Bits and Pieces

A couple of former Dartmouth players received mentions in the press this week. The Bangor Daily News has a story about Maine's Little Ten Conference awarding the third annual Silvernail Academic Scholar Award. From the story:

The award is named for Andy Silvernail, who played offensive guard and linebacker at Bucksport during the 1980s and went on to play at Dartmouth until a back injury curtailed his career.

Silvernail is now a business executive in Wisconsin, and three years ago with his wife Shelby established the football-related scholarship as an expression of gratitude for what playing the sport and in particular playing in the LTC meant in shaping his life.

Silvernail is a Dartmouth '94. The award is a $2,000 scholarship given to a Little Ten player "based on academic merit involving such criteria as cumulative grade point average and classes taken, such as honor classes and advanced placement classes."

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With the Army-Navy game on tap Saturday, the Baltimore Sun has a story on the Navy rushing attack that runs behind Jeff Battipaglia, the Lombardi Award nominee (nation's premier offensive or defensive lineman). The story notes that his older rother Matt '05 played at Dartmouth.

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Two more former Dartmouth players are mentioned in a Naples (Fla.) News brief, but they are no strangers to the press. From the story:

Dartmouth College football coach Buddy Teevens will visit Naples for lunch with the Dartmouth Club of Southwest Florida later this month.

Former Cincinnati Bengals head coach and Dartmouth alum Dave Shula will also be in attendance.

The event will be held Dec. 23 at Shula’s Steakhouse

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The Sports Network predicts a 23-16 Delaware victory over New Hampshire and a 27-23 Villanova win over Appalachian State in the FCS playoffs. Ivy League champion Penn, which pushed Villanova to the limit in the Quakers' only loss this fall, will be idle. Still.

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The NCAA is reporting, that:

For the first time since the NCAA began tracking student-athlete ethnicity data 11 years ago, African-Americans compose the highest percentage of the players in Division I football.

According to the 2009-10 NCAA Student-Athlete Race and Ethnicity Report, 45.8 percent of student-athletes in Division I football (including the Football Bowl Subdivision and the Football Championship Subdivision) were African-American, followed closely by white football players at 45.1 percent.

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And finally, it was 9.8 degrees this morning when I went out to get the newspaper, but it's supposed to get cold over night. According to AccuWeather.com the temperature at 5 a.m. will be zero.