Game Week

It's game week. Finally.

The Ivy/opponent schedule this week looks like this:

• Bucknell at Cornell, 12:30 p.m.
• Holy Cross at Harvard, 1 p.m.
• Yale at Georgetown, 1 p.m.
• Colgate at Dartmouth, 1:30 p.m.
• The Citadel at Princeton, 3 p.m.
• Brown at Stony Brook, 6 p.m.
• Columbia at Fordham, 6 p.m.
• Villanova at Penn, 7 p.m.
• New Hampshire, off

In a look at the Darien (Conn.) High School football team, the Stamford Advocate writes ...

"And one of the FCIAC's biggest threats at wide receiver, Brian Kosnik, is now playing at Dartmouth, giving the Blue Wave a lot less height (Kosnik was 6-foot-7 last season).

Kosnik, who has come on in the last week, is listed at 6-foot-5 on the Dartmouth roster. He may not be quite as tall as the Advocate suggests, but he's still another in a large group of lanky receivers in Hanover. Kosnik, Will Deevy and Tim Vanderet are all 6-5 and Tanner Scott is 6-4. Now add 6-6 tight ends Mitch Aprahamian and Jackson Floyd, along with 6-5 Carroll Papajohn and Michael Cummings, and that's a whole lot of towering targets.

While we're on the subject of size, this is from yesterday's Big Green Alert Premium after the release of updated heights and weights on this year's team:

No fewer than 11 players are now listed at 275 or more pounds with four at 300 or more. Topping the scales at 320 each are a pair of freshmen offensive linemen, 6-foot-8 John Scheve and 6-7 Thomas Prewitt. John Hanna, a 6-4 freshman offensive lineman, comes in at 315 while sophomore defensive lineman Eddie Smith carries 300 pounds on a 6-3 frame. ... There are 26 players who are 6-4 and taller. The breakdown by height: 11 players are 6-4, 11 players are 6-5, 2 players are 6-6, one is 6-7 and one is 6-8.

The College Sporting News site has an interesting way of reporting scores. CSN lists them this way:

FCS-FCS
FCS over FBS
FBS over FCS
FCS over Lower Divisions
Lower Divisions over FCS

New Hampshire was the lone FCS over FBS winner Saturday with a 23-16 victory over Ball State although James Madison just missed an astonishing fifth Colonial Athletic Association win over an FBS team when it fell to Maryland in overtime, 38-35.

The big fear was always what would happen if UNH ever had a defense that could measure up to its offense. We may find out this year. From a Manchester Union Leader story after Ball State:

Ball State managed just 58 yards of offense through the first three periods and a brutal 127 yards for the game. Running back MiQuale Lewis, who averaged 124 yards a game last year, had 21 yards on 14 carries.

The Sagarin Ratings rank all Division I football teams, regardless of whether they are FCS or FBS (or I-A/I-AA if you prefer). Here's how Dartmouth's opponents (and three future opponents) rank heading into the first week of Ivy action:

• 120 Harvard
• 125 New Hampshire
• 138 Yale
• 151 Pennsylvania
• 156 Brown
• 168 Colgate
• 170 Princeton
• 190 Cornell
• 201 Holy Cross
• 207 Dartmouth
• 208 Columbia
• 235 Georgetown
• 240 Butler
• 242 Sacred Heart

Not sure I'd have Harvard ahead of UNH. Yale is surprisingly high while Colgate and Holy Cross must have done something wrong by winning their first two games. Those curiosities have driven me to take a look at Sagarin's methodology. He writes:

For the first few weeks of the season, the starting ratings have weight in the process (BAYESIAN), but once the teams are all CONNECTED, then the starting ratings are no longer used and all teams are started equal and the ELO-CHESS is then done in an UNBIASED manner from that point on. RATING and PREDICTOR are now bayesian and the ELO-CHESS is now bayesian.

Don't know about you but that certainly clears things up for me.

Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim was a guest on Bill Moyers Journal. Find the video and a transcript here. From the transcript:

I've already played with the women's volleyball team – I played volleyball in college – I've already been out throwing the football around with the football team, and that's one of the really great perks of this job, these fantastic young people who are both athletes and students. I happen to believe that athletics is a really important part of one's educational experience. So that's really the fun part of a job.

Extra Point
Before UNH football played Ball State, a poster out Indiana way was commenting that New Hampshire didn't really have much in the way of famous alums. Beg to differ. None other than The Rick is a UNH product. Find a video of one of his best ESPN commercials here.