Media Day

The 2009 Dartmouth media guide isn't quite ready yet, but it's getting close. Here's a sneak look at how a couple of pages of the new design will look. The pictures will be black and white in the printed version. The NCAA doesn't allow color in the "book," except for the covers, inside and out.

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The Ivy League preseason media teleconference is today and I'll join in with the masses and make my prediction. Not of how I think the season will turn out, but how I think the media poll will turn out. Check back this afternoon for the REAL poll.

A Guess at How the Poll Will Look
1. Penn (8)
2. Harvard (7)
3. Brown (1)
4. Yale
5. Princeton
6. Columbia
7. Cornell
8. Dartmouth

The Penn media guide is online here. Two thoughts:

1. While I understand the reasons behind rotating the "lead" story on a web page, it is easy to miss new information if on consecutive visits to a site the same lead story pops up as the splash. I didn't even know the Penn guide had been posted until I saw a note elsewhere.

2. Penn posted its guide in eight sections. That's great if, like me, you have a slow connection. You can just pick and choose which section you want. But the flip side is that I need the entire guide and it's easiest to retrieve one file. I had to download all eight sections by themselves and then reassemble then in a single file. Bottom line, I like the idea of different sections, but it would be great if there were a "download entire guide," link as well.

The Daily Times reports that coach Jeff Fisher thinks Tennessee Titans tight end/fullback Casey Cramer's shoulder, which he hurt against the Buffalo Bills, should be OK.

New Hampshire has debuted a spiffy new website. The football page can be found here.

Former Dartmouth outfielder Nick Santomauro is hitting his stride in rookie ball with the New York Mets' Brooklyn affiliate. Find a story on the Mets.scout.com site.

Speaking of baseball, you've got to see (and hear) this to believe it. A musician has made an electric violin out of a Derek Jeter bat. Now he's using it to play the National Anthem at major league ballparks. Check out the video here.

And finally, an old friend posted a note on an interesting website called Uniwatch; The Obsessive Study of Athletics Aesthetics. The "About" section of the site explains: "Uni Watch is a media project that deconstructs the finer points of sports uniforms in obsessive and excruciating detail. It has nothing to do with fashion — it’s about documenting and maintaining the visual history of sports design, and about minutiae fetishism as its own reward." Anyway, he posted the following note with the photo to the right: "This watch ad ran in various football game programs, including those at Dartmouth, in the late ’70s and early ’80s,” says Tris Wykes. “It ran with the image reversed year after year, and they failed to correct it. That’s Columbia at Harvard, in case you’re wondering. Interesting that the helmet logos weren’t airbrushed out.” (Click the image for a better look.)