Kicking off the Week

The Daily Dartmouth has a recap of the Sacred Heart game and a look at how new Athletic Director Harry Sheehy is settling in.

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Attendance at Ivy League football games Saturday:

• Harvard at Brown, 17,360
• Yale at Cornell, 16,026
• Lafayette at Princeton, 9,327
• Penn at Villanova, 8,117
• Sacred Heart at Dartmouth, 6,427
• Towson at Columbia 2,643

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Jim Donaldson has a good column in the Providence Journal about the Brown-Harvard game Saturday night. (Photo) From the column:

“Brown was founded in 1764,” said (Gerry Massa, president of the Brown Football Association). “How many things can you say have never been done before at Brown?”

Not many.

It was a terrific line, and a terrific night.

After the game, players came back out of the locker room still in uniform to celebrate on the field with family, friends and fellow students, some of them dancing with joy to the music of the Brown band.

Saturday night fever, baby.

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Despite winning, Dartmouth took a serious hit in the Sagarin Ratings this week. The number after the school name is last week's ranking. (245 Division I teams are listed):

128. Brown (158 - beat Harvard)
135. Penn (131 - lost to Villanova)
138. Harvard (96 - lost to Brown)
157. Yale (177 - beat Cornell)
181. Princeton (208 - beat Lafayette)
193. Dartmouth (173 - beat Sacred Heart)
196. Columbia (224 - beat Towson)
234. Cornell (240 - lost to Yale)

Also of Interest:
115. New Hampshire (128 - beat Lehigh)
173. Colgate (171 - lost to Syracuse)
201. Holy Cross (171 - lost to Georgetown)
235. Sacred Heart (239 - lost to Dartmouth)
238. Bucknell (235 - did not play)

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Week Three opponent Penn led defending national champion Villanova with less than five minutes remaining in Saturday's game. Although the Quakers eventually lost, 22-10, the coach of the nation's top-ranked FCS team came away impressed. Said Nova's Andy Talley:

"They are a championship football team and they showed it. I would put them as an upper-level team in the CAA."

From a column in the Philadelphia Daily News:

The Quakers (1-1) played without starting quarterback Keiffer Garton (offseason knee surgery) for the second consecutive week. He could return for this week's Ivy opener in West Philly against Dartmouth. They also lost running back Lyle Marsh during the game with a broken arm.

Green Alert Take: Losing a back like Marsh would be a huge blow to most teams and Penn would clearly be a better team with him on Saturday. But by most accounts, the Quakers have as deep and as talented a group of running backs as anyone in the Ivy League.

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You know Harvard has had it pretty good when it loses at Brown and the Harvard Crimson writes that the defeat, "spoiled the hopes of a perfect season for the Harvard football team."

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From Bloomberg last Friday:

Dartmouth College’s endowment gained 10 percent in the past year, lagging Harvard University’s 11 percent increase and beating Yale’s 8.9 percent return.

The Daily Dartmouth follows up on the endowment story in a piece that begins this way:

The value of the College’s endowment increased by an unanticipated 6 percent over the 2010 fiscal year to reach a value of just under $3 billion as of June 30, College officials announced in a press release on Friday. The unanticipated increase is a stark contrast to fiscal year 2009’s $835 million endowment loss, which occurred in the wake of the nationwide economic crisis.

The endowment showed a 10 percent return on the fiscal year with a net increase of $173 million after increases in the value of investments, new donations and disbursements for operating expenses, according to the release.

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The Optimist and The Pessimist will be dealing both with Dartmouth-Sacred Heart and the opener at Penn this evening on Big Green Alert Premium.