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."

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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.

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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.

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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 ;-)

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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.