The AD Search Winds Down

Our local paper has a story about Dartmouth's search for a new athletic director. The story lists five candidates it has reason to believe might be among the finalists. That's might be finalists. Those named are:

• Interim AD Bob Ceplikas '78
  
• Reggie Williams '76, former Cincinnati Bengal and Dartmouth great
  
• Dan Gavitt '88, associate commissioner of the Big East and son of Dave Gavitt '59
  
• John Hardt, Bucknell athletic director
• Harry Sheehy, Williams athletic director

If the story is correct, it appears an offer has been extended and an announcement could be imminent.


I don't think I had seen this video of incoming quarterback recruit Cole Marcoux before. It opens with a brief interview and then shows highlights of his performance in the US Army All-American game. To say the announcers were gushing over Marcoux is to be guilty of understatement ;-)

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Tulsa World's Sports Extra has an interview with incoming Oklahoma all-state lineman Cohle Fowler of Verdigris High School in Claremore. Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens had this to say in the spring about the 6-foot-3 Fowler, who comes in at more than 300 pounds:

“We learned about him a little bit late. He's a good-sized guy who moves his feet pretty well. He was really very excited about the school when he came out for a late visit with us. Seeing him, he can play inside and is large enough to possibly play outside. He is an inside guard which would also allow us to teach him to snap the football.”

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Speaking of big guys, one who got away is a 6-9, 310-pound senior offensive tackle for the Colorado Buffaloes. But get this: If he had come to Dartmouth he was going to play basketball. That's what this story in the Denver Post said. The story says the former tight end was once clocked at 4.8 in the 40.

Now considered an NFL prospect, Solder told the paper:

"I really considered Dartmouth, but couldn't afford it. But coming to Colorado turned out to be the best decision."

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There hasn't been much information out of Game One opponent Bucknell until now. The 2010 Bucknell media guide is available for download here. Something I discovered in a quick look at the guide: While the stadium was opened on Oct. 18, 1924, it was rededicated on Sept. 30, 1989. The opponent? Dartmouth! Bucknell won the game, 36-20.

Bucknell's coach in that game, by the way, was Dartmouth grad Lou Maranzana '70.

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He didn't play the way he hoped on Friday but Dartmouth men's golf coach Rich Parker made the cut in the U.S. Senior Open at Sahalee Country Club outside of Seattle – with one stroke to spare. After opening with a 72 he shot 77 yesterday to stand at 9-over 149, tied for 48th place with, among others, Craig Stadler. Parker is set to tee off at 8:43 today and will be paired with Bruce Vaughan. The opening-round leader with a 66 blew up in the second round with an 82.

Scorah Makes it Tri-Captains

The Dartmouth football team will have tri-captains next fall with news that strong safety Pat Scorah will join receiver Timmy McManus and defensive end Charles Bay in leading the Big Green in 2010. A senior from Washington, D.C., and St. John's College High School, Scorah led the Big Green with 64 tackles last year including five for a loss. He had one interception and one forced fumble. Bay and McManus were announced as captains at halftime of the Green-White spring game. (Photos courtesy of Dartmouth sports publicity)

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Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens doesn't get to step under center on Sunday and baseball coach Bob Whalen never gets the chance to dig in at the plate at Fenway, but golf is different. Coaches can keep playing and so it is with Dartmouth golf coach Rich Parker, who shot 72 and is tied for 20th place starting the second day of the U.S. Senior Open at Sahalee Country Club outside of Seattle. Parker was at even par through 16 holes before making bogey on 16 and 18. (Scorecard).

The New York Times had a story about Parker that said he's called "Coach," or "Rich" around campus. They might have added Chuckie, but that's another story.

The photo above is from the press packet for the Senior Open. One correction: Parker played baseball, basketball and golf at Plymouth. He did not play football but he probably could have because when they write the history of the best athletes ever to come out of the Upper Valley, Parker will be in the conversation if not at the top of the list.

I had the Senior Open broadcast on in the background yesterday and perked up when I heard Curtis Strange mention that Parker is the head coach at "Dartmouth University." After a commercial break Strange apologized for misspeaking. I'm guessing that Sean McDonough, who was handling the "play by play" of the broadcast, corrected him. I clearly remember McDonough, who happens to be from Massachusetts, broadcasting a Dartmouth football game from Memorial Field. Without telling tales out of school, I think it is fair to say he enjoyed his visit to what he referred to on yesterday's broadcast as, "beautiful Hanover, N.H." He also referred to Hanover as a, "great Ivy League institution."

Rich Parker's caddy, by the way, is Scott Peters, son of former Dartmouth director of athletics Seaver Peters. A terrific amateur golfer himself, Scott Peters owns and runs Golf & Ski Warehouse in West Lebanon, N.H.

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Bucknell has a release about its football game against Cornell being carried on the CBS College Sports Network. If you can't make it to Lewisburg, Pa., for Dartmouth's opener against the Bison, you can get a look at gorgeous Christy Mathewson-Memorial Stadium on the Oct. 2 battle of the 'Nells.

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Stopping by one of my usual haunts this morning I discovered the Sacredheartpioneers.com domain is for sale. Either Dartmouth's second opponent forgot to pay the bill or it is getting a new web address. Until today that link always brought up Sacred Heart football's site.

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For a sweet reminiscence of what football Saturdays mean to a young boy – even a boy whose father is the winningest coach in Division I history – check out this column by Jay Paterno. From the column:

I’m reminded of the excitement I felt as a kid on a Tuesday night watching the temporary lights being brought into town for the 1982 Nebraska showdown. The wait from that Tuesday night to kickoff was the longest week of school in my life. Even now I can hardly wait for the games each Saturday.

On Friday nights I drive past the empty stadium and I slow down to look. At bedtime it takes a little longer to fall asleep, and I am a kid again.

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The Daily Dartmouth has a story today about thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail. From the lede:

The Appalachian Trail — which crosses through Hanover on its stretch from Maine to Georgia — has brought hikers of all shapes, sizes and trail nicknames to campus this summer. Hikers passing through often take advantage of discounts and services offered by both the town and the College ...

The trail comes up the hill from Norwich, Vt., wends through town and eventually crosses back into the wilderness at Chase Field, where football's Blackman practice fields are located. (Our home on the shoulder of Moose Mountain is about one-quarter mile from the trail, which I can access out my back door ;-).

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Speaking of hiking, That Certain Hanover Grad got her top DOC first-year choice, Hiking 4. She hiked to the bottom of Grand Canyon two years in a row so I guess she feels up to what is said to be a serious challenge ;-)

About That Dartmouth Game, Coach ...

Curious what Sacred Heart coach Paul Gorham thinks about his team playing Dartmouth in its first-ever game against an Ivy League opponent? You can ask him. No, really.

Like the Ivy League, which will hold its teleconference on Aug. 10, the Northeast Conference is putting its coaches on the telephone for a conference call with the media. While the general public won't be in on the call, the NEC teleconference on Aug. 4 has a nice added element in that the pubic is invited to send along questions. To find out how to ask a question of the 1984 New Hampshire grad, click here.

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Speaking of preseason media days, the Colonial Athletic Association got the jump on the other FCS conferences in the region and UNH – which was replaced by Sacred Heart on the Dartmouth schedule this fall – was picked third in the powerhouse conference. Here's how the CAA poll went:

1. Villanova (17 first-place votes)
2. William and Mary
3. New Hampshire (2)
4. James Madison
5. Delaware (1)
6. Richmond
7. Maine
8. Massachusetts
9. Rhode Island
10. Towson

Consider that a bullet dodged.

The CAA has once again produced and posted videos for its preseason all-conference teams. Check them out here.

UNH, by the way, is still doing a media guide that is available via the Internet, here.

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The University at Albany hasn't shown up on the Dartmouth schedule yet, but it wouldn't be a surprise if the Big Green and Great Danes end up playing sometime in the future. (Albany is playing Yale this year and has played Cornell in the past.) Perhaps if Dartmouth holds off long enough it will play in Albany's proposed new stadium. Time will tell if it gets built (and if it looks like this) but check out what they are dreaming about in New York's capital region here.

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DartBlog is hearing interesting things about the Dartmouth athletic director search. From the site:

Word is filtering back that the AD search is now going swimmingly — and not only David Spalding thinks so. It seems that the College has the pick of the litter: the applicant pool is first class.

A Decade of Dominance

The best records in the FCS from 2000-2009:

1. Montana 120-24 (.833)
2. Harvard 76-23 (.768)
3. Appalachian State 102-33 (.756)
4. Northern Iowa 80-29 (.734)
5. Penn 69-29 (.704)
6. McNeese State 82-35 (.700)
7. Colgate 81-34 (.701)
8. San Diego 73-33 (.689)
9. Furman 83-39 (.680)
10. Hampton 73-36 (.669)

In case Colgate's record got you wondering about the challenging non-league schedule Dartmouth has played for the past decade, the University of New Hampshire's record over the decade was 75-47 (.615). After an 18-27 start from 2000-2003, UNH has gone 57-20 (.740).

Holy Cross went 55-57 (.491) over the decade, but 39-28 (.582) since former Dartmouth assistant Tom Gilmore took over as head coach in 2004 – and 36-20 (.643) over the past five years.

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The Ivy League football web page has come to life with a collection of links to various preseason All-Ivy League and All-America teams. If you've been stopping by this electronic neighborhood there's nothing new here, but it's nice to have the links all in one place.

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It's available on the Dartmouth website, but I was not aware that the 2009 Dartmouth football highlight video can be watched via YouTube. It's well done.

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TigerBlog once again writes about the end of the printed media guide. He – I won't give away who he is but trust me, he's a, well, a him – and I aren't 100 percent on the same page about this. I'm keeping the final media guide for each Dartmouth opponent on my bookshelf for historical purposes.

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Speaking of media guides – and I worked on a few in my days in sports information – there's no question doing them was a headache. I'm not going to start telling tales out of school here, but suffice it to say some creative thinking occasionally came into play when the right photos didn't exist.

Nothing quite like this however. Ouch.

I like the writer's take on the whole thing:

Seeing the images, I had three immediate questions:

1. How does this guy have so much time on his hands?
2. Why is a Nebraska fan surfing the Texas Tech website then posting links on a Texas A&M message board?
3. Who cares?

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Interesting promotional concept out at Colgate. From a release:

The Colgate Raiders are gearing up for the best ride of the summer with the inaugural 2010 Raiders Tour. This summer road tour will make stops at towns throughout the Central New York area to give fans chances to win tickets to Colgate football games, receive free giveaway items, take photos with championship trophies and receive information about football ticket discounts.

This summer, fans can meet Raider along with coaches and former standout wide receiver Pat Simonds ’10 at select stops on the Tour.

Only the first two stops of the "tour" are listed, but kudos to the folks in Hamilton for some forward thinking.

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Former Dartmouth quarterback Josh Cohen gets "props" for his basketball ability from his brother Jake, a 6-foot-10 hoops standout at Davidson in this Q&A. Specifically:

Who is the best player you ever had to guard?
The best player I ever had to guard….I would have to say my older brother. Even though he decided to play football, he can flat out hoop. I’ve covered him a lot, and I mean a lot, and he has this nasty habit of making every shot he takes when I cover him. It must be a big brother thing, I don’t know.

Josh Cohen thought seriously about trying to play basketball at Dartmouth. His "little" brother, by the way, is having a terrific summer playing the the U20 European Championships representing Israel. Sports Illustrated.com has a story about the younger Cohen.

In the News

Dartmouth Now has a story about golf coach Rich Parker teeing it up this week starting Thursday at the U.S. Senior Open in Sammamish, Wash. Parker earlier this year earned a check at a Champions Tour event in New York State. I remember covering the 1990 U.S. Open at Medinah outside of Chicago and thinking then what I think now: If Rich ever makes it into the interview room it will be like ice cream for the media. Trust me, Boo Weekley has nothing on him when it comes to being quotable.

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The San Diego Union-Tribune takes a look at a high school quarterback named Garrett Krstich who has a 3.9 GPA and isited Harvard, Dartmouth and Brown this summer.

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The News Press in Fort Myers, Fla., writes about SEC Commissioner – and Dartmouth grad – Mike Slive, who just turned 70.

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Russell Wilson, the North Carolina State quarterback and son of former Dartmouth receiver Harry Wilson '77 who died in June, is playing pro baseball this summer in the Colorado Rockies organization. The News Observer has a story.

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Noticed on the Columbia website that you can buy a Roar-ee Bobble Head Doll for $18 plus $2 shipping. Can someone please tell me where I can buy a Big Green Bobble Head Doll?

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Penn offensive lineman Joe D'Orazio is the only Ivy Leaguer on the All-America team posted by The Sports Network Monday. D'Orazio was named to the third team.

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Thanks to an emailer who follows these things for sharing a link to these adidas football T-shirts. I can't say the design does a lot for me, but you may like them.

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Do I miss newspaper work? A little bit on occasion, but not very often. One thing I certainly don't miss is the anxiety that came with making sure I was "out front" on breaking news in the Dartmouth athletic department if you catch my drift.

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I'm out of town the rest of the day so I'll return your emails either late tonight or tomorrow.

Name That Linebacker

It's not hard but you have to connect the dots on this Orlando Sentinel story about a promising Florida high school linebacker just to figure out who his famous father might be. For some reason the dad's name doesn't appear in the story (although I expect at some point an editor will get to the story and insert the name).

The son's name? Kellen Williams.

The father's name? Here are some clues from the story:

• Went to Dartmouth
• Played 14 years in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals
• Was intense on the field

That's right. High school linebacker Kellen Williams' dad happens to be Reggie Williams '76.

The younger Williams is 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds. From the story:

Williams was a bit surprised to hear he had made the list, and he knows there are other players out there who could have been place in the spot he garnered.

"Of course, everyone thinks they're the best at their own positions," said Williams, who has snared the No. 9 spot on the Sentinel's 2011 Central Florida Top 10 linebackers.

And the ending ...

Grades won't be an issue, however. With that 1600 and a 4.5 weighted GPA, he'll be getting looks from plenty of schools.

"No matter what happens, I'm going to get a good degree somewhere," Williams said. "All of the schools I've talked to have stressed academics."

Like Dartmouth.

"They are really interested," he said, "since my dad went there."

The story doesn't mention it but Williams goes to West Orange High School in Winter Garden, Fla. His Scout.com page can be found here.

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It would be hard to have a better season than Rick Taylor had this year as head coach of the Calanda Broncos in Switzerland. Correction: It would be impossible to have a better season.

The onetime Dartmouth assistant and former Northwestern director of athletics saw a 16-0 season come to an end with a 49-7 win over the Basel Gladiators in the Swiss Bowl. With the victory Calanda became the first Swiss team ever to win the Bowl and the EFAF Cup. Find a full story and pictures here. Best of luck with the translated page here.

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New Hampshire isn't on the Dartmouth schedule this fall but it's still interesting to take a look at the kind of information UNH's high-powered conference churns out. The Colonial Athletic Association online media guide can be found here.

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Speaking of high-powered, Penn State is playing Indiana this fall at FedEx Field in Landover, Md. It's an Indiana home game, if you can believe that. Find a story here. But that's old news.

The reason for bringing it up again is to point you to a really impressive 30-second promotional video put together by the PSU people. Do take a look at it because it is the kind of thing an Ivy school could pull together and easily toss up on YouTube. It does get the blood flowing.

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And yes, it was fun to watch that clip without any "buffering." With our long-awaited DSL up and running I'll have to find something to whine about other than our slow Internet ;-)

Who ARE Those Guys?

"I couldn't do that. Could you do that? Why can they do it? Who ARE those guys?"

Butch Cassidy
in the 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Dartmouth hasn't played Bucknell since 1993 but at least there's a frame of reference for this year's Week One opponent. The Big Green has never played Week Two foe Sacred Heart.

Bucknell plays two or three Ivies semingly every year. Sacred Heart? It has never played an Ivy.

While Dartmouth plays two Patriot League opponents every year, it has never played a single member of the Northeast Conference, which is made up of Albany, Bryant, Central Connecticut, Duquesne, Monmouth, Robert Morris, Sacred Heart, St. Francis and Wagner.

So to quote the immortal (or mortal as it turned out) Butch Cassidy, Who ARE those guys?

You can start to learn about the Pioneers ...

On the Sacred Heart football web page
In their 2010 prospectus
On the Northeast Conference football page

Sacred Heart, by the way, is the "second largest Catholic university in New England," according to its Wikipedia entry.

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I liked pinball when it was three games for a quarter and before it got all glitzy, but my video game history stopped at Pac-Man. Those Certain Two kids, meanwhile, never had a "gaming system," so I'm a little out of my depth, but I've discovered there's something called The FCS Project/Team Directory that is listing all the FCS teams "built" for "NCAA 11."

To see what this is all about you can check out teams that one game owner built for Brown and Columbia. (Those are the only teams posted so far.) It's worth it just to see the mockups of their uniforms. Anyway ...

For Brown, the team builder rated:

Academic Prestige: A+
Campus Lifestyle: A
Coach Experience: A
Championship Contender: D
Athletic Facilities: D
Fan Base: D
Pro Factory: D
Program Stability: C+
Program Tradition: C+
Television Exposure: D

Green Alert Take: I'm not going to comment on most of those grades, but Pro Factory D? If this is in comparison to other FCS programs, that should be an A.

Admit it. This is all just one person's opinion but you are curious what the grades are for Columbia, aren't you? Me, too.

For Columbia, the same team builder who did Brown handed out these grades:

Academic Prestige: A+
Campus Lifestyle: A
Coach Experience: C
Championship Contender: D
Athletic Facilities: D
Fan Base: D
Pro Factory: D+
Program Stability: C
Program Tradition: C
Television Exposure: D

How would you grade Dartmouth?

You can find the listing of FCS teams that have been built already here, although you'll have to scroll down a bit.

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I'm off to work the final day of the Tommy Keane Invitational golf tournament today. Then I've got three pretty big freelance assignments to try to wrap up over the next two weeks to clear my plate so I can devote myself pretty much full time to Big Green Alert premium.

I said it before, but in six years of doing BGA I haven't sensed anywhere near the optimism I'm feeling from people I've heard from to date.

Broadband Access

"You know what" has frozen over. At long last DSL has officially arrived here on Moose Mountain. We'll have to see about down time and service interruptions, but as of today there's no comparison to what we had before.

I'm off working the Tommy Keane Invitational golf tournament at Hanover Country Club but I'll be interested to fiddle with the 'Net tonight.

Will of a Champion

A website called Will of a Champion is reprising a 2007 interview conducted with former Dartmouth linebacker Marshall Hyzdu '00. The headline:

Marshall Hyzdu shares what he did to play Division I football at Dartmouth College, one of the best colleges in the world.

Hyzdu told the site:

Football and all athletics end for every competitor at some point and less than 1% of college athletes ever go on to become paid professionals. In my opinion, an education should be the number one priority. A person’s athletic skills can be stolen at any point in his or her life, but an education is untouchable…no one can ever take away my college degree and education.

At 6-foot-3, 220 pounds, the graduate of Cincinnati football powerhouse Moeller High School was credited with 82 tackles as a Big Green senior. Following the season he was presented with Dartmouth's Frank Hershey Award, given, "To the varsity player who, judged by his teammates, possesses a genuine zest for life, a strong, upbeat attitude and a sincere desire to win because of his dedication and love for the game, his team and Dartmouth College."

What's interesting about Hyzdu's comment about just 1 percent of college athletes going on to play pro spors is that his brother Adam, played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Boston Red Sox, San Diego Padres and Texas Rangers from 2000-2006. (He was drafted out of high school.) Another brother played football at Miami University.

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The official Dartmouth website has a brief on the Penn game being televised in the Philadelphia area starting at 3:30 on Oct. 2. From the story:

This will be the eighth time Dartmouth and Penn will square off in a televised game, but the Quakers have won each of the first seven dating back to 1983.

Dartmouth's last win at Franklin Field was 1997 when Big Green kicker Dave Regula snatched a fumble of his own kickoff and ran it in 32 yards for a touchdown. (link) Not surprisingly, that made ESPN.

But I digress. The full Big Green will kick off games at five different times this fall. The schedule, now with times for every game:

Sept. 18 at Bucknell, 1 p.m.
Sept. 25 Sacred Heart, 1:30 p.m.
Oct. 2 at Penn, 3:30 p.m.
Oct. 9 Yale, 1:30 p.m.
Oct. 16 Holy Cross, 1:30 p.m.
Oct. 23 at Columbia, 1:30 p.m.
Oct. 30 Harvard, 1:30 p.m.
Nov. 6 at Cornell, 12:30 p.m.
Nov. 13 Brown, Noon
Nov. 20 at Princeton, 1 p.m.

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As we speak the telephone company folks are on the road in front of our house trying to get our phone working for the first time since midday Thursday. Although it's impossible to know how many calls we've missed – probably a few – there's been something liberating about being somewhat out of touch. (Insert your own joke here.)

While the phone people are here they said they are going to hook up our DSL. All things considered, I might not be able to mope about our s-l-o-w internet service after today. (Although fiber optic sure would be nice!)

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I'll be off to the Tommy Keane Invitational golf tournament to take care of my responsibilities as sort of a "media coordinator" for the event in a few minutes. Longtime fans of Dartmouth athletics might want to check out this 10-second video I posted on the TKI blog yesterday. No, that's not Ivor Robson of British Open fame. It's former Dartmouth director of athletics Seaver Peters.

WR Recruit Catches On at Oil Bowl

Incoming receiver Joe Dowdell of Bishop Kelley High School in Oklahoma was the leading receiver in the 73rd Oil Bowl in Wichita, Texas, on June 12. Dowdell hauled in four passes for 54 yards as his Oklahoma squad dropped a 13-12 decision to Texas.

Dowdell was one of a whopping five Ivy League-bound players in the Oil Bowl. The others:

Texas
Dillon Farley, Princeton
Taylor Pearson, OT, Princeton
Ricky Zorn, QB, Harvard

Oklahoma
Mike Major, T, Tulsa Princeton. (Major was a high school teammate of Dowdell.)

Find a note about Dowdell receiving an offer from Dartmouth last year here, and a Tulsa World story about him "signing" with Dartmouth in February, here.

Dowdell will also be playing in the Oklahoma All-State game in Jenks on July 30 as a member of the East team. Find the game roster here.

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If notes from early Green Alert Premium subscribers are any indication, there is indeed a sense of growing optimism among Dartmouth football fans this summer.

That optimism carries over to a columnist for the Daily Dartmouth who writes:

Two years can make a huge difference, and the shifting destiny of the Dartmouth football team is a clear-cut example. Two seasons ago, the team fought hard, but wound up with a winless season. Last season, the team demonstrated to its fans how it developed as a whole and the success that was yet to come.

Now, less than two months away from the kickoff of the 2010 season, I am a believer.

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What FCS (I-AA) team has the most players in the NFL? Unless you read Craig Haley's piece on The Sports Network site it will probably take you a lot of guesses to get it right. I know I would have named a ton of schools before I came up with the University of Maine (where Dartmouth's Buddy Teevens began his head coaching career). That's right, the answer is UMaine, which had no fewer than seven players on NFL rosters last year.

Standout Maine fullback Jared Turcotte, who dreamed at one time of playing for Dartmouth, could join those ranks in a couple of years. Before then, however, this Portland Press Herald story says the bruising preseason All-America – who missed all of last season with injury – will become a husband and a father.

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While drilling USC for the Reggie Bush/OJ Mayo mess, Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan takes a mini-swipe at the Ancient Eight. He writes (italics are mine):

The NCAA exists because at the turn of the 20th century colleges couldn’t trust each other to play fair in terms of just who was wearing these uniforms and what was being done for them at their schools. Nobody has ever trusted anybody, and with good reason. This means you, too, Ivy League. You’ll all do whatever you think you can get away with.

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Away from the playing field ...

From today's Daily Dartmouth:

Dartmouth’s total projected budget for the 2010 fiscal year shows a $5.6 million surplus despite original projections of a $2.5 million deficit, according to Senior Vice President Steven Kadish. While the College of Arts and Sciences is expected to break even, the sum of the professional schools’ budgets will likely account for a “modest” surplus, he said.

And this ...

More than 80 percent of the projected budget gap through fiscal year 2014 has been resolved, Kadish said.

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And finally, today was the long-awaited day when DSL was finally supposed to arrive at this outpost on the shoulder of Moose Mountain. The countdown to what a friend jokingly referred to a,s "last century's technology," is on hold for a few days because our phone service went out at midday yesterday. Word is the phone company won't be able to look into the problem until tomorrow :-(

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And finally Part II, if you are trying to track me down between now and Sunday evening it will be hit and miss as I work as a media coordinator of sorts for the Tommy Keane Invitational golf tournament at Hanover Country Club. You can visit my TKI blog here. If there's one thing I enjoyed almost as much as covering football when I was at the newspaper, it was golf. Just keep your fingers crossed that the weather holds. The forecast as we speak is calling for a 40 percent chance of rain on championship Sunday.

More Dartmouth Football History Links

New additions to the on-line replacement for the Dartmouth football media guide:

• Dartmouth in pro football
• Dartmouth football timeline
• Ivy League composite standings, Dartmouth vs. Ivy opponents, Ivy composite scoring and defense since 1956.

Pennsylvania's Allentown Morning Call had a story and Q&A with onetime Dartmouth football assistant Rick Taylor, who has coached his Swiss football team to an undefeated season. Taylor told the paper:

The biggest "obstacle" has been the culture of the game over here. By that, I mean the players pay to play as well as paying for their own equipment. Any coach has to understand it is not like American sports with scholarships and 80+ players. We have a total of 34 players, three of whom have never played the game at any level. Consequently, practices are somewhat difficult to organize and quite a few players go both ways and are on special teams as well.

Taylor, most recently athletic director at Northwestern, once served as an assistant at Lehigh and his quarterback for the Calanda Broncos is Lafayette grad Marko Glavic, subject of this Morning Call story. Interestingly, the Swedish team Calanda beat for the European championship (game story) was quarterbacked by fellow Lafayette grad Rob Curley. The Glavic story gives some interesting background on what it is like to play at this level in Europe.

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Is competitive cheerleading a sport? Not according to a court case that had gender-equity ramifications. From this story:

Competitive cheerleading is not an official sport that colleges can use to meet gender-equity requirements, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in ordering a Connecticut school to keep its women's volleyball team.

Several volleyball players and their coach had sued Quinnipiac University after it announced in March 2009 that it would eliminate the team for budgetary reasons and replace it with a competitive cheer squad. ...

For a pretty thorough look at the competitive cheerleading issue, check out Lehigh Football Nation.

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From a news release:

Allstate Insurance Company and the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) announced the 112 student-athletes nominated for the Allstate AFCA Good Works Team ...

Seeing that, I figured Dartmouth and the Ivy League certainly have players who would fit the bill. But scanning down the list, no nominees from Dartmouth. In fact, no nominees at all from the Ivy League. Or the Patriot League. Or the Northeast Conference. One from the Colonial Athletic Association, a player from Delaware. It's the 19th year of the award and while it may be the schools' responsibility to nominate players, when virtually the entire northeast is unrepresented there's something rotten in Denmark.

From the release:

While glory and praise may be traditionally reserved for the most athletically skilled college football players on the field, it is the student-athletes committed to serving others who make the most important impact off the field. The Allstate AFCA Good Works Team exists to tell their stories and acknowledge their impact beyond the game.

I couldn't help but notice that there were just two divisions of nominees. The FBS (nee I-A), and everybody else (FCS, aka I-AA, Division II, Division III and NAIA).

OK, kids, we're going to do some 'rithmetic.

The NCAA lists 120 schools playing FCS football. If I counted correctly, there are 605 schools (give or take) in the Everybody Else category.

Given those numbers and the fact that this award is not based on skill level, it is astonishing that there were the same number of nominees in the FCS and Everybody Else categories, don't you think?

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With Harvard hoops standout Jeremy Lin signing with the Golden State Warriors after a solid performance in the NBA summer league, can a shoe contract be in the works, and Lin shirts on the racks in the Bay Area soon? According to a Harvard Crimson blogger the answer is yes.

The Ironman

Although the passing game has changed dramatically since he played, David Shula '81 still stands fifth on the all-time Dartmouth list for catches and receiving yards in a career. (His 135 catches and 1,822 yards were both school records when he graduated.)

The oldest son of Hall of Fame coach Don Shula, David played one year for the Baltimore Colts, eventually became head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals and sent three sons on to college football including Dan, a Dartmouth quarterback before graduating in '06.

Though he's a successful restaurateur these days, it wasn't Shula's that brought Florida's Sun-Sentinel to write a story about the former Dartmouth receiver, now a 51-year-old grandfather. Here's the headline from the story:

Dave Shula makes mark away from football as Ironman

Former Bengals coach follows exhaustive training regimen to prepare for his second ironman triathlete, Sunday at Lake Placid

From the story (italics are mine):

As a sportsman, Shula has found himself on some intriguing roads less traveled. Such as during the 900 miles he covered on a bicycle trip from San Diego in 2007 with former college teammate Buddy Teevens, now head football coach at their alma mater, Dartmouth.

(An aside: I wrote daily reports on Teevens' cross-country trip for this blog and a few posts that mentioned Shula can be found here. If you are in the football offices at Floren Varsity House you can find a bound copy of all the stories I wrote about the trip on a coffee table in the lounge.)

Anway, Shula told the Sun-Sentinel:

If you're competitive whatsoever, you can't help but miss the adrenaline rush that is game day. You don't know which direction your life is going to go. I thought I would have been a football coach forever. … It's worked out nicely."

*

Cruising my usual haunts I found a mention on the Penn site about Penn season tickets going on sale. Normally I wouldn't have read more than the headline but this time I glanced down and stumbled across this:

Be there when head coach Al Bagnoli ties and then breaks the 109-year-old school record for career coaching wins.

Hmm, I wondered to myself, "Could it be that he might have a chance to set the record against Dartmouth?"

Given the way the sentence was written they seem pretty confident it is going to happen this year, so I figured Al probably didn't need a bunch of wins.

The story didn't mention Bagnoli's career record at Penn so I scurried off to his bio on the school site. That mentioned 122 wins but it didn't mention the career mark of George Woodruff, whose all-time record Bagnoli is approaching. (Nor did it mention how many losses Bagnoli had at Penn.)

A visit to Bagnoli's Wikipedia entry lists his record in Philly: 122-56.

That noted, I now needed to find Woodruff's career record. I found that in the 2009 Ivy League Football Media Guide. Woodruff's record from 1892-1901: 124-15-2.

Interesting. Because I knew Dartmouth was Penn's third game I hustled back to the Quaker website to check their schedule and see who they would be playing in the first two weeks of the season: home against Lafayette and at Villanova. One win against either and Bagnoli can tie the 109-year-old Penn record against Dartmouth. Wins over Lafayette and Villanova – the defending national champion – and Al can set the record at home against the Big Green. It will be worth watching.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, Bagnoli's bio says he's one of just eight Ivy League coaches to have 100 or more wins. (With Harvard's Tim Murphy joining the club last year, it's actually at nine.) Here's the entire list:

• 179 Carm Cozza (Yale, 1965-96)
• 140 Edward Robinson (Brown, 1898-01, ’04-07 & ’10-25)
• 127 Bob Blackman (Dartmouth, 1955-70; Cornell, ’77-82)
• 124 George Woodruff (Penn, 1892-1901)
• 120 Tuss McLaughry (Brown, 1926-40; Dartmouth, ’41-42 & ’45-54)
• 117 Joe Restic (Harvard, 1971-93)
• 122 Al Bagnoli (Penn, 1992-Current)
• 110 Lou Little (Columbia, 1930-56)
• 104 Tim Murphy (Harvard, 1994-Current)

Next in line to reach 100 wins if he sticks around should be Brown's Phil Estes, who has 72 wins. Dartmouth's Buddy Teevens is next with 35 wins.

*

Dartmouth alum Brad Ausmus '91 has been activated off the disabled list by the Los Angeles Dodgers. He's mentioned briefly in a Los Angeles Times story. Ausmus, a recruit who signed with the New York Yankees before ever putting on a Dartmouth uniform, has been battling a bad back, probably not a huge surprise for a 41-year-old catcher. Ausmus' story is pretty well told on his Wikipedia entry.

*

A friend shared a link to a moving piece sportswriter Joe Posnanski penned about Dean Smith. News broke recently that the North Carolina coaching legend is struggling with memory issues.

From the story:

Dean was famous for checking up on people interviewing him — with his mastery of detail I always imagined he had extensive files on every sportswriter in the land ...

That made me laugh because it's safe to say I was not on Dean Smith's Christmas card list. Go ahead and ask me about it sometime ;-)

*

And finally, there's Internet progress here on the mountain. Um, did I say finally?

Those of you who have followed the BGA blog for the past six years (one year elsewhere before moving to the Blogger platform) may recall we were stuck with dial-up access when this adventure started. That was supplanted by a pizza-sized dish that brings Internet access by radio waves off a tower on the ridge behind us. Not fast, but faster than dial-up and not always dependable. (Two weeks of downtime one year meant a lot of drives to the library.)

Now, finally, we are getting last-century's technology and those of us here in the hinterlands are thrilled. That's right, DSL is coming. The modem arrived yesterday (by FedEx, not Pony Express, silly) and we are supposed to be "provisioned" Friday.

The speed is supposed to be markedly improved over what we've had. I can only hope the dependability is a little better. I know the price is significantly cheaper. Now let's see if I can get it to work ;-)

Stay tuned.

Men of Steele Redux

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The Daily Dartmouth has another update on Phil Steele's magazine choosing five Dartmouth players to its preseason All-Ivy League team. (July 9 BGA: Men of Steele). To the D's credit, it tracked down some of the players for comments.

Defensive backer/returner Shawn Abuhoff said:

It’s nice to be recognized. It’s all about confidence, but any preseason ranking means nothing to me. All that matters is what I’m doing on the field.”

Kicker Foley Schmidt said:

““Being recognized is great. But we must all continue to work even harder to make sure that this year is a successful one.”

Also tapped by Phil Steele's magazine were tailback Nick Schwieger, receiver Tanner Scott and linebacker Garrett Wymore.

One clarification on the story. Of Abuhoff it says:

He is a manageable eight picks away from becoming the Ancient Eight’s career record holder. If he were to get all eight interceptions during the 2010 season, he would hold both the single-season and career top marks.

With six, Abuhoff is actually eight interceptions from the Dartmouth record of 14 for a career shared by Lloyd Lee '98 and Scott Sims '89. Lee later played for the San Diego Chargers and coached in the NFL.

The Ivy League career record of 22 interceptions is held by Princeton's Dean Cain (who went on to fame in the TV series Lois & Clark). Cain had a whopping 12 interceptions in 1987 alone.

*

The Daily Pennsylvanian has a story about Penn's latest in a line of transfer quarterbacks. Ryan Becker comes to West Philly from Florida State, where the DP says, "At one point last season, Becker was the Seminoles’ backup signal caller, though he never played a down."

Because the walk-on did not appear in a game, he is listed at Penn as a freshman and will have four seasons of eligibility. (In case you are wondering, that's the same scenario enjoyed by former Dartmouth tailback Pete Oberle '96, who redshirted at Colorado State and then played four years in Hanover. Oberle is still fifth on the Big Green career rushing chart with 1,763 yards. Find the "lede" to a Boston Globe story about Oberle's transfer here.)

Becker's Florida State bio can be found here and his Penn bio is here. He's actually grown two inches from 5-foot-10 to 6 feet since leaving FSU ;-). To see video of the QB, click here.

Becker is a product of Florida prep powerhouse St. Thomas Aquinas, which sent quarterback Dan Shula '06 to the Big Green.

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New York Times Op-Ed columnist Ross Douthat had a very interesting column earlier this week on admission to "eight highly selective colleges and universities," and the role affirmative action played in shaping the student body. Worth noting is that Douthat is a 2002 Harvard graduate. For a more incendiary (?) look at the same subject, check out Patrick Buchanan's take.

*

And finally, thanks to those of you who have already signed up for another year of Big Green Alert Premium. A reminder: If you are a returning subscriber, you do not need to fill out the form with a new password and username.

Time To Sign Up

HANOVER – With what many expect to be a renaissance season for Dartmouth football just around the corner, the official signup for the sixth year of Big Green Alert has kicked off.

As always there will be a minimum of one newspaper-length story posted every day from the start of the cycle in early August through the end of the season. During the season there will once again be 10 or so full-length stories each week.

Every practice will be covered with same-day stories (including two on double-session days). Two stories will be filed on location the night of each game.

To subscribe or learn more about Big Green Alert, click here.

Here's a blurb from the site telling you who is behind this whole thing ;-)

Bruce Wood covered his first Dartmouth football game for the Valley News in 1979.

After two years, he left to become sports editor of a daily newspaper in Pennsylvania. He returned to the Upper Valley in 1983 to serve as Dartmouth's assistant sports information director.

In 1988 he rejoined the Valley News where the contacts he made were invaluable in his role as the Dartmouth beat writer through June of 2005.

Bruce has won numerous state and national awards for his writing from the College Sports Information Directors of America and Vermont and New Hampshire press associations. He has written for a wide range of magazines and is the author of the Ivy League chapter in the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, published in 2005.

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Here's a sampling of a BGA game preview from last fall, followed by a game story Dartmouth fans might enjoy reading:

Buckle Your Seatbelts
It Can Be a Wild Ride When Cornell and Dartmouth Get Together

By Bruce Wood
www.biggreenalert.com

HANOVER – It is safe to say that neither Dartmouth (1-6 overall, 1-3 Ivy League) nor Cornell (2-5, 1-3) has bullied its way up and down the field like a Hummer on the highway this fall.

The Big Green comes into Saturday’s game ranked 90th of 118 teams in the nation at 17.6 points per game. Factoring out defensive touchdowns from Charles Bay (fumble return against Columbia) and Michael Reilly (blocked punt return against Harvard), as well as Shawn Abuhoff’s two-point conversion return against Colgate, the Dartmouth offense is scoring 15.3 points per game.

Not counting the two defensive touchdowns, the offense has produced exactly 14 points per game over the past four contests.

The Big Red comes to Hanover scoring at a 19.1 clip, 79th nationally. But Cornell, like Dartmouth, has had two defensive touchdowns (Emani Fenton returned a fumble against Colgate and Brandon Lainhart brought back an interception against Brown). Take those out and the offensive output by the Big Red drops to 17.1 points per game.

When the defensive touchdown against Brown is deducted the Cornell offense has averaged 14.5 points per game over the past four contests.

So why bring up the kind of numbers that keep offensive coordinators awake at night? Because at least one of those fellas could be sleeping a lot better than the scoreboard operator when this one is over.

Reason No. 1: 32.6. That’s how many points Dartmouth’s defense has given up on average this fall.

Reason No. 2: 32.6. Ironically, that’s also how many points Cornell has surrendered on average during its current five-game slide. (Counting its wins over hapless Bucknell and Yale in the first two weeks, the Big Red’s average goes down to 26.3.)

Reason No. 3: Last year Cornell had its highest scoring game of the season in a 37-14 win over the Big Green.

Reason No. 4: The last time the teams played in Hanover Dartmouth had its highest scoring game since 1935 in a 59-31 win over the Big Red.

Reason No. 5: Cornell is prone to giving up big plays. The Big Red has allowed six pass plays of 45 or more yards in the past three games alone.

Reason No. 6: Dartmouth is prone to giving up big plays. Harvard had TD runs of 40 and 45 yards last week and the Big Green has given up at least one play of 40-plus yards in every game this fall – except the lone win against Columbia.

Reason No. 7: Dartmouth return man extraordinaire Shawn Abuhoff is a threat to break a long one at any time. He’s been as high as second in the nation in kickoff returns (he’s currently ninth) and has been 13th in punt returns.

Reason No. 8: Cornell return man extraordinaire Bryan Walters is the Ivy League’s all-time record holder for career kick return yardage and needs just five yards to break the Ivy League career punt return yardage record.

Reason No. 9: Kick blocking. Dartmouth is currently tied for seventh in the nation in blocked kicks with last week’s punt block against Harvard going for a touchdown, and a PAT block going for two points earlier this season.

Reason No. 10: Kick blocking. Cornell blocked two Dartmouth field goal attempts last year and returned one 69 yards for a touchdown.

Reason No. 11: Steven Liuzza. Cornell’s Mr. Excitement is officially listed as a 6-foot, 178-pound backup wide receiver, but he had runs of 54 and 55 yards against Fordham, had a 65-yarder against Bucknell and last year had an 81-yarder against Dartmouth. Two years ago he stepped in at quarterback against the Big Green and, though not practicing at the position since the preseason, ran for 131 yards and threw for 292 more.

Reason No. 12: Timmy McManus, Dartmouth’s own Mr. Excitement and pretty much a Liuzza clone who is listed as a wide receiver but also plays quarterback. (OK, the parallels fall apart here because McManus isn’t actually playing. He’s still out with the broken leg he suffered in late August, but just imagine. And for the record, he had a career-best 10 catches for 122 yards against Cornell last year and a 75-yard TD catch against the Big Red two years ago.)

If McManus and Liuzza were both out there this game would really be something. Actually, it still might be. Take it from Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens.

“It could be a wild one,” he said. “They’ve given up some big plays but they’ve got some big-play capabilities as well. The key is eliminating big plays – one team or the other.”

Cornell opened opened the season with a 33-9 win over struggling Bucknell and then won a bizarre game at Yale, 14-12, when it managed only three first downs. The Big Red is coming off a 17-13 loss at Princeton in which it ran for 229 yards against a defense that held Colgate’s vaunted running game to 143 yards.

Marcus Hendren led Cornell in rushing against Princeton with 76 yards and is averaging a solid 5.8 yards per carry. Randy Barbour, the Big Red’s leading rusher the past two years, is the leading pure tailback with 226 yards this fall but is averaging just 2.9 yards per carry. The X-factor is Liuzza, who has run for a team-high 269 yards and a 6.4-yard average largely out of the Wildcat formation.

Senior Ben Ganter was expected to be a steady presence at quarterback, but he’s completing just 51.6 percent of his passes with four touchdowns and eight interceptions. Backup Adam Currie hasn’t fared much better, completing 53.6 percent with one touchdown and four interceptions. The X-factor once again is Liuzza, who has completed 15-of-24 passes (62.5 percent) with one touchdown and no interceptions and a passing efficiency rating of 171.10 that dwarfs that of Ganter (93.55) and Currie (98.89).

Walters leads the Cornell receiving corps with 36 catches for 617 yards, a 17.1-yard average and three touchdowns. All are team-highs. Surprisingly, though listed as a receiver Liuzza has just four catches for 21 yards with a long of six.

Liuzza started at wide receiver for the first four games and then ran 14 times for 166 yards against Fordham in Week Five. One week later he was at quarterback against Brown and completed 10-of-13 passes for 124 yards.

“I have no idea,” Teevens said when asked how he expected Cornell to use its jack-of-all-trades. “Every year it's something different. He's a very gifted athlete who can throw the ball, who can run the football. He ripped us a year ago and put a bunch of yards in. They throw him the ball outside, he catches it and he can make a lot of people look very bad. We've got to be aware of where he is on the field and what they are asking him to do because he can hurt you in many ways.”

Defensively, Cornell is 89th nationally against the run and 102nd in the nation in yards allowed playing an unorthodox scheme.

“They are wild,” said Teevens. “Everyone plays a four-down front, they play a 3-5-3 where they stack their backers, so it takes some time strategically for our guys to understand what they are doing and how they are doing it. They've been productive against most people, not letting a whole lot of points up. But it has been the big play that has hurt them. They shut down, shut down, shut down and then all of a sudden they give up a big one, and that's been consistent in most ballgames.

“They've done some decent things on occasion, but consistency is the issue. We certainly understand that from our end. That's what we are looking for. It's an interesting combination of teams. It will be a colorful one.”

And he wasn’t just talking about the team names.

Here's the game story:

One for the Record Books
Freshman QB Patton Snaps Rushing Mark in 2-OT Win Over Cornell

By Bruce Wood
www.biggreenalert.com

HANOVER – You can’t make this stuff up for one simple reason.

No one would believe it.

Freshman quarterback Greg Patton, who hadn’t played a single varsity down in the first seven games of his college career, rushed for a school-record 243 yards and two touchdowns in the eighth to lift Dartmouth to an improbable 20-17 double-overtime victory against Cornell.

Patton, recruited as a defensive back and pressed into service as a quarterback only because of injuries and the defection of another recruit, split time at QB Saturday and had touchdown runs of 52 yards in the fourth quarter and 13 yards in the first extra session as Dartmouth won for the second time in three weeks. The Big Green, which erased a 10-0 fourth-quarter deficit, is now 2-6 overall and 2-3 in the Ivy League.

Cornell, which dropped its sixth consecutive game, is 2-6 overall, 1-4 in the conference.

Senior safety Peter Pidermann blocked Cornell’s 35-yard field goal attempt on the final play of regulation and Foley Schmidt provided the winning points in the second overtime on a 40-yard field goal, but on a day when Dartmouth had more heroes than a comic book convention it was the 6-foot, 190-pound Patton who was wearing the cape.

Patton’s stunning day meant Al Rosier’s Dartmouth rushing record of 229 yards that stood from 1991 until this fall has been broken twice in a span of three weeks this fall. Sophomore tailback Nick Schwieger ran for 242 yards against Columbia on Oct. 24 only to have Patton come out of a virtual telephone booth to top him by one yard.

“I don’t know where they were hiding him,” said Cornell coach Jim Knowles.

The answer: on the junior varsity team.

Patton carried three times for 22 yards in the jayvee game at Harvard a week ago before starting to get a few snaps with the varsity first team during practice for Cornell. With Schwieger out because of a broken hand, coach Buddy Teevens planned to rotate Patton into the game in relief of starter Conner Kempe on occasion in the Wildcat formation, but even in his wildest dreams he couldn’t have foreseen how successfully that would play out.

Asked what he would have thought if someone had told him the night before that Patton was going to break Schwieger’s record, Teevens chuckled. “I probably would have said, ‘Man, I don’t think he’s going to have enough carries to do that.’ ”

With that, Teevens glanced at the stat sheet in front of him. “Twenty-nine,” he said. “I would never have guessed that last night. We didn’t know. How is he going to respond? We hoped it would go well.”

Patton carried three times for 16 yards in the first quarter and while he was at 10 carries for 99 yard by the half he tacked on only 11 more in the third quarter. He exploded for 133 yards in the final period and overtime.

“Coach said that he’d get me in the first couple series and see how it went from there,” Patton said. “I honestly wasn’t sure I would play a whole lot.”

Sitting next to Patton and listening to in the postgame press conference, Pidermann had to stifle a laugh at his modesty even before before the soft-spoken freshman answered a question about his feelings in the aftermath of his historic debut.

“I’m glad we won,” Patton said. “I’m happy.”

If Patton was unduly modest, Pidermann was more than happy to heap praise on him. “His locker is right in front of mine,” the senior co-captain said. “I’ve told him the entire year it’s ridiculous the amount of improvements he’s made from day one until now. He made our defense better. I don’t think our defense goes out there and plays like that today if we are not going against quarterbacks like Timmy (McManus) and Greg on a daily basis. Great mobile quarterbacks running around, they really put a stress on the defense and it makes things a lot easier on Saturday when you go against great athletes like that.”

Not that anything was really easy on Saturday.

With both teams missing field goals, the only points of the first half came when Ben Ganter hit Ben Moody with a 16-yard pass to cap a 78-yard drive that gave Cornell a 7-0 lead heading into the locker room.

A 25-yard Brad Greenway field goal late in the third quarter stretched the Big Red’s lead to 10-0 heading into the final period.

Dartmouth appeared to be in deep trouble when a Cornell punt early in the fourth quarter clipped the back of a Big Green player and was recovered by the Big Red at the 29-yard line. But two plays later, it was sophomore linebacker Diego Fernandez-Soto – who has been staying after practice to work on his hands for several weeks after dropping an interception – picking off Ganter and returning the interception to the 43. A delay-of-game penalty against the Big Red for a sideline infraction advanced the ball to the 48.

Perhaps stunned by the sudden change of fortune, the Big Red was reeling one snap later as Patton took advantage of a hole up front, cut to the left sideline and won a 52-yard race to the end zone. Schmidt added the PAT to make it 10-7 with 12:04 left in regulation.

While Patton was getting congratulations on the sideline from Dartmouth president Jim Yong Kim – suitably dressed in a Dartmouth football windbreaker – the Big Green defense was surrendering just one first down and forcing a punt that returned the ball to the home team at its own 12 with 9:53 left.

Four consecutive Patton runs, highlighted by a 27-yarder brought the ball to the midfield stripe. But a four-yard Patton run and a couple of TJ Cameron carries left Dartmouth facing a fourth-and-one at the 41 with 6:33 left and Kempe under center.

The 6-foot-4, 210-pound sophomore, who completed 23-of-38 passes for 210 yards and one interception, bulled in behind Austen Fletcher and the center of the Dartmouth line to earn the first down and keep the drive alive. Kempe would make an even bigger play five snaps later.

With the Big Green facing a third-and-17, he fired a pass down the middle to junior Tanner Scott for 18 yards and a first.

When the drive bogged down Schmidt came on and booted a 26-yard field goal to knot the score at 10-10 with 2:10 remaining.

But the excitement was far from over.

Cornell took the ensuing kickoff and marched from its own 29 to the Dartmouth 17 in nine plays to set up a 35-yard Greenway field goal attempt to win the game at the buzzer.

After two Dartmouth timeouts to try to ice him, the Cornell kicker who had been 7-of-11 on the season before Saturday, trotted back onto the field. The Dartmouth defense, which was among the national leaders with six blocks of one sort or another this fall, was confident it could add to that total and send the game to overtime.

“We ran the regular block, but we had noticed the tight ends were trying to come out on me,” explained Pidermann. “So we just had to talk to Connor Phillips before the play. We went over that. Either they were going to get two hands on (Shawn) Abuhoff or the wing’s going try to come down on me. If he comes down on me, Abuhoff’s gonna get it. ‘Conner, just make sure you pull that tight end out of there. Whatever you do, just don’t let the tight end get to me and me and Abuhoff will block it. One of us will definitely get through there.’ ”

Pidermann ended up being the one, stabbing it – and Cornell hearts – with his left hand.

“I was just untouched,” he said. “I was just hoping I wouldn’t run past it.”

But the block only prolonged the drama.

Dartmouth won the coin toss for the overtime and elected, as teams always do, to let Cornell go first from the 25. The Big Red took the lead when Ganter hit standout receiver Bryan Walters with an eight-yard post pattern on a third-and-four play that made it 17-10.

The Big Green answered with four consecutive Patton runs, the last a 13-yard for a touchdown that made it 17-16.

Surprisingly, after a time out Teevens then sent Patton back out to try a two-point conversion to end the game – one way or another. With its kick-block team on the field, Cornell called its own time. The chess match extended when play resumed and Teevens thought better of his gambit, instead sending Schmidt out to tie the game.

The second overtime had its own drama after consecutive holding penalties backed Dartmouth up to the 43. After a couple of Kempe passes fell incomplete, the Big Green faced a third-and-28.

Once again, Kempe stepped up as his next throw found Michael Reilly for 20 yards to the Cornell 23.

Facing a fourth-and-eight, Teevens sent out Schmidt, who hadn’t kicked a field goal longer than 29 yards before Saturday and hadn’t had an attempt of any length in the previous four games.

Schmidt, a sophomore with 50-plus yard range, hit the ball solid but never saw what happened.

“I don’t know if I got hit or what,” he said, “but I ended up on the ground. I just saw all the people that moved from the side stands to the back stands jumping up and down going crazy so that kind of gave me the indication that it was through.”

Although Schmidt’s kick gave Dartmouth a three-point lead, the game wasn’t nearly over. Cornell could still force another overtime with a matching field goal, or win the contest with a touchdown in the bottom half of the inning.

But Phillips stopped Randy Barbour for a gain of one on first down. Abuhoff knocked down a pass intended for the dangerous Stephen Liuzza on second down and freshman Garrett Wymore stopped receiver Horatio Blackman three yards short of a first down on the next play. That brought about a fourth-and-three at the 18 and sent Greenway out for a 36-yard attempt to extend the game.

Perhaps unnerved by the Dartmouth rush, the Cornell kicker yanked a sidewinder left. With that the Big Green, which broke a 17-game losing streak two weeks ago, was celebrating once again.

“We said it at the half,” Teevens said later. “It’s a pivotal point programmatically and you have it in you. Sometimes you get close and you get nervous. The big thing is, ‘Hey, take a deep breath fellas, enjoy it, have some fun while you are out there. Do what you are supposed to do.’

"And they did.”

Especially one freshman did more who did a whole lot more.

More Media Guide Material

More material from the late-and-lamented (by me at least) Dartmouth football media guide has been shifted to the web.

Newly added are:

• Alphabetical list of Dartmouth All-Americans – link
  
• Chronological list of Dartmouth All-Americans – link
• Alphabetical list of Dartmouth All-Ivy League first-team picks – link
• Chronological list of Dartmouth All-Ivy League first-team picks – link
• Dartmouth's Asa Bushnell, (Ivy League player of the year) and Ivy League Rookie of the Year winners – link

And yes, by the letter of the law All-Americans should be All-Americas, but I don't think anyone is confused ;-)

Previously posted to the web in anticipation of the 2010 season have been these traditional media guide pieces:

• All-time letterwinners – link
• All-time results – link
• All-time results of Dartmouth TV games – link
• Year-by-Year won-loss record – link
• All-time Dartmouth coaching records (scroll to bottom) – link
• All-time team awards – link
  

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Former Dartmouth assistant Rick Taylor's Calanda Broncos (earlier post) of Switzerland posted a 17-3 win over Sweden's Carlstad Crusaders to earn the Euro Cup Championship of American football. Taylor, last the athletic director at Northwestern, will now lead his 15-0 team into the Swiss Bowl title game against Basel, a team they have twice defeated this year.

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We took in the world premier of the Bottom of the 10th inning of Ken Burns' new baseball film last night at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center. (It wasn't as painful for a Yankee fan as I feared.) Again, Burns sat on a stool at the front of the stage and eloquently answered questions for a full hour after the film. Mrs. BGA asked his opinion – given that he's spent a lot of time looking at baseball clips – of instant replay. He said he's just fine with the limited way it is used now: to determine home runs.

Burns, who lives in Walpole, N.H., less than an hour due south of Hanover along the Connecticut River, listed some of the projects on which he's currently working. Among them are looks at the Roosevelt clan, the Dust Bowl, Prohibition and Vietnam. He also hinted that there's a biography project in the pipeline, but he stopped short of saying who it would be on.

Time Travel

You'll have to excuse me if I'm not thrilled. Penn has announced that the Ivy League opener on Oct. 2 between Dartmouth and the Quakers will kick off at 3:30. The good news for fans from afar who know someone who has a VCR in Philly (as well as highlight film makers) is that the game will be carried on Comcast Philadelphia. (Story link and Penn schedule link)

The bad news if you are someone who will be writing two stories after the game is that there's simply no way to get back to the Upper Valley on Saturday night. The game won't be over until 7 or so (given TV timeouts) and you have to figure in another 45 minutes or so for the postgame press conference. That means it will be going on 8 p.m. by the time you get on the road. Escaping the city to find accommodations at a reasonable price probably means 8:45 or so before even sitting down at the keyboard. Argh!

Now the question becomes whether to risk making the long drive down the day of the game or forking over the dough for two nights on the road for the second game in a row. (There's no choice at Bucknell ... but at least there's a campground in Lewisburg with wi-fi. Maybe I ought to find an Official Sponsor of Big Green Alert on the Road ;-)

The last time Dartmouth played a late-afternoon game for TV purposes was at Columbia two years ago in a monsoon. Don't even ask people who drove home from New York City after that game what it was like. If you do, be prepared to hear it was about as scary a hydroplaning drive as you could imagine. Combine that with a disappointing loss and it was a rough, rough day.

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Speaking of our friends in West Philly, they get mentioned in a Dallas Observer story headlined, "At SMU, Winning On The Field Is Being Sacked By An Unwillingness To Accept The Academically Less Gifted." From the story:

... (I)t took offensive lineman Ben Gottschalk—who was accepted by Ivy League member Penn, for crying out loud—two appeals to earn admission on the Hilltop (SMU).

Wouldn't you like to know the back story on that? (Thanks for the link.)

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And finally, we saw the debut of the Top of the 10th inning of Ken Burns' latest baseball effort at the Hopkins Center last night. (Link) It's a terrific film that will be on PBS in late September.

A T-shirted and relaxed Burns helped introduce the film and then popped out at the end for an extended Q&A session. He did a nice job of explaining his filmmaking methods and offering thoughts about baseball and baseball players.

The Bottom of the 10th inning will show tonight and Burns promised Red Sox fans in attendance that if they returned they would like what they would see. (BGA's grandfather was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and he used to turn off his hearing aid when he was in front of the TV if Navy was losing the Army-Navy game. I don't use a hearing aid but as a Yankee fan – sorry about that – I may wish I had one so I could pull the battery tonight.)

Do You Know This Guy?

Brian Mann has won plaudits for his efforts as Dartmouth's director of football operations. He's no longer playing in the Arena Football League, of course, but you can get still get his Los Angeles Avengers card on ebay.

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Trying to get a read on Dartmouth's non-league opponents? The Lehigh Football Nation blog offers up one version of a Patriot League preseason team that includes players from 2010 Dartmouth foes Holy Cross and Bucknell. Here are the opponents Dartmouth will see from the LFN preseason All-Patriot League teams:

First team offense
Holy Cross
Senior wide receiver Bill Edger
Senior wide receiver Luke Chmielenski
Senior offensive lineman Mike McCabe
Bucknell
Senior offensive lineman Anthony Carter

First team defense
Holy Cross
Senior defensive lineman Mude Ohimor
Junior linebacker Jimmy Thomas
Senior defensive back Anthony DiMichele
Bucknell
Junior defensive lineman Robert De La Rosa

First team special teams
Holy Cross
Senior kicker Rob Dornfried

Second team offense
Holy Cross
Senior wide receiver Freddie Santana
Junior tight end Alex Schneider

Second team defense
Holy Cross
Senior linebacker Sean Lamkin

Bucknell
Junior defensive lineman John von Paris
Senior linebacker Travis Nissley

Green Alert Take: It will be interesting to see how the three wide receivers and tight end from Holy Cross mentioned by LFN perform without Dominic Randolph throwing to them. How much of the success they had the past couple of years was the result of Randolph and how much of Randolph's success was the result of their talent? Time will tell. ... Not mentioned is Bucknell's Josh Eden, a first-team Patriot League defensive lineman who returns from a Mormon mission. Toss him in the mix and the Bison have a former Patriot League first team defensive lineman, an LFN preseason first-team Patriot League defensive lineman and a second-team defensive lineman. That sounds formidable. ... The Big Green can breathe a sigh of relief that it won't see LFN's (and likely everyone else's) first-team running back and first team quarterback in Colgate's Nate Eachus and Greg Sullivan respectively. Interestingly, those are the only two Colgate names on the LFN first team.

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Jim Fiore was an assistant director of athletics at Dartmouth from 1995-99 and took over as Stony Brook athletic director in 2003. In a story about the rising fortunes of the Seawolves' football program, The Sports Network writes, "...(S)eventh-year athletic director Jim Fiore has helped build a successful athletic program, with upgrades in facilities, branding and improved revenue-generating, a body of student-athletes whose collective grade point average is at least 3.0 grade in each of the past four school years, and recent success in higher-profile sports like men's soccer, men's basketball and men's lacrosse." High praise indeed.

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One of the plusses of living in a college town is the cultural opportunities it offers, even when that college town is well off the beaten path. Sometimes one of those cultural opportunities intersects with sports, and so it is tonight and tomorrow night when three of us will venture off the mountain and be at the Hopkins Center for an advance screening of Ken Burns' latest baseball film. Burns will be at The Hop for a discussion both nights. To learn more about the event and the films, click here.

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And finally, I had the good fortune of covering two Masters golf tournaments and two U.S. Opens, but my favorite major – by far – is the (British) Open Championship. When it's at St. Andrews it's that much better. And when there's wind and rain, well, that's as good as it gets.

It's on ESPN right now so I'm checking out to go sneak a peek or two. Fore!