More Harvard Under The Lights

A couple of interesting notes from the Harvard Crimson sports blog after the announcement yesterday that the Harvard game against Dartmouth on Oct. 29 will kick off at 6 p.m. ...

• "Harvard has never lost at home at under the lights, sitting on a 4-0 record going into the 2011 season."

• "Last year’s night game, the home opener against Holy Cross, drew 21,704. In 2009, when Harvard’s average attendance was 10,701, the night game against Brown brought 17,263 fans to the stadium."

Dartmouth has a brief announcement of the time change here.

Dartmouth has never played a night game although the Columbia game several years ago in New York City was a late-afternoon kickoff that ended under the lights – both for TV reasons and because of the monsoon-like conditions. Whether the Harvard game will be Dartmouth's first-ever night game, however, remains to be seen because there is still a chance that one of the Big Green's early season home games this fall could be shifted to an evening start to take advantage of the lights being installed on Memorial Field this summer. Probably won't be the Ivy League opener against Penn, however.

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Former University New Hampshire assistant and Granite State native Chip Kelly got almost universal praise the past couple of years for the job he was doing as head coach of the high-octane Oregon football team. Now, however, Kelly is under the microscope for questionable recruiting practices. Stewart Mandel of SI.com has a story that begins this way:

Oregon coach Chip Kelly is known as a master tactician, a guy who employs a unique offensive attack and frenetic pace to give his teams an edge over opponents. It turns out Kelly was using a far more ethically questionable approach to give his program an edge in recruiting.

SI.com's Andy Staples has a story headlined, Cheating for dummies" that includes this:

"Scandals at Oregon, etc. make it clear coaches have forgotten how to cheat."

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A sad story out of Virginia where in February St. Paul's College hired a football coach for its Division II team and on July 1 announced it was dropping not just football but the entire athletic program. An historically black school of 517 students. St. Paul's had sponsored baseball, basketball, golf, tennis, track and cross country in addition to football for men, and basketball, bowling, softball, tennis, track, cross country and volleyball for women. (Thanks for the link.)

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There are 73 days until Dartmouth kicks off the season against these guys ...

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Had another night-time visit from a bear ... or bears the other night. The first clue came when I was watering the vegetable garden and didn't see our composting barrel. Turns out a passing bear hauled the thing – which weighs a ton on its wooden stand – into the woods. Same thing happened once last year.

Good thing we remembered to close our garage door. It was a few years ago when Mrs. BGA heard a noise out in the garage, turned on the light and saw a bear hightail it out of there and into the woods.