The Swiss (Big) Cheese

This season a familiar name will be coaching the Calanda Broncos, a Swiss football team. (Check out the trailer for the Swiss Bowl above.)

The coach? Rick Taylor, a former Dartmouth assistant (1971-76) who went on to be a very successful head coach at Boston University and athletic director at Cincinnati before a successful run as AD at Northwestern. (Taylor was brought in last year to do an external review of the Dartmouth football program, which is mentioned briefly in this State of Dartmouth Football letter from interim AD Bob Ceplikas last summer.)

For your education – but more for your entertainment – what follows is the Google translation of the news release announcing Taylor's appointment:

Calanda the Broncos in 2010 with a new head coach in the championship: The 68-year-old Rick Taylor, longtime football coach and former Athletic Direcor the prestigious Northwestern University in Chicago, has fished the Swiss football champions a big fish. The Master Coach James Craig left in the Graubunden and will be able in the future as Defensive Coordinator to focus on his specialty.

Rick Taylor has done with his duties as football coach and University Athletic Director (in charge of an entire sports program at a university) in the U.S. in the last 30 years a name. After several years as head coach at Boston University (College was named second-highest league), he to Athletic Director, and later he took the same position at the University of Cincinnati. The last decade, he stood before the sports department of the prestigious Northwestern University, where he conducted according to the website of Northwestern University with a lot of leadership, enthusiasm and discipline.

"Why not to Switzerland?" The idea came to me erstmal on a European trip 2005th We took a train from Paris to Milan and went through Switzerland. We noted that our country was on a wish list of what country we wanted to travel to. 2007 we are back in Italy and one of the other passengers gave me John Grisham's book "Playin 'for pizza' and it sounded after a great idea. Finally, I spoke last May at a college reunion with former classmates, who some years ago coached in Italy and told of the grand experience. He gave me the Euro Player website (a kind of football player stock exchange), the Red, one thing led to another - so, why not? "

After his retirement two years ago wants to know the football professor who led Northwestern to a total of 19 teams with thousands of athletes and still maintains numerous contacts in the NFL, so now again. Taylor is looking forward to working with the players and coaches: "I understand that it is in European football for the time limits are involved. My goal is to form a team that will interact well and demonstrates real respect for the game. " Together with the former Head Coach Craig James, who will concentrate in 2010 at the Broncos on its core competencies - the defense - the "MVP quarterback coach-player" Marko Glavic in the attack and the local coach Mike Derungs (Assistant Head Coach), Daniel Zinsli (Defense Backs) and Walter Tgetgel (Linebackers) have the Broncos Calanda so certainly in the coming season on a very promising coaching staff.

The Football 2010 season begins in late March, the training will start in mid-January. About Training Start here. Coach Taylor will arrive in February in Chur.

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Freshman linebacker Michael Tree is one of six finalists in the Dartmouth Idol competition. Tree advanced last night according to the Daily Dartmouth, which wrote:

Tree also had a memorable performance that earned him a spot in the finals. He closed the “Idol” semifinals with a crowd-pleasing rendition of “Senorita” by Justin Timberlake.

And in case you were wondering, The D notes:

Finalists will compete for a $500 prize and the opportunity to record a three-song demo. The runner-up will receive a $250 prize, while the third place winner will be awarded $100.

Mike Tree is no stranger to being in the entertainment spotlight. Check out the following high school football promo from his days at Brophy Prep in Arizona:

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The impending crackdown on drinking announced by the Hanover police has not been well received on campus. The Daily Dartmouth reports:

Student Assembly unanimously passed a resolution calling for Hanover Police to reevaluate the new alcohol enforcement policy Chief Nicholas Giaccone announced last week at their General Assembly meeting Tuesday night.

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If you haven't taken a look at the Club Trillion blog written by Ohio State basketball manager-turned-end-of-bencher Mark Titus, you are missing a very good laugh as well as a revealing look behind the curtain of a big-time college sports program. To date, he's had more than 2.2 million visitors, which is at least a good half-dozen more than this blog ;-)

Honestly, if you are going to read just one posting by Mark Titus, read about him getting stuck in an elevator after a shootaround at the University of Minnesota. You can't make this stuff up. OK, I suppose you could make it up, but most of this is at least partly true, if you catch my drift.

Even the New York Times took notice of Titus in a late-December column. I was reading the Times piece yesterday evening and stumbled across an Ivy League reference:

Titus is smart enough that he was recruited to play basketball at Harvard and missed one question on the math section of the SAT.

Which reminds me. I know of someone else who got just one question wrong on the math section of the SAT, and she'll be headed to Harvard in a couple of weeks (no, not for college) to run the mile at the USATF New England Track & Field Championships as a warmup to the New England championships ;-)