Elsewhere, Meanwhile ...

Barring a rare development Dartmouth fans might as well look right past the "D" listings as this chart fills up – but it's kind of interesting to take an occasional look at the unofficial College Sporting News football transfer tracker. A few things that jump out early in the process ...

Mississippi Valley State is the leader in the clubhouse with a whopping 10 transfers already lined up ... Eastern schools are a little under-represented except for Stony Brook, which has seven transfers in the fold ... The Colonial Athletic Association has had success with transfer quarterbacks in the past and the only CAA transfer listed is, you guessed it, a quarterback headed from Kansas State to James Madison.

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Speaking of rarities, try this one on for size: a tailback from an FCS team declaring for the NFL draft. Throwing his name in the hat is Taiwan Jones, who missed the final two playoff games for national champion Eastern Washington this year but still ran for 1,724 yards and 14 touchdowns. (The Sports Network link)

All totaled, Jones missed three full games and parts of two others. He averaged 145.2 yards per game rushing to finish second in the nation behind Colgate's Nate Eachus, who ran for 170.1 yards per game. Jones averaged 7.9 yards per carry while Eachus averaged 5.9.

Dartmouth's Nick Schwieger finished the year sixth in the nation with 125.9 yards per game and a 4.7-yard average.

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In case you were wondering, Schwieger's national ranking was one of four individual rankings Dartmouth had in the national top 10. The others:

3. Shawn Abuhoff, punt returns (17.22 yards)
7. Schwieger, scoring (9.33 ppg)
7. Charles Bay, sacks (1.0 spg)

(The NCAA doesn't list a separate yards-per-catch stat, but Dartmouth's Michael Reilly was second nationally in that category with a 23.86-yard average. Eastern Illinois receiver Chris Wright averaged 26.52.)

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The morning email brought an interesting link to a story the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette spun out of the Pitt Panthers paying new coach Todd Graham almost $2 million annually. That makes him the highest paid state employee in Pennsylvania. From the P-G:

Universities are ill-equipped to lasso in high salaries because, in large part, they created the dilemma. If they choose not to pay the going rate for coaches, they risk losing quality employees to other schools that will. If they collude or create a salary cap for coaching, they run the risk of violating federal antitrust laws.

And ...

But (Michael Pinsky, a professor of critical care medicine, anesthesiology and bioengineering at the Pitt School of Medicine and president of Pitt's University Senate) said while he believes university faculty are underpaid, athletic administrators are justified in paying high coaching costs because of market forces.

The university uses peer groups -- comparing itself to schools of a similar size with similar resources -- to determine salary for university faculty and administrators, so athletic coaches should be no different, Dr. Pinsky said.

For what it is worth, the story says Alabama's Nick Saban is the highest paid college football coach in the nation with $5.9 million in salary last year.