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.