Stay Tuned

Don't be surprised if the announcement of a new Dartmouth football assistant to replace Jim Pry comes in the next few days. Whether he'll be the new offensive coordinator, quarterback coach or an offensive assistant of some other sort is uncertain, but there's a very good chance a name familiar to Dartmouth fans. More when the news breaks. ...

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Incoming running back Cody Patch of nearby Lebanon has been named to the New Hampshire team for the 58th annual Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl pitting the top graduated seniors from the Granite State against those from Vermont. The game is Aug. 6.

Traditionally played at Dartmouth's Memorial Field, the Shrine game was moved to Windsor High School in 2009 when construction was planned for the Dartmouth home stands. The game will return there for the third year in a row largely for financial reasons.

Patch was chosen for the Shrine team by Chris Childs, the New Hampshire head coach who guided Patch and the Raiders to an undefeated state championship season last fall. New Hampshire has won the past 10 games and leads the all-time series, 42-13-2.

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Looking for something else yesterday, I came across a very interesting 2006 New York Times column by Bill Pennington headlined, Ivy Football and Academics Strike an Uneasy Balance. A few interesting outtakes from the story:

... (L)ess than a month after the 1981 season ended, the Ivy League was expelled from big-time college football. In a squabble over television revenue, the eight Ivy institutions were demoted to the N.C.A.A.’s Division I-AA. Given the chance to appeal, the Ivy League presidents did not protest and instead willingly walked away from the highest level of a game their teams created.

And ...

“Since the 1950s, the Ivy League has been relatively consistent, and maybe that’s the point,” said James Wright, president of Dartmouth. “We haven’t changed fundamentally. The others have.”

And the kicker ...

Jeff Orleans, the Ivy League’s executive director, said, “For those who wonder why we didn’t stay in Division I-A as Duke, Stanford and Northwestern did, I would ask, what do you think of their football experience this year?”

Duke’s football team is 0-10 this season. Stanford is 1-9 and Northwestern is 3-8.

“One could argue,” Orleans said, “that the Ivy League has had the better football experience than those institutions have had for the last 25 years. You might want to ask why they didn’t do what we did.”

That quote stuck in my craw when I first read it in the fall of 2006. It doesn't seem quite so smug after what Stanford accomplished last fall, does it?

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The Dartmouth women's ice hockey team upset the nation's No. 2 team last night at Thompson Arena when the Big Green knocked off Cornell, 4-2. Dartmouth is now 18-9 overall and 14-7 in the ECAC while Cornell is 25-2-1 and 19-1-1. (In case you were wondering, the men's hockey team, which has been enjoying a solid season at 15-8-3 and 11-6-2 in the ECAC took a 5-3 loss at at Colgate, which is 6-23-2 and 3-14-2.)

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Live webcast from the Penn State Thon (46-hour dance marathon For The Kids) reported here yesterday.