Friday, May 29, 2009

Of Baseball And Playoffs

If you are interested in following the Dartmouth-North Carolina NCAA baseball regional game tonight, there will be a free internet audio broadcast on the Dartmouth website starting at 5:45. Calling the action will be Drew Galbraith along with Sports Information Director Rick Bender (a former Davidson College baseball standout) and Wayne Young '72, the color commentator for Dartmouth football who once played in the College World Series in Omaha. In addition to the audio being carried at the Dartmouth website, North Carolina is providing a free video feed if your connection is fast enough.

Speaking of Dartmouth baseball, the Boston Globe had a nice piece about the Pagliarulo family of Massachusetts. It begins this way:
Mike Pagliarulo celebrated winning the Ivy League championship with his exuberant teammates on the Dartmouth College baseball team and shed his uniform shirt before hopping the fence at Red Rolfe Field in Hanover, N.H.

His three hits had helped fuel the Big Green's 11-hit attack in a 10-0 clubbing of Cornell in the clincher earlier this month. Now, the senior first baseman from Winchester was focused on his family and sharing the poignant moment of the program's first Ivy title. He hugged his grandmother, Margaret, and then his father, Mike, who played third base and hit 134 home runs in the majors over 11 seasons, most notably with the Yankees and the Twins.

The son was wearing his father's T-shirt from 18 seasons ago, from the Twins' World Series championship club in 1991 - with the team's logo "work hard, play hard" - as a tribute to his family.
Today's Daily Dartmouth has a preview of the Dartmouth-UNC matchup.



The Wall Street Journal has a detailed looked at athletics in the Ivy League that includes this:
With the league becoming weaker in sports like basketball, football and hockey, some argue it needs to make major changes, like creating a basketball tournament, ending the postseason football ban, or even adjusting admissions standards.
The story includes this (italics are mine):
The ban on postseason football, which exists because the Ivies don’t want to take up players’ time, prevents players from competing for titles and gaining exposure.
So that's the reason, huh? Outgoing Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans could never quite zero in on the reason, but thanks to the Wall Street Journal the mystery has finally been solved. It's all about players' time.

Makes sense if you follow Columbia AD M. Dianne Murphy's reasoning for why she's against a postseason tournament in basketball:
“It’s another week of being out of class,” she says. “In our league that matters.”
Depends on the sport.

Curiously, the Wall Street Journal's explanation and Murphy's reasoning apparently don't carry over to all sports. Take men's ice hockey for example. Let's compare and contrast:

• Days between first Ivy League football game and last: 63
• Days between first Dartmouth hockey game and last "regularly scheduled" game: 121

• NCAA football playoffs: one automatic berth proposed for Ivies
• ECAC hockey playoffs: five teams made 2009 field

• NCAA football playoffs: one and done
• ECAC hockey playoffs: best-of-three series in first two rounds, then one-and-done (but with a consolation game).

• Number of NCAA football playoff games for 2008 Patriot League champion Colgate: 1
• Number of 2009 ECAC postseason games for Ivy League hockey teams: 22 – Dartmouth 2, Harvard 2, Brown 4, Yale 4, Princeton 5, Cornell 5.
• Total number of 2009 postseason games for Ivy League hockey teams, counting NCAA Tournament: 26.

• Days between first game and last game if an Ivy team were to go to the NCAA football championship: 90
• Days between games if an Ivy League team goes to the NCAA hockey championship: 162

This is not to suggest a change in the Ivy League's hockey policy. It is simply to show how absurd it is to say the reason behind a ban on football playoffs (or a basketball tournament) is the players' time.

Do I sound angry about the policy regarding football? I am. I've talked with way too many football players (who have gone on to successful careers as doctors, lawyers, teachers etc.) who desperately wanted to have the chance to test themselves against the best – like every other Ivy League athlete is allowed to – and never got the chance because the Ivy League mucky-mucks kept hiding behind flimsy explanations like "players' time."



The always interesting TigerBlog has a caution for those who make assumptions about recruiting classes based on what they read. TB writes:
If you ask a football coach whether so-and-so should help the team, the typical answer is an optimistic one; if you ask that same coach what so-and-so will do as a freshman, there is typically a smile and a shrug of the shoulders.

They have no idea.
The TigerBlogster goes on to write:
It's more than just the accelerated physicality and speed of the college game. It's more than the wider range of plays and schemes that must be learned and remembered. It's about an 18-year-old kid moving away (and often times far away) from the safety of home. It's about a kid often being academically challenged for the first time in their lives. It's about a kid going from being a big fish in a small pond to a big fish in an ocean of big fish.
Well said.

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