Game Day

Longtime Princeton beat writer Craig Haley has a preview of the Dartmouth-Penn game on the VERSUS TV network website. Craig is absolutely correct when he writes:

All the pressure is on Penn. It can’t afford to slip up in its Ivy League opener against a Dartmouth squad that, despite having promising underclassmen, is on a 14-game losing streak.

Dartmouth friends, fans and family have to hope he's wrong in his conclusion:

Expect the Quakers to be methodical in a victory. Penn 27, Dartmouth 14.

The VERSUS studio hosts open their weekend preview show with mention of Penn and Dartmouth. But it's clear they don't have much (if any) more background than what they learned reading the first few sentences of Craig Haley's piece. If you click on this video and watch the opening minute or so, you'll hear them say neither team has a win and one will finish the game with a win. Really?

A couple of Patriot League standouts that have drawn NFL attention – Dartmouth has already seen one this fall and will see the other in a couple of weeks – are subjects of stories.

The New York Times writes about Holy Cross quarterback Dominic Randolph, who really wasn't a starter in high school. Nor was he at Holy Cross until, well, until he was. The Times notes:

He has ascended from fifth-string as a freshman to a starter that nearly every N.F.L teams has come through Worcester to scout. Some, like the Indianapolis Colts, have popped in twice.

The Daily Star writes about Pat Simonds, the 6-foot-6 Colgate receiver. The Star writes:

Cal McCombs of the Denver Broncos, Jerry Hardaway of the Arizona Cardinals, Greg Seamon of the Cincinnati Bengals, Michael LaFlamme of the Buffalo Bills and Conrad Cardano of the Minnesota Vikings scouted Saturday's game.

Read the stories and there's a common denominator. These are two really good kids.

And finally, this is hard to watch but a high school player in Vermont who did not understand football rules and got no help from his coach cost his team a game it appeared to have won when a 46-yard field goal fell short as time ran out. The video and a story can be found here.

Extra Point
That certain sister is visiting from Texas and yesterday I took her up the Kancamagus Highway to check out the foliage and have a look around the ski village of North Conway. We stopped at a little store just as we entered the White Mountains and a very nice clerk chatted us up, asking where we were from. Then the kicker. He asked us, "Are you here to see the LEAFS?"

Why yes, yes we were. And for the rest of the afternoon, one or the other of us would periodically say something like, "Did you see those LEAFS?"