That's a Rapp – Or Two

Alex Rapp '09, a 2008 Dartmouth captain as a 280-pound offensive lineman, weighed in at an almost svelte 218 pounds before running the Chicago Half Marathon last weekend with his father Kent.

While his dad had projected a finish in about 2 hours, 15 minutes, Alex pushed the pace and the father-son team crossed the line at 1:56, which translates to 8:50 per mile. The pair are pictured in their Dartmouth green running shirts, natch.

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Yale football coach Tom Williams is a man of strong opinions and one of them is that the Bulldogs should occasionally schedule up. From a column in the New Haven Register:

Both Williams and Tom Beckett, the Yale AD, would love to see the Ivy League season moved up a week to provide Yale and the league the delicious possibility of playing its opener up against the likes of a Duke or Vanderbilt.

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Although change comes at a glacial pace when it comes to Ivy League football, don't rule out the possibility that the Ivies may actually consider moving their start date up in the not-too-distant future. Mark it down. And if they do it won't have anything to do with football.

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Jake Novak at the Columbia football Roar Lions Roar blog has his predictions posted and he gives Dartmouth the nod at Bucknell.

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And finally, my apologies but I don't have time to dig up anything more for you in the wee hours. Three of us, sans That Certain Hanover Grad, are about to begin the 7-hour-plus drive out to Lewisburg, Pa. Only one of us, and that would be me, will be going to the Dartmouth-Bucknell game.

Here's the back story:

Through some strange phenomenon, the kids have grown up as pretty big Penn State football fans. Must be osmosis. But I digress.

I've never been able to take the two of them to a regular-season Penn State game because wherever Dartmouth has gone for the past 20 years or so, I have gone too. And to my chargin they haven't yet played at Beaver Stadium. That's why we have made our annual spring pilgrimage to Happy Valley for the Blue-White Game each of the past six years. I'm here to tell you that joining 77,000 people in the stands on a glorious spring day is pretty impressive, but it's nothing like a real PSU game.

That being the case, after Dartmouth scheduled Bucknell last spring I checked the Penn State schedule and then emailed old friend Jeff Nelson, the SID at Penn State, to see if he had a guess what time Saturday's game between the Nittany Lions and Kent State might be played. I figured it it were a 7 p.m. game I might just be able to do a double. Alas, Jeff was off by just one minute. He predicted a noon start and they are kicking off at 12:01 ;-)

So, That Certain Hanover High Junior, who hopes to go to Penn State in a couple of years, is off from school today for a college visit later today and, not coincidentally, a Big Ten football game tomorrow. They will drop me off at Bucknell early in morning and come get me sometime late in the day.