inherited some blue blood (not that kind of blue). So for the fourth year in a row, we'll get up at "0-dark-30" tomorrow morning and make the long drive out to Centre County, Pa., (with a stop for a second look at Bucknell mixed in).

We'll camp at the exact same site at the same Bellefonte KOA we've camped at each year, shop at the same Weiss Market we've shopped at each year, hit all the same souvenir shops we hit each year and once again have stickies at The Diner. Traditions, you understand.

We'll catch a PSU baseball game against Illinois Friday night and then walk through the midway on the adjoining Beaver Stadium parking lot. On Saturday we'll tailgate for a few hours and then join perhaps 70,000-plus others at the Blue-White game. If the line isn't too long after the game we'll get some Peachy Paterno at the Creamery and then make the long drive home on Sunday.

Mom, meanwhile, will have four days of peace and quiet sans her, ahem, three kids.

In case you are wondering how they do it in the big-time, find the schedule of events for the Blue-White Weekend here.

Hopefully, some of my "spies" will share a few observations about Friday's first real scrimmaging of the spring that I will be able to post from the campground Saturday morning – if the wi-fi is working. I'll revisit the scrimmage with Monday's BGA, and have full coverage of the final week of spring football next week.