Schedule Talk

2010 Non-Conference Ivy League Football Schedules
(with 2009 records)

Brown
Stony Brook 6-5
at Rhode Island 1-10
at Holy Cross 9-3

Columbia
Fordham 5-6
Towson 2-9
Lafayette 8-3

Cornell
at Wagner 6-5
at Bucknell 4-7
Colgate 9-2

Dartmouth
at Bucknell 4-7
Sacred Heart 2-9
Holy Cross 9-3

Harvard
at Holy Cross 9-3
at Lehigh 4-7
Lafayette 8-3

Penn
Lafayette 8-3
at Villanova 14-1
at Bucknell 4-7

Princeton
at Lehigh 4-7
Lafayette 8-3
Colgate 9-2

Yale
Georgetown 0-11
Albany 7-4
Fordham 5-6

Combined records of opponents:
Penn 26-11
Princeton 21-12
Harvard 21-13
Cornell 1914
Brown 16-18
Columbia 15-18
Dartmouth 15-19
Yale 12-21

(Record of Dartmouth opponents for 2010 if the schedule had not been changed: 28-7)

Non-Conference Home-Away for 2010 (in order)
Yale H, H, H
Columbia H, H, H
Dartmouth A, H, H
Princeton A, H, H
Penn H, A, A
Brown H, A, A
Harvard A, A, H
Cornell A, A, H

Dartmouth's first game, of course, is now against Bucknell. Chuck Burton over at Lehigh Football Nation takes a look at Bucknell's offseason developments including the naming of Dr. John C. Bravman as president. Bravman came to Bucknell from Stanford. Chuck writes:

... Bucknell's selection of Dr. Bravman has the potential to be a giant step forward for Patriot League athletics - while, importantly, still not taking the eye off the academic ball. It's hard to envision him arguing against the merits of merit-based athletic aid for football, for example, or letting the Bison football program slide into obscurity. In a very short time he had a key role to in the resurgence of Stanford's athletics programs - and did so while maintaining Stanford's excelsior academic requirements.

Also ...

He's living proof that you can root, root, root for the home team on the weekend and be serious about square roots during the week. Loving academia and athletics are not mutually exclusive.

Sounds like Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim, although I doubt he has President Kim's arm ;-)

More specific to football, Chuck writes:

... (T)he Bison are abandoning the triple-option ... to run a more balanced offense, and the return of junior DT Josh Eden to the lineup as he returns from his Mormon mission means an already good defense could be even better next year.

And he adds this final, interesting twist on the new matchup:

When Bucknell hosts Dartmouth this fall, it could very well be that the new (Bucknell) president will be sending what he knows about Big Green head coach Buddy Teevens' coaching style to his football coach, fresh off the staff at Rutgers. A date which was for a long time a void in the schedule is now an intriguing must-see matchup - and a home game, too - for the new president of Bucknell. It's not hard to see why Bucknell fans are optimistic.

It is one thing to have "live" quarterbacks in a spring game. It is another thing to call a play that sets the quarterback up for a killer hit. Check out what happens to UMass quarterback Octavious Hawkins in this 22-second YouTube clip. (Seriously, don't miss this one.)

Former Holy Cross quarterback Dominic Randolph, a thorn in Dartmouth's side the past four years, didn't last long with the New York Giants. (link)

Looks as if Dartmouth is getting a new assistant basketball coach with a familiar name. This story says Patrick Beilein, son of Michigan coach John Belein, will be heading to Hanover. He was a 1,000-point scorer (actually 1,001 ;-) under his dad at West Virginia.

If you happen to know anyone looking to get off the Dartmouth waitlist you might want to tell them not to get their hopes up. Today's Daily Dartmouth reports the college has experienced perhaps its highest ever yield and that, "any wait list activity will be very limited," according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Maria Laskaris.

Um, speaking of That Certain Senior, she and others in her class at Hanover High are participating this spring in an annual rite called, unfortunately, Assassin. It's a water pistol-gun-water balloon game where teams of four seniors try to eliminate a designated opposing team of four seniors with one team surviving to move on in the "bracket" each week. It's a pretty crazy deal with kids sleeping over each other's houses for protection (those with attached garages are preferred) and getting up in the wee hours to stake-out their "victims."

Last week TCSenior returned from a softball game to see her car (MY car, actually!) wrapped up in blue masking tape (fortunately the kind that doesn't peel paint) to try to delay her access to the car long enough to soak her. She connived a couple of younger kids into undoing the tape while she waited safely in another car. Last night she wasn't as lucky. She arrived home from an away softball game to find all the windows of her car (MY car again!) covered with shaving cream. Windshield, back windows, side windows. Again she thought she'd dodged the (water) bullet only to have the perps surprise her. On the plus side, she "took one out" just as he took her out.

(By the way, there's a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a Hanover High mother one day going out to the trash barrel only to find a shooter in the barrel waiting to soak down her kid. No word on whether the shooter was successful or whether anyone sat next to him/her in class later that day.)

Back to our story. The nice part of TCSenior being "eliminated," is that after the soaking, the soakers all joined in to help her remove the shaving cream from the car. In the interest of honesty, if you looked closely you could see some remnant of the affair this morning, but it was sweet that they stuck around to help.

Speaking of TCSenior, her softball team is now 0-7. Hanover has tremendous success in virtually every sport over the years but this is one of the few exceptions. They've been outscored, 83-12. Yesterday it was 10-1 with a certain two-year captain having one of the two hits, a sacrifice bunt and scoring the only run. She's played every inning over her four-year career and made the all-state second team last year, but for a competitive kid who played baseball with the boys into her freshman summer, this is really hard. She's looking forward to running track in the spring at college.

That Certain Soph, meanwhile, has been enjoying the move from catcher to second base this year with the Hanover jayvee baseball team. Yesterday he turned a doubleplay for the first two outs of the final inning and then snagged a liner to end the game. He's always been a catcher before, but with a logjam behind the plate he's making a nice transition to the field, and that has carried over to a solid year at the plate as well.