Detailed Look at the Ivy League

The College Sporting News 2010 FCS Yearbook is out and available for free download. If you've been frustrated by the lack of coverage in the national magazines on your local grocery shelf or neighborhood bookstore, this is the place to go. This first of three PDFs about the FCS includes a comprehensive look at the Ivy League written by the inimitable Charles Burton. Download it with this link.

Chuck's Ivy League prediction in the yearbook goes like this:

1. Harvard
2. Penn
3. Brown
4. Yale
5. Columbia
6. Dartmouth
7. Princeton
8. Cornell

Players of the Year
Offense: QB Kyle Newhall-Caballero, Brown
Defense: FS Collin Zych, Harvard

The text that goes with the preview includes yet another damning look at the Ivy League's prohibition on postseason play in football. (Please excuse me for getting up on the soapbox again, but for the uninitiated out there, football is the only Ivy League sport not allowed to compete in the postseason. No truly defensible explanation has ever been offered for the prohibition. The one that rings truest: Because it's always been that way.)

Chuck Burton writes:

Prolonging the postseason ban in football due to class time and exams? Princeton’s men’s lacrosse team, playing in the NCAA tournament, played its last game in the NCAA quarterfinals on May 16 – exactly one day before its spring semester finals were scheduled. The team it lost to? Cornell – whose team was already missing final exams (finals for Cornell started May 13).

It’s astounding that the Ivy League cares so much about the final exam scores of its football teams, but don’t seem to care at all as long as the athletes are carrying lacrosse sticks instead of footballs.

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Week One opponent Bucknell opens this week at Duquesne and the Bison game notes have been posted here. Of interest: The starting quarterback for BU is Burke Batten, the only non-freshman quarterback on the roster. It follows then that he has the most game experience: 1-for-2 passing for two yards. One rush for five.

Backing up Batten, a 6-2, 178-pound freshman named Brandon Wesley.

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The Holy Cross game notes vs. Howard also have been posted.

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Dartmouth's other non-league opponent is also opening this week but the Sacred Heart website remains quiet.

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Craig Haley at The Sports Network made his weekly predictions and he has ...

Bucknell over Duquesne
Holy Cross over Howard
Marist over Sacred Heart

Also ...

Colgate over Monmouth
UNH over Central Connecticut

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A Bleacher Report column headlined Oregon Football Coach Chip Kelly and Other New Hampshire Awesomeness includes a link to a PDF about Dartmouth's Old Division Football2 history dating back to the 1820s. Find that PDF here.

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With the college football season kicking off, ESPN columnist Pat Forde has a piece about The Most Interesting Men in Gridworld. He lists Princeton's Jordan Culbreath No. 13 after the star tailback returned from a potentially fatal disease. Personally, I think he undersold Culbreath's story, but it's worth checking out.

If for no other reason, click on Forde's piece to learn more about the fellow who plays The Most Interesting Man in the World in those commercials. Admit it, you were curious who he is, weren't you? I know I was.

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And finally, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times here on Moose Mountain today.

It's the worst of times for That Hanover High Junior who dragged himself onto the little schoolbus that comes down our dirt road and carts kids off to that brick building that shall not be named. Yup, it's the first day of you-know-what. Now, don't get the wrong idea. He does just fine. Better than that, actually. But that doesn't make going back any easier for a typical 16-year-old boy. He was a little less grumpy about it this morning than most other years because he was elected a captain of his golf team yesterday.

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The is the best of times for That Certain Hanover Grad, who we will help move into her dormitory today (between football double sessions ;-). She leaves on her challenging DOC trip tomorrow (psycho hiking she tells me is what they informally call it) and then starts cross country practice when she returns, which is why she's allowed into the dorm early.

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Now I'm off to the morning practice session. I'm still planning to have a report before they hit the field again this afternoon, but if I don't I hope you'll understand why.