What, More Football?

Saturday begins my first weekend without a football game or football practice since August and wanna guess what I'm doing? That's right. Going to a football game.

That Certain Hanover High Student is a huge college football fan. While he's been to more Dartmouth games than just about anyone you'll ever meet, we don't get to spend much time together at those games because I'm always working. So the tradition has been that we saddle up and take in a game somewhere else when the Dartmouth season is over and I finally have a free Saturday. In the past we've been to a couple of New Hampshire playoff games and a couple of UMass playoff games. Two years ago we took a step up and caught a UConn-Pitt game.

Checking the schedules for this weekend we found UNH in the playoffs again, but unfortunately on the road. Boston College would have been fun, but the Eagles are at Syracuse. Of course, That Certain HHS had his eyes on Penn State against Michigan State, but that's a huge trip and tickets would have been tough to find as well as outrageously expensive.

Fortunately, UConn's Rentschler Field is just 2 1/2 hours away and the Huskies are home Saturday for a noon kickoff against Cincinnati. Because there are bowl implications for UConn, tickets were in short supply for that one as well, so we went the StubHub route. Counting "handling," and overnight delivery, each ticket in the corner of the upper deck ended up costing about what a season ticket to Dartmouth costs, but this is a special treat, so we hit the "buy" button on the computer. We will be in the car at 6 Saturday morning so we can get to the stadium in plenty of time for a breakfast tailgate.

Now here's the funny part that Mrs. BGA reminded me of last night while we were watching the Dartmouth-Quinnipiac men's basketball game. Again, because I'm always working on football Saturdays – and because the previous post-Dartmouth UNH, UMass and UConn games were always "daddy trips" – she's been in the stands with me for just one college football game. Ever.

It was a Penn State game on Sept. 7, 1991. Want to guess who the Nittany Lions were playing?

Cincinnati.

What do you think the chances were that we would see just two college football games, 20 years apart, and they would both be against the Bearcats?

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A final piece of trivia about seeing Cincinnati. The last time, out at Beaver Stadium, the Cincinnati coach was none other than current Harvard mentor Tim Murphy. JoePa and the Nittany Lions ended up dealing Murph's team an 81-0 loss. The next year Cincy closed the gap to 24-20. After the Bearcats went 8-3 the following year, Murphy picked up and left for Harvard. While some were puzzled by the move, you might say it hasn't turned out too badly. ... A few years ago I mentioned to Murph that I was at the Penn State game. He laughed and said something along the lines of, "Don't remind me."

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The Daily Pennsylvanian has a column about the abrupt end to the Penn football team's season after an undefeated run through the Ivy League. From a story about the conference's ban on going to the NCAA playoffs:

Apparently, part of the reason the presidents won’t budge is to uphold “tradition” (in Ivy League spokesman Scottie Rodgers’ words). But the presidents are simply perpetuating a pattern of inequity and irrationality. They’re not upholding tradition. They’re being stubborn.

Green Alert Take: I think those presidents standing in the way of the playoffs subscribe to the old Andre Agassi "image is everything," school of thought. They don't want to be the ones on whose watch the ban on postseason play is abolished. What they fail to appreciate is that the ban has far outlived its usefulness. It's simply not necessary anymore. The threat of football being out of control in the way they feared when the ban was implemented is over. Football is no more out of control today than any other Ivy League sport, and all of the others are allowed to go on to the postseason. It's time to drop the ban.

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Penn coach Al Bagnoli is a finalist for the FCS national coach of the year. Again. From Penn Athletics:

This is the fourth time since 2002 that Coach Bagnoli has been named a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award. He finished ninth in 2002, eighth in 2003 and 10th in 2009. The Ivy League does not name a Coach of the Year, but Bagnoli has won a league-record eight outright Ivy titles in his 19-year tenure. His eight overall titles are second-most in Ivy history behind Yale's Carm Cozza, who finished with 10 Ivy title rings.

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Safe travels everybody, and cherish time with family and friends tomorrow.