This And That

Although injuries have derailed his promising career as a linebacker, Carter Scott is finding another way to contribute to the college. The junior from Columbia, S.C., is one of 12 students appointed to Dartmouth's Committee on Standards, which deals with academic and behavioral cases at the college. Find Scott's football bio here. Background on the Committee on Standards can be found here.

One of the leading candidates in the Atlanta mayoral race is Jesse Spikes '72, who played freshman football at Dartmouth. The Daily Dartmouth has a story.

With attendance at Ivy League football games always a challenge, the conference might get some new ideas from initiatives being employed by Boston College and Old Dominion to drum up interest in their programs.

Boston College has signed on for a viral computer advertising campaign that puts the potential fan almost in the game. From an AP story:

The BC video asks for your name, phone number and e-mail address, then takes you from the locker room to the coaches' box, where (coach Frank) Spaziani is waiting. The other schools use a similar storyboard -- right down to the upperclassmen glaring at you on the elevator.

"There you are. Everybody has been talking about you," Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson says, gesturing to the Sun Devil Stadium field below, where your name is printed in the end zone. "Fans like you inspire our team to play harder."

To see the BC campaign in action, click here. (I can't tell you what it's like because my Internet connection here on the mountain is too slow to make it work without going out to mow the lawn while it loads ;-)

At Old Dominion, which has sold out season tickets for its first year of FCS football, there is pretty neat virtual tour of the game-day experience. Do take a look at it, because it's pretty good. A nod to Jake Novak over at the Roar Lions Roar blog for linking to the video. Find a much higher-quality version of the video on the ODU site, here.

No question, what Old Dominion – and to a greater extent Boston College – is doing is hokey. But it wouldn't hurt the Ivies take a look at what others are trying as it looks for ways to market what is a very good and reasonably priced product.

The NCAA News has a story spun out of the Patriot League's reaction to Fordham adding football scholarships. Will the rest of the league that provides the Ivies with most of its non-conference competition follow suit? Consider this from the story:

(Patriot League Executive Director Carolyn) Femovich imagined that, should the presidents move toward football scholarships, the implementation would be similar to the league’s move toward basketball scholarships: Simply declare the football aid permissible and allow each institution to make decisions on its own.

“That approach allows schools to determine the best approaches on their individual campuses,” Femovich said. “I think if we went that direction, some might work to get up to 58 or 60 equivalencies, and others might say we’ll do scholarships for key athletes and other individuals that might not have the need, but we’ll do a combination, a hybrid model.”

In case you just dropped in from Mars, what you are reading is a blog. Your daily correspondent is a blogger, although as a trained journalist and veteran newspaper writer, not a typical one according to this study out of a school he once called home. From a Penn State research project:

A majority of bloggers who comment daily about college and professional sports online do not see themselves as professional reporters, but they do believe their work fills a void left by mainstream media.

According to a survey of more than 210 bloggers conducted by the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State, 75 percent said they do not see themselves as rivals of professional journalists.

In fact, just 40 percent have ever applied for a credential to a sporting event and only 30 percent have ever included any "original reporting," such as attending games and news conferences or interviewing athletes or coaches, in their blogs.

While the rebuilding of the home football stands at Memorial Field is on hold, Dartmouth's new Visual Arts Building can go ahead now that town approval for the project has been given. Find a story in our local paper here and a photo and more information on the project on the official Dartmouth site.

And finally, if you have any pull, could you please do what you can to see that the rain stops in these parts? It's getting a little depressing. No, a lot depressing.

We went down to Manchester last night to watch the New Hampshire Fisher Cats Class AA farm team play the Trenton Thunder. Gore-Tex and umbrellas were a good ideas, but a fleece jacket would have been smart.