Saturday, May 23, 2009

Informed On Uniforms

My laptop beeped yesterday and coughed up a link to a September, 2006 blog item posted on the Daily Pennsylvanian site. From that posting:
Penn starts the Ivy League season this weekend with Dartmouth — the team with arguably the most interesting uniforms in the league and the most recent changes.
Not sure why it showed up now, but believe it or not it's timely. The item discusses changes in Dartmouth's football uniform dating back to 2001. Some of the links are dead, but it's still interesting to get someone else's perspective. The reason the item is timely is because there's current news on the uniforms to share:

The green pants have gone the way of the black pants. They are gonzo.

Regular visitors to this electronic neighborhood know I was no fan of the black or green pants. If you ask me (or even if you don't, because it's my blog ;-) the green pants were barely passable – with white shirts. But the green-on-green thing just didn't work. I kept waiting to hear a voice over the loudspeaker intone, "Ho, ho, ho Green Giant."

Don't forget, I've got Penn State blood in my veins. A stripe down the middle of the helmet and numbers – readable numbers – on the shirts and I'm good to go. (But JoePa, the Nike swish? C'mon.)

Former Dartmouth tight end Casey Cramer and his Tennessee Titan teammates from non-BCS schools are getting a little love from a Tennessee teammate named Cortland Finnegan. From a story in the Tennesseean:
But the Titans cornerback is willing to spread his love for all the underdogs of college football, and his teammates who represent those schools.
Finnegan recently ordered T-shirts from nearly a dozen small schools, from Washburn and Fort Valley State to Montana State and Eastern Washington.
The story goes on to say another of the T-shirts was from Dartmouth.

Occasionally I'm asked if I would start a message board to go with Green Alert. I haven't and I won't because unless they require registration, prohibit anonymous posting and are heavily moderated given time they often degenerate into a mess like the Ivy League Football forum. Yes, the Green Alert blog allows anonymous "comments," but they all show up first on my computer and if they even hint of a personal attack they don't get through.

I bring this up because a column on CBSsports.com is a reminder that what people post on the Internet can hurt and do damage. In this instance, a young basketball player decommitted from Wisconsin because of the things he read about himself on a message board.

Given the amount of press he's received heading into the NCAA lacrosse Final Four, you know former Dartmouth tailback Chad Gaudet is a pretty good story. And you had to know with Gaudet's Virginia team taking on Cornell that the Ithaca Journal would sniff this one out, and it has. Find a story about the Dartmouth grad who played against the Big Red in another color uniform a year ago here.

And finally, that certain Hanover High junior got a couple of hits in yesterday's softball loss to archrival Lebanon, but a generous scorekeeper listed her with three. I don't think she'll give the last one back ;-). The freshman was supposed to have a jayvee doubleheader today against Lebanon but with the holiday weekend depleting the other team's roster, the games were cancelled and he's headed out on the golf links instead. Given the end-of-season blues, I don't think he's disappointed.

Have a fun and safe holiday weekend everybody.

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