More Honors For The Other Guys

A couple of players Dartmouth will see early this fall have been named by The Sports Network to the 20-player, FCS, "Watch Lists," from which the nation's offensive and defensive players of the year will be chosen.

Named to the first Buchanan Watch List for the nation's top defensive player is Penn's Chris Wynn. Name to the first Payton Watch List for the nation's top offensive player is New Hampshire's RJ Toman.

Wynn is a 5-foot-9, 185-pound senior corner from Flemington, N.J., who had five interceptions as a sophomore and five more last fall. He's also had 20 pass breakups the past two years. Against Dartmouth in 2008 he had five tackles, two breakups and one interception. He also had an interception against the Big Green two years ago.

Toman is a 6-1, 195 junior quarterback from Mission Viejo, Calif. He threw for 3,110 yards and 28 touchdowns last year in his first season as a starter. He completed 17-of-23 passes for 208 yards and one touchdown with no interceptions against Dartmouth last year. Only four of the passes came in the second half before he took a seat. He also had 46 yards rushing.

Ironically, a Bloomberg.com story about budget cuts in Ivy League athletics that catches attention with the headline, "Harvard Reduces Sports Travel as Ivys Cut Athletics to 'Core,' begins with a reprise of the old news that Dartmouth's Memorial Field project has been "scrapped." I'm not sure scrapped is the proper word. I think it would be more accurate to say it has been put on hold. Interestingly, Bloomberg reports it as a $15 million project. The price tag last year was $12.2 million.

Green Alert Take: While the story mentions cuts at most of the eight Ivy schools, I'm not sure cutting athletics to the "core," is supported by the story that follows the headline.

Architect Charles Gwathmey, of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, has died (New York Times). Gwathmey Siegel & Associates designed Dartmouth's John W. Berry Sports Center. Something that was written about the Berry Center in the local paper at the time of dedication rubbed one of the architects the wrong way (I can't seem to recall whether it was Gwathmey or Siegel, although I believe it was Gwathmey) and he called the local writer on the carpet in a public gathering. I'm just glad, in this case at least, that writer wasn't me.

While Dartmouth and other FCS schools struggle with attendance at football games, there's no such problem at Old Dominion, which is just starting up football at the college game's Triple-A level. The Monarchs have received requests for 14,859 tickets before ever playing a game. From a Hampton Roads story:

Only one Football Championship Subdivision program in the country - Montana - will have a season-ticket base this season larger than ODU. The Grizzlies, who cap their season tickets at a little more than 19,000, have won two national championships in the past 15 years, have posted 23 consecutive winning seasons and have been playing football since 1897.

If you can't laugh at yourself you can't laugh, so here's a funny comment about Penn State's football schedule (with an Ivy twist) from a Foxsports.com columnist:

Penn State, which doesn't play on the road until after hockey season starts, has home games against Akron, Syracuse, Eastern Illinois and Temple.

What, Brown wasn't available?

See, that only goes to show JoePa is smarter than the rest of 'em.

Speaking of JoePa, son and assistant coach JayPa – that would be Jay Paterno to the uninitiated – not only Twitters but also writes a blog. Norman Hemingway he's not (that's a Joe Theisman joke) but he's pretty good and certainly a heckuva lot better writer than I would ever be a football coach.

Anyway, on his blog he has a moving piece about a former Penn State player named Rick Slater, who graduated from high school in 1988 and then spent eight years in the military, most of it as a Navy Seal. He walked on to the Penn State team in 1997 at age 28, and made the team. After 9/11, he re-enlisted in the military has now has completed five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. On his blog, Jay quotes Slater, speaking at the recent Penn State football golf banquet:

“This belt I’m wearing, is the belt I wore in my football pants on Saturdays at Penn State. I wear it today, but this belt has also been with me ever since I left here. It’s been with me when I jumped out of airplanes at 25,000 feet on oxygen at night, it has been on all my missions. I wear it for all the guys who played at Penn State—all the guys who played before me and all the guys who will play after me.”

Jay Paterno closes his piece this way:

You may not know his name, but his actions as a soldier for this country have swelled the fame of Penn State. He has certainly made me proud, and all of his brothers who played here before him, with him and after him are honored to count him among our legions.

And finally, to borrow from Sports Illustrated, Today's Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us: The organizers of the Vermont-New Hampshire Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl football game came up with the idea of a partnership with Amtrak to offer $12 tickets from stations in the Vermont towns of Essex Junction, Waterbury, Montpelier, Randolph and White River Junction to Saturday's football game in Windsor, Vt. Smelling a story, the local paper put a reporter on the train. Oops. He was the only passenger on the train who went to the game.