Looking Back

Check out the video above for highlights of Dartmouth's win over Princeton in the season finale. Click on the following seniors' names and you can see short clips of them from Princeton: Alex Wodka, Alex Johns and Buddy Benadaret.

*

The Philadelphia Inquirer writes about defending national champion Villanova knocking off No. 2 Appalachian State, 42-24, in the FCS playoffs aided by the play of Matt Szczur who ran for three scores, caught one TD pass and threw another. The all-purpose Szczur ran 16 times for 104 yards, was 2-for-2 passing for 58 yards and caught five passes for another 45 yards. He scored Nova's first TD on a short run, completed a 54-yard touchdown pass for the second score, caught a 30-yard pass for the next one and then had a 24-yard TD run and a 1-yard run for the next two touchdowns.

Three things:

1) Szczur is a obviously a wonderfully gifted athlete (he also plays minor league baseball) but let's just suppose you have a player who can run, throw and catch but doesn't have a position because others might be a tad better at each of those slots. Do you think you could you shape a job description for him around how Villanova uses Szczur? The Wildcats have done the wildcat one better.

2) Remember yesterday's posting about how Sports Illustrated promoted Plymouth State's Joe Dudek for the Heisman 25 years ago? If SI hadn't already done that, (and if he had been healthy all year) Szczur would have been a good candidate for that kind of story this fall when there are concerns that the Heisman might end up being a little tainted. Szczur, the Most Outstanding Player of last year's national championship game, donated his marrow last spring to save the life of a 21-month-old child with leukemia.

3) Defending Ivy League champion Penn, which led Villanova with five minutes remaining and was driving for the possible winning touchdown until giving up a pick-six ... remains idle this playoff season.

*

A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story has been making the rounds in the Dartmouth athletic department, a reminder about how careful athletes need to be about using "social media."

*

And finally, a happy birthday to the ever-patient, Mrs. BGA.