Calendar Conundrum

The big news today has nothing to do with sports. OK, that's not true. It will have an impact on sports, but it's not sports news.

The Daily Dartmouth writes that a change in the college's academic calendar ...

... will shift the last day of Fall term to before the Thanksgiving holiday ... . Beginning in the 2012-2013 academic year, Fall term will end 10 days earlier, shortening the break between Summer and Fall terms.

More from the story ...

...(F)inal exams will not be held on the Saturday before the holiday to accommodate a scheduled football game against Princeton University, (philosophy professor Samuel Levey, who chairs the Committee on Instruction) said.

The college's press release notes ...

Fall athletic pre-season training and Dartmouth Outing Club First-Year Trips will begin sooner, due to the earlier start for fall term.

When asked last fall about the impact of a possible calendar change, Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens suggested it might lead to the entire Ivy League pushing its schedule up one week to avoid a conflict between exam prep and the final game of the season.

One potential benefit of moving the schedule ahead would be having more opponents to choose from in the non-conference portion of the season. As it stands, by the time Ivy League play starts many teams in other leagues are wrapping up their out-of-league games and getting into their conference schedules.

Another option at least worth considering would be to play the final game the week after Thanksgiving, although I seem to recall the Ivy League having an original rule requiring the season be completed before the holiday.

Find the adjusted 2012-13 Dartmouth academic calendar here.

*

Speaking of conflicts between finals and football, Lehigh Football Nation goes back to the Ivy League's founding documents to further illustrate the hypocrisy of the ban on football going to the playoffs. Chuck has done his homework and makes a very good case, but the issue is actually much simpler than that. It's about fairness.

Allowing all student-athletes except football players to compete in the postseason is unfair and discriminatory. Period.

*

The Roar Lions Roar Columbia football blog offers up an analysis of the Dartmouth football recruiting class. It suggests that Dartmouth is at the cutting edge of a push to bring in more players from the improving prep school football ranks.

*

Sacred Heart football averaged just 2,203 fans per game at home last fall. The guess here is that the Dartmouth game in Connecticut on Sept. 24 will far exceed that number for at least three reasons. 1) It's the first time the Pioneers will ever have hosted an Ivy League team; 2) There are a ton of Dartmouth alums in the metropolitan area and 3) As the Sacred Heart website reports ...

This season's return match-up with the Big Green will highlight 2011 Sacred Heart Homecoming Weekend.

*

From the Ivy League website:

Fourty-Four Football Ivies Named to the 2011 NFF Hampshire Honor Society

There's good and bad in that headline ;-)