The 'Reckless Rover' and More

In advance of the recent Ivy Football Association dinner, the IFA web page had a look at the 2011 honorees including College Football Hall of Famer Murry Bowden '71, the "Reckless Rover." There are also capsules on an impressive list of previous Dartmouth honorees – Jake Crouthamel, Reggie Williams, Jeff Immelt, Hank Paulson and Bill King.

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California's Los Altos Town Crier follows up on last week's mention of linebacker-fullback Tyler Stout choosing to play at Dartmouth. Stout was the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League El Camino Division defensive player of the year. The Crier notes he had 78 tackles, three sacks, a recovered fumble and two forced fumbles last fall.

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The Columbia Spectator writes that the school is one step closer to getting the green light from New York City to begin work on the Baker Athletics Complex, which will include the 48,000-square-foot Campbell Sports Center, a punt away from Wien Stadium. New weight rooms, coaches’ offices and study space will be featured in the building. To get a sense of the size of what Columbia is planning, Dartmouth's Floren Varsity House is 43,000 square feet.

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Brown didn't officially "release" its 2011 football schedule, but it is up on the school website and can be found here. No surprises. The nonleague dates are at Stony Brook in the opener and home to Rhode Island and Holy Cross on the first two weekends of October.

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The Ivy League likes to pride itself on being different but sometimes it's not that different at all. The Harvard Crimson has a story about a tennis player who transferred from Brown to Harvard and made no bones about the fact that the move was based on athletics. From the story:

In the spring of 2009, (Jonathan) Pearlman decided that he was not satisfied with the tennis program at Brown and left.

“It turned out to be a very negative experience athletically,” Pearlman says. “I needed to be in a stronger program with a more experienced coach, like Coach (Dave) Fish, and Harvard was the place for me to come.”

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And then there's this from the Daily Pennsylvanian about the first Penn basketball recruit from a Philadelphia public school in 30 years:

The 6-foot-5 forward, who is averaging 17 points per game, committed to the Quakers in late January, but his enrollment is contingent upon a 30-point increase in his SAT score.

If that seems kind of silly, consider this from a May 2009 issue of USA Today (italics added):

A 30-point boost in math and critical-reading scores on the SAT reasoning test is statistically meaningless yet could make or break a student's chances of admission at "a substantial minority" of colleges, a research paper says.

In case you are wondering, it happens at Dartmouth as well. I clearly remember a coach agonizing over an individual who he said needed to add one point to his ACT on what would be his final try. He got it, was accepted and became a huge asset to the school athletically as well as to the Dartmouth community as a whole.

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The Boston Globe had a story about the Dartmouth Winter Carnival that included an interesting tidbit from Jere Daniell '55, professor of history emeritus and a popular local lecturer. From the story:

The real significance of the carnival, said Daniell, is the role it played in the transformation of Dartmouth from a failing regional college at the end of the 19th century to an elite institution with a national profile.