Not-So-Seriously Naming Names

Darren Rovell of CNBC has a list of his 25 best names in college football this year and topping Navy's Wave Ryder, FAU's Yourhighness Morgan and TCU's Tank Carder is pretty much impossible. I was disappointed that he included nicknames, but even the given names in his list are pretty good.

That sent me on a time-waster checking out the names on teams Dartmouth will see this fall. Here's a list of a few of them that jumped out at me, arranged by school:

BROWN
Patxi Colbern, Tellef Lundevall, Oyeleye Odewunmi, Adewole Oyalowo, Clayton Paino

COLUMBIA
Seyi Adebayo, Percee Goings

CORNELL
Shane Savage, Tre' Minor, Fiaalii Togiaso

HARVARD
Obum Obukwelu, Niv Sultan, Khadi Tshishiku

PENN
Allante Keels, Tosan Eyetsemitan, Feerooz Yacoobi

PRINCETON
Jaiye Falusi

YALE
Wynston Bouknight, Jordan Buxton-Punch, Obinna Nwakeze

COLGATE
BaRack Little, Armani Aburto, Quinneil Simmons, Harlan Abeshouse, Siddiq Cornish, Chibe Achuko

HOLY CROSS
Llazar Cuko, Roman SanDoval

SACRED HEART
Rock Tate, Keshaudas Spence, Rudyard Favard, Alihumza Sumra, Rakendrick Varnado

Dartmouth? Maybe I'm too familiar with the names, but I couldn't find even one for the list.

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A Daily Dartmouth columnist lists the top 10 reasons to be excited for the upcoming Big Green football season.

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Teams of note in The Sports Network/Fathead.com FCS Top-25 College Football Poll (link):

10. New Hampshire
26. Penn
39. Colgate
41. Harvard
52. Yale
62. Brown
65. Columbia

This is not meant to be a knock on Columbia, but the fact that the Lions are in the poll means someone voted for them in the Top-25. Hey, if they win their first five games, we'll talk. But c'mon.

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Dartmouth defensive tackler Elliot Kastner has an interesting sideline. Click here to learn a little more.

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Several years ago the Hanover Chamber of Commerce commissioned me to do the writing for a promotional piece on the town. It took a ton of research and a lot of fact-checking to pull the piece together because there was no lack of good material to slog through. That included a lot of impressive rankings in national magazines and websites.

CNN Money's new list of best small towns in America "that stand out in the qualities American families care about most," is cut from the same cloth. It has Hanover ranked No. 6 in the nation. Find the full story here or zip straight to the writeup on Hanover.

(Am I the only one who thinks the definition of a small town as places under 50,000 in population is a little off? Maybe places under 25,000? Or under 10,000 like Hanover. Or under 1,000 like Etna, population 814 according to that definitive source, Wikipedia. In case you are wondering, we live far from the population center of Metroplitan Downtown Etna on the shoulder of Moose Mountain.

Thanks to all who shared the CNN Money links.

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And finally, best wishes to Heather Croze, who is wrapping up eight years as Dartmouth's assistant director of sports information today and returning home to Colorado. Heather always had time to sit and laugh at my stupid stories when I'd stick my nose into her office and was great about tossing me freelance assignments here and there. Her emails were always addressed, "Brucey," and that was a first ;-)

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The Cornell preview will be going up on BGA premium later today.