This is just a guess but there probably aren't many college football lounges that have a moose antler on display. Coach Buddy Teevens found this one, curiously enough, on an antler-seeking hike in the northern woods. Trust me, it's much larger than it looks and solid as a rock. A pretty good conversation starter when folks walk into the lounge, I'd bet. (Click the photo to supersize it.)By the way, the booklet to the left in the photo is also a little unusual. It's a compilation of the daily stories I wrote several years ago on Teevens' cross country bicycle ride.
The Daily Dartmouth has a story about new football co-captain Charles Bay. The story includes this quote from the big defensive end, who came to football late in his high school career:
“I was on the track team, so I was pretty fast. I thought I could be a wide receiver. They tried me out there and I actually played one game but after that they put me over on defense and it worked pretty well. I liked the idea of hitting people rather than getting hit.”ESPN has another nice story on Villanova all-everything star Matt Szczur. You might say the 5-foot-11, 190-pound Szczur has had a pretty good year:
- MVP of the national championship football game when he had 270 rushing, receiving and return yards in Villanova's 23-21 win over Montana.
- A .435 batting average, second in the Big East.
- Was the 1-in-80,000 who happened to be a match and donated bone marrow to help save the life of a 19-month-old little girl with leukemia.
The Connecticut gubernatorial campaign of Oz Griebel '71, a member of Dartmouth's 1970 NCAA College World Series team and a former Big Green football player, is heating up as he wins an early straw poll. There's a story on the Oz for Governor website.
I've been told this is a nice video on Reggie Williams and the fight of his life. (I haven't been able to watch it. See below ...)
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OK, I'm going to go a little Andy Rooney on you here and complain a little about "progress," in college athletic websites.As much as I like video, folks, I just don't think it can be to the near exclusion of the written word. For one thing, as hard as it may be for those of you in the 'burbs to understand, some of us simply aren't able to watch video at our homes. (I've been a member of the Hanover rural broadband committee for some time and absolutely no progress has been made toward getting high speed to those of us who live outside of town.)
For another thing, if you watch a video of a football coach talking about his team and want to share a thought or a stat with a classmate or friend, you've got to rewind the video and take notes to get the names or the position changes or numbers the coach talked about correct. Go ahead and try cutting and pasting from a video.
I won't even get into what a problem relying on video is for the media.
And finally, I know I'm definitely swimming against the tide on this one but I can't help myself. The front page of virtually every football website is now built around a rotating photo and caption. Beneath the big photo, a series of smaller pictures that rotate into the space above as the "feature" photo/story. I know I'm repeating something I wrote before, but there are times when I feel like I'm playing Whack-a-Mole trying to bring up the story that interests me.
Honestly, it's hard to tell when a site has a new story because I find myself sitting through a rotation saying, "I think I saw that one yesterday. I think I saw that one yesterday."
My feeling is web designers are getting a little like the graphics people at ESPN. Just because they have the capability of producing eye candy doesn't mean it's a good idea if people can't easily find the information they want. It's not about the art. It's about the information.
So my suggestion, web designers, is to go ahead and keep your rotating stories, but somewhere off to the side have a dated list of stories. Each time there's a new one, put it at the top and slide the others down the list.
I know. I know.
It's a revolutionary idea.
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