Decision Week

Admissions announcements for Ivy League schools come out Thursday. (Believe me, I am well aware of the date this year ;-).

While most of Dartmouth's recruits have been reported on the blog (link) there are several others I have heard about from parents of other recruits, parents of current players, etc., but I haven't been able to find confirmation online that they are coming. Because the policy here is to not report about recruits until they are published in the media, I haven't written anything about expected additions to the class.

If their local papers write them up after Thursday's acceptances go up and I can find stories, I'll have them here. If not, keep in mind that Coach Buddy Teevens won't talk about the regular-decision recruiting class until all the deposits are in at the end of April. (Believe me again, I know about that this year ;-).

By the way, there are also several interesting walk-on types who will learn their fate Thursday.

You might call it a "cross-collectible." (True confession: I've watched Antiques Roadshow a few times.) An e-mailer sent a link to this Dartmouth football photo he apparently bid on but did not win. It might be collectible to fans who appreciate Dartmouth football history as well as to those who collect vintage newspaper "art," as we used to call it.

The Cornell Sun has a story about companies that supply ...

...fake degrees from real-sounding but fake colleges, prominent among them “Stamford,” “Berkley,” and even, “Cormell” University.

No word on whether there are degrees to Darthmouth available, but one of those sheepskins might fool a lot of people because if you click here you can get Dartmouth College Big Green tickets. Even the New York Times once wrote, MINNEAPOLIS EXECUTIVE IS SELECTED AS PRESIDENT OF DARTHMOUTH COLLEGE.

One "prospie" apparently bought into it as well, writing to Yahoo:

I have an interview with a Darthmouth College alum. I've never been to a college interview, and neither have my parents. I am applying as a freshman.

How long do these things usually last?
What kind of clothes should I wear?
What kind of questions should I be prepared for?

Ouch. I hope the would-be Big Green student figured it out before the interview.

President Barack Obama has named Alan Bersin head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That would have gone right on by me but for an e-mailer who points out Bersin was an All-Ivy League football player at Harvard in 1967, something noted deep in this mention in The Atlantic. There's a good, old LA Times story about him here.

No word on how the Dartmouth men's basketball coaching search has been going, although it will likely heat up with the Final Four this weekend. Apparently the Penn search is winding down. From the Daily Pennsylvanian:

The search for Penn’s next basketball coach is in its “final stages,” according to Athletic Director Steve Bilsky.

And ...

After a search in which “hundreds” of names have surfaced, he said he has “narrowed that down to a group of nine who have actually had personal contact.”

Of the nine, six are Division I head coaches, one is a D-I assistant and two are from “the professional ranks” which Bilsky clarified to be the NBA. ...

He extolled the advantages of conducting a search that dates back several months rather than waiting until the conclusion of the regular season, when the coaching carousel hits full gear.

Speaking of basketball, one of the fun things about reading Princeton's TigerBlog is stumbling across a new Pete Carril quote. I've read and heard a bunch of 'em over the years and "Yoda" even game me a few. One I will never forget came after a 10-4 Dartmouth team that lost only to Penn and Princeton fell to the Tigers for the second time that winter to see its championship hopes extinguished:

"They have defendable players," Carril told me, "and we defended them."

Here's an excerpt from a piece in Friday's TigerBlog that mentioned pickup ball with Pete at Jadwin Gym:

One time, when another player went down with a knee injury that turned out to be a torn ACL, everyone gathered around while someone ran to get an athletic trainer. In the silence, while the player was down, Carril walked up to him and said: "Now might not be the best time to tell you that you traveled."

A recent TigerBlog post recounted this one I had heard before:

As Carril used to say, "One day I'm going to be dead, and two guys are going to walk past my grave and say 'poor guy, never won a national championship,' and I won't hear a word they say."

Another Carrilism cribbed from TigerBlog:

"God blessed me the day that kid walked into my life," he said of one player. "If I asked everyone in this locker room to write down one word that best describes you," he said to another player, "I'd get back 15 pieces of paper with the word a------ written on them."

Perhaps my all-time favorite, again stolen from TigerBlog, came after the 1989 NCAA game when Carril was asked if Alonzo Mourning should have been whistled for fouls on blocks that preserved No. 1 Georgetown's 50-49 win over 16th-seeded Princeton:

"I'll take that up with God when I get there."

This one that sums it all up:

"What good is being Spanish, if you can't chase after windmills?"

And finally, we had a fabulous day in Boston yesterday and can't possibly thank our hosts enough. We left Moose Mountain a little before 8:30 a.m., and got back home a little after 1:30 a.m.. Long day but kudos to Cooper the Wonder Dog, the golden retriever who looked at us a little cross-eyed when we came through the door but managed to, um, wait for us.