Saturday, February 20, 2010

Slow Saturday

Another quiet midwinter Saturday in the Dartmouth football blogosphere. ...

Curious about the memoir On the Brink by former Treasure Secretary (and Dartmouth football great) Hank Paulson? Find a Newsweek look at it here. I flipped through it at the Dartmouth Bookstore and he does briefly mention his football career in Hanover. ...

Dartmouth linebacker Diego Fernandez-Soto's brother Sergio is headed to Lehigh. Sergio is a 6-foot wide receiver who was first team All-Dad Country out of Belen Jesuit. ...

Former Dartmouth basketball captain Peter Roby '79, a Buddy Teevens classmate whose name is occasionally raised with regard to the athletic director position at Dartmouth, is the AD at Northeastern, which announced at the end of last season that it was dropping football. Apparently the Boston school made a powerful enemy in the process of making that announcement: the Boston Herald. The Northeastern school newspaper notes that the Herald is not staffing any full game stories during the school's "record-breaking" men's basketball team out of spite. From the school paper:
... (T)he Herald's feud stems back to Northeastern's Nov. 23 press conference at Matthews Arena, during which Athletics Director Peter Roby announced the termination of the football program in front of a room full of TV, radio and print reporters – but none from the Herald. (Executive Sports Editor Hank Hryniewicz) said Northeastern did not alert the Herald about the press conference. He said he has called Northeastern officials asking for an explanation but has been ignored, leading to the lack of Northeastern coverage in the Herald's popular sports section.
As Dartmouth goes about making cuts to its athletic budget (as well as all others), the Associated Press has a look at how cross-state rival New Hampshire does more with less ... and why UNH might actually want to bump up the budget. From the story:
The University of New Hampshire should stop treating athletics as a sideline and start pumping more money into the program, boost private fundraising efforts, and upgrade or replace aging sports facilities, an in-house report released Friday said.
And ...
In fiscal year 2007, UNH athletics raised $439,000, compared to $800,000 at the University of Vermont, $1.3 million at the University of Delaware and $14 million at the University of Connecticut. Only 1 percent of UNH's former athletes donated money, compared to 26 percent at Boston College.
The red turf football field that could be in place at Eastern Washington University soon doesn't go over particularly well with on alum who notes the explanation for the unusual color is "all about enhancing the Eastern Washington marketing brand." From the story:
How about doing that by toughening admittance standards, then leading the Big Sky Conference in the number of Academic All-Conference selections because of added emphasis on graduating players who gainfully contribute to society?

Why is it that benefactors so often surface to enhance playing surfaces, weight rooms, luxury boxes, stadium expansions and the like, yet few put their names on athletic academic centers equipped with the latest technology where student athletes – what a novel term – can spend as much time as they do in the film room studying past and future opponents.
And finally, congratulations to the Dartmouth men's basketball team for gutting out a 48-44 win over Columbia last night for its first Ivy League victory. More than one Big Green fan might say that seldom has something so ugly (it was 17-15 at the half with the teams combining for 15 field goals but 19 turnovers) turned out so pretty.

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