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.