Looking Ahead To Spring

Here's Dartmouth's spring football schedule (subject, and perhaps likely, to change):

• Tuesday, April 10
• Thursday, April 12
• Saturday, April 14
• Tuesday, April 17
• Thursday, April 19
• Saturday, April 21
• Tuesday, April 24
• Thursday, April 26
• Saturday, April 28
• Tuesday, May 1
• Thursday, May 3

Spring Game

• Saturday, May 5

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More follow-up on the Patriot League adding football scholarships . . .

The Utica Dispatch story included thoughts from Colgate coach Dick Biddle including this on the PL vs. Ivy League:

Biddle said he didn’t know what the league’s move to football scholarships would do to its relationship with the Ivy League, whose teams commonly make up part of their schedules against Patriot League teams. Colgate’s relationship with Cornell, for example, goes back to the 1890s, and the Raiders also played Dartmouth last season. Cornell is not on the 2012 schedule, but Yale is, and Cornell, Yale and Princeton are on future schedules.

“If they want to play you, they’ll play you,” he said. “We’ll still hope to play the Ivies.”

The Third Rail (Extended News and Opinion on Georgetown Hoyas Football) writes that, "For Georgetown, it’s time to look up the road," and offers several suggestions. One, if Georgetown doesn't give scholarships, is giving up games against scholarship teams, which it notes other schools have done:

Dartmouth used to play the University of New Hampshire until the Wildcats went full scholarship—from 1901 to 1980, Dartmouth was 16-1-1 vs. New Hampshire. Since 1980, 1-17-1. Yale no longer plays Connecticut, Princeton long since fell off Rutgers’ calendar.

In addition to staying in the Patriot League, the Third Rail suggestions are to join the Northeast Conference, to join the Pioneer Football League, to play as an independent or an "Ivy+1" model of facing all of the Ivy teams as a "scheduling partner" of the Ancient Eight.

It is highly unlikely the last will happen because it would require the Ivies to play a non-conference opponent deep into the Ivy season.

An opinion piece in The Express-Times of the Lehigh Valley says the decision to add football scholarships in the Patriot League is a mistake.

Lehigh Football Nation analyzes the scholarship decision and writes:

It was a bold decision - and one that was a lot more difficult, I think, than folks realize. But I also think, ultimately, it was also the right decision

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Visit the Harvard football website and watch the stories rotate through. We all know the Crimson program has seen its coaching staff denuded, but watching the announcements of new hires machine gun onto the screen one after another drives the message home.

Oh, and here's the biggest reason for the changes at Harvard.

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And finally, email has brought several comments and concerns regarding recruiting. Keep in mind what you read here and in the newspapers is a quick snapshot that doesn't begin to tell the whole story.