Fore!

While the U.S. Open is set to battle the rain once again, the Dartmouth Friends of Football Golf Classic here in Hanover today might be spared. The sky is a pale shade of gray this morning and the weather.com forecast is for just a 15 percent chance of rain this afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed.

Three Ivy Leaguers were chosen in the first United Football League draft. That would be the United Football League, which is slated to play on Thursday and Friday nights in the fall with one game a week televised by Versus. Chosen by the San Francisco franchise were Harvard quarterback Liam O'Hagan and Brown defensive lineman Kai Brown. Wide receiver Chas Gessner, who has bounced around various pro football venues since graduating from Brown, was taken by Orlando.

Say what you will about the UFL (Wikipedia page) it has taken an interesting approach with former NFL coaches heading up the "Original Four." Dennis Green will coach San Francisco, Jim Haslett will be in Orlando, Ted Cottrell in New York and Jim Fassel will run the show in Las Vegas. While saying he didn't see the league as an NFL feeder, Fassel did tell the Arizona Republic:

"There are a lot of guys just out of college that get released because they're just not quite there. Give him another year or two of seasoning, and you'll find him right back in the (NFL) playing. Like Kurt Warner. He needed a few years in the Arena league to develop, and the next thing you know the guy is an MVP player. There are guys out there just like that."

Be sure to check out the photo gallery from the sixth Wearers of the Green celebration in Boston last month.

Specialization? Not Yet

Two of us are off to take a look at another college this morning, this one beginning with the letter "W." Then it's a 2 1/2-hour drive back home and, weather-be-willing, a sprint up the Connecticut River valley another hour for our second-round Little League tournament game. Busy day, so there likely won't be any more blog updates today.

This week's mail brought letters to both of those certain Hanover High student-athletes that I meant to share an excerpt from yesterday:

In this era of sports specialization, it is important for student-athletes to develop their athletic abilities by participating in as many sports as possible. The enclosed Three Sport Athlete certificate recognizes those who share our opinion.

Count me as one who shares that opinion.

Email has delivered next fall's Hanover High cross country schedule and the news is pretty good. After seeing only one race last year because of Green Alert commitments, I should have a chance to catch a few of the biggies in that certain runner's senior year.

Amazingly, the team is running in an invitational in Connecticut on the morning of the Yale game in New Haven. The well-regarded Manchester (NH) Invitational is on the morning of the game at UNH, which should work out. The state championship meet in Manchester is on the morning of the game at Harvard, and even that could be doable if the race is run early enough. New Englands are in Connecticut on the day of the game at Brown. There's no guarantee Hanover will make it that far but after winning New Englands two years ago and finishing second last fall, there's a good chance. It's probably not workable, but we'll see.

A funny column from the Orlando Sentinel begins this way:

Maybe Bernie Machen thought this was a preseason football poll.

In filling out a U.S. News & World Report survey evaluating the nation's colleges, the University of Florida president gave his school the top score of distinguished.

He scored Florida State and the University of Miami as good, which is one notch below strong, which is one notch below distinguished.

In other words, he gave himself an A and his rivals a C.

And then it gets interesting ...

He rated UF above four Ivy League schools: Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania.

"If cost was not an issue and only the quality of education mattered, and you had a chance to go to Dartmouth or Florida, which would you choose?" asked Rollins President Lewis Duncan, former dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth.

That's easy: Florida!

And this ...

Says U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, an FSU alum, "I have it from a good source that Bernie also votes in the BCS poll, which explains a lot."

Take A Virtual Tour

If you haven't yet been in Floren Varsity House, take a photographic tour here. There are pictures of Crouthamel Lounge, the locker room, weight room, the "smart" classroom, meeting rooms, training rooms, staff offices and the academic center.

The murmurs on the message boards this winter suggested that Penn stocked up on talented running backs with the incoming recruiting class. No surprise, then, that coach Al Bagnoli calls running back, "our deepest position, certainly on the offensive side of the ball," in a Daily Pennsylvanian story.

One of the really special things about the Ivy League is its stability. It would be a shock if the Ancient Eight ever became the "Sapiential Seven," or the "Nous Nine."

Membership in the leagues Dartmouth plays non-conference games against hasn't been quite as steady.

The Patriot League has has seen original member Davidson and miscast Towson leaving over the years, and now Fordham is in some kind of bizarre limbo.

The CAA? You are indeed a fan if you can name all the schools in the league. But do it quickly, because the University of New Hampshire's football conference will swell to 14 teams with the addition of Georgia State in 2012. And a writer from the Virginian-Pilot points out that it might be well-advised to grow a little more.

His suggestion? The CAA should take a look at adding the aforementioned Fordham along with fellow New York school Stony Brook. SBU is now a Big South member (anyone got an atlas I can borrow?) but it clearly would be a nice fit in a northern division of the CAA. Check out the Virginian-Pilot story that includes quotes from Jim Fiore, a former assistant athletic director at Dartmouth.

And while we're at it, bonus points for anyone who can name the entire Big East. I know I can't.

Lauren's First And Goal

A Lafayette College news release the other day caught my eye. It began this way:

A record 1,733 high school students participated in the sixth annual Lauren's First and Goal Football Camp on Sunday, June 7 at Lafayette's Metzgar Fields Athletic Complex. The one-day clinic featured 275 college coaches who volunteered their time to teach aspiring football players the in-and-outs of the game.

The donations from campers alone tallied $62,000 and the day's total of $185,000 is steadily on the rise with the help from outside contributions, including a $100,000 pledge from the Special Needs Trust in Clearwater, Fla.

Lauren, the daughter of Lafayette defensive coordinator John Loose, addressed the crowd of players, coaches, parents and volunteers who turned out to support her battle with an inoperable brain tumor and expressed her appreciation for their continuous support. Connecticut head coach Randy Edsall was the keynote speaker.

That sent me to the touching video above, and eventually landed me at a list of college coaches who had volunteered to work one of the two one-day camps (a satellite venue was added at the University of South Florida last year). Old friends Roger Hughes and Adam Hollis of Princeton were part of a strong Ivy League contingent who stepped up.

Among those who helped out in Florida: Dartmouth kicker/punter Matt Kelly (once recruited by Loose). Kelly, a junior and the leading candidate to take over as the Big Green punter in the fall, worked with a group of 15 or so young punters at the South Florida camp.

For more information on Lauren's First and Goal, click here.

College Hoops.net isn't the first place you would look for a story about a former Ivy League football player who went on to the NFL, but there you go. Click here for a Q&A with George Starke, Columbia '71, a former basketball player and football player who went on to start for nine years on the Washington Redskins' offensive line. Some interesting stuff about Columbia and the Ivy League of his day in the piece.

The Providence Journal sports section has an interview with University of Rhode Island president Robert L. Carothers, who is retiring after 18 years and very little success on the gridiron. In the 16 years since he fired longtime coach Bob Griffin, the Rams have had three other coaches and just two winning records. Carothers told the ProJo:

“I think in retrospect maybe the decision with Bob was not fully informed. I was used to teams winning. It just seemed to me that he had gone past his peak and that we needed new energy in the program. Now, after I saw the performance of the other folks that we brought in here, maybe he was doing about as good as he could do, or anybody could do. I feel kind of bad about that in retrospect."

Reading that story sent me scurrying to see double-check exactly when outgoing Dartmouth President Jim Wright took office. It was Aug. 1, 1998. Ironically for a man who was a friend of the football program and anything but a stranger at practice, Jim Wright never once presided over a winning season as Dartmouth president. Over his 11 years the Big Green was 23-86 with a 5-5 record in 2003 the high point.

And finally, word this morning that the certain Hanover High School junior catcher was named to the all-state second team in softball after batting .468 and throwing out runners by the handful this spring. ... Now if only final exams would wrap up. I'm telling you, two kids driven to get good grades in a highly competitive school system adds up to a lot of tension and I can't wait for them to be able to relax.

A 'Unique Experience' At Dartmouth

Missed this the first time around but thanks to an emailer for pointing out that a former Dartmouth football recruit was written up in the Daily Dartmouth as one of four seniors who "have had particularly unique experiences at Dartmouth."

From the Daily D story:

Andrew Seidman ’09 began playing poker in high school to bring his friends together, but his interest in the game soon grew to become a passion. With three years of professional poker under his belt, Seidman is also the inventor of the Baluga poker theory, has written an eBook on poker whose two volumes sell for a total of $949, and has made $312,000 by playing online games and giving lessons in the past year.

A particularly unique experience. ... Um, ya think?

Seidman was a 6-foot-2, 195-pound running back who had six carries for 20 yards and caught one pass with the jayvees as a freshman. Check out the home page for Seidman's balugapoker.com, his blog and forum.

Seidman's story calls to mind another former Dartmouth student with a football background named Chip Reese, who was profiled in the New York Times after he died in 2007.

The Charlotte Observer has a story about Russell Wilson, the two-sport star son of two-sport Dartmouth alum Harry Wilson. Russell is a quarterback/infielder for North Carolina State.

Giving New Meaning To Big Green

With a little pressure from the NCAA, Newberry College in South Carolina dropped its Indian nickname in May of 2008 and spent the past school year as the Newberry Nothings. (I made up the Nothings part, but you get the idea. The school teams did not have a nickname.)

A columnist from the newspaper The State has come up with a few suggestions for a new nickname, with at least a couple of them offered tongue in cheek. Given that the school colors are scarlet and gray, you can be pretty sure the following suggestion is one that was not intended to be taken seriously:

"This is where Newberry should follow the lead of Ivy League member Dartmouth,with a twist to acknowledge current times.

"During the 1920s, Dartmouth began referring to its athletic teams as the Indians. By the early 1970s, the school recognized the insensitive nature of the nickname and dropped it in favor of the Big Green.

"In a time when our country’s focus is on being green, Newberry can ride the wave

of ecological correctness and go with Big Green as a nickname."

The columnist does raise an interesting idea. Perhaps some of us who are less-than-thrilled with the Big Green nickname would be more enthusiastic if it were a little more cutting edge. Maybe the classic Bob Blackman helmet could be updated for these more environmentally aware times. Um, no ;-)

For full coverage of Dartmouth graduation including transcripts of the speeches, sound files of those speeches, pictures and bios of those honored, click here.

Among those in town for graduation was former quarterback Charlie Rittgers '06, whose sister Annie, served as president of the Class of 2009 from her freshman year on. She's profiled here. Charlie Rittgers is third on the Dartmouth career list for passing yardage and very well may have have challenged Jay Fiedler's career mark if he'd returned for a fifth season instead of heading off to law school.

Understanding The Academic Index

Ever wonder about the mystery of the Ivy League's Academic Index? Your best bet is to order Chris Lincoln's book, "Playing the Game," but short of that you can find a synopsis of sorts at this web site.

Today is graduation in Hanover and while the sky up here on the mountain is almost white, the rain is supposed to hold off until 3 p.m.. Let's hope so. From a college release: "Dartmouth is recognizing a total of five students with valedictorian and salutatorian honors ... ."

First the word leaked that another BCS transfer was coming to the Ivy League. Then the chatter said that he was headed to Penn. Now the message boards and Jake Novak's Roar Lions Roar blog are identifying the transfer as Stanford safety Fred Craig, a freshman last fall. Find his Stanford bio here. He doesn't have any stats from last fall so it appears he'll have four years of eligibility. ... This story notes that heading into his senior year of high school he had offers from Stanford, Nebraska, West Virginia, Louisville, Michigan State, Indiana, Duke, Cincinnati, Miami (OH), North Carolina State, Vanderbilt and Air Force.

Former Dartmouth basketball player Stan Kowalewski '94 has become a lightning rod of controversy as a high school hoops coach in North Carolina. Click here to read a riveting story on a former Dartmouth athlete headlined "Stan Kowalewski: Savior or scoundrel? Coach or operator?"