It Won't Be (That) Long Now

With signups for Big Green Alert premium kicking off yesterday, it was as good a time as any to get a look at the preseason practice schedule. It shows the first session slated for 3:45 on Aug. 26. There will be single sessions each afternoon until Tuesday, Sept. 1, when the first of five double-session days will kick off, with each separated by a day as mandated by the NCAA.

The preseason will wrap up with the scrimmage on Memorial Field against Harvard on Sept. 11, after which game-week preparation begins in anticipation of the opener against Colgate on Sept. 1819.

Following up on an earlier posting about Phil Steele's College Football Preview Magazine, his full first and second preseason All-Ivy League teams can be found here.

If you'd like to see which Colgate and Holy Cross players were honored on Steele's preseason All-Patriot League team, click here. (Holy Cross, by the way, is in the enviable position of returning not only quarterback Dominic Randolph, the two-time Patriot League offensive player of the year, but also three offensive linemen chosen for the All-Patriot League first-team calibre and another who made the second team.)

An unscientific survey suggests most prognosticators have pegged Harvard and Penn as two of the teams to watch in the Ivy League this fall and Steele is no different. Steele's previews of those two schools and Dartmouth opponent New Hampshire are posted as PDFs on the web.

In its own inimitable, shorthand style, Steele's Harvard preview says: "Despite having their least exp team in 4 years the Crimson must be considered the preseason favorite to win the Ivy."

Steele's Penn preview concludes this way: "I will call for Penn to have its best record since 2004 and they are a true Ivy League contender."

Of New Hampshire, Steele writes: "They should have their 6th straight winning ssn and playoff appearance this year."

The Cornell Sun recently published "The Sun's Sports glos•sa•ry." Scroll down to the entries for the letter "D" and under Dartmouth you'll find this:

Conservative Ivy foe strong in women’s basketball, men’s soccer and ice sculpture. Small school, but with proper nourishment could become a full-grown university like the rest of its Ivy pals. Nicknamed the Big Green, a name stolen from the children’s movie of the same title.

Before Tim Murphy came down from Division I-A Cincinnati and turned Harvard into the football powerhouse it has become, coaches regularly referred to the Crimson as a "sleeping giant." The power of the Harvard name married to a coach with a national reputation is evident in the comments of a highly regarded Northfield Mount Hermon basketball player who has committed to play for the Crimson under coach Tommy Amaker. Matt Brown, who drew recruiting interest from Stanford, Virginia and Notre Dame, is quoted this way in the Harvard Crimson:

"I committed to Harvard because that’s the place where I want to go—to play for Coach Amaker. He’s a big name. When he first came to Harvard, it really opened up my eyes. I wasn’t really considering Ivy League schools in the past.”

Another blue-sky day in Hanover, at least to start. The tomato plants are thankful.