Back when I worked at the college we regularly received requests from collectors for Dartmouth football schedule cards. I'm not sure if folks still collect them as religiously as they did in the past but here's what collectors would get from Dartmouth this year.
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It is easy to quibble with both the numbers that have been assembled and what they mean or don't mean, but it's still fun to look at the data pulled together by Keeper's College Football Ratings regarding the percentage of production lost from last year's team. Here is the Keeper's explanation of its formula (take two aspirin to deal with your headache after reading):WHAT THE NUMBERS INDICATE: For example, UC-Davis loses 2.00 out of 11 Offensive Starters based on individual game starts in 20 UCD loses 1.00 out of 5 Offensive Line starters. They lose 18 percent of their rushing yards by anyone with positive net yards for the season. 1% QB passing yards are lost. 8 percent of receiving yards are lost. The Aggies will lose 3.82 out of 11 Defensive Starters from 2011. Defensive Tackling Rating has UCD losing 29% from the Top 22 tacklers. (Tackle Rating gives 2 points for a solo tackle and 1 point for assisted.) Defensive Line has 54% losses, Linbackers lose 7% tackling stats, and Defensive Backs lose 32%. (Samples are from the Top 22 tacklers plus any player who started at least one game on defense.)Got that? Me neither, but according to this spreadsheet from Keeper's, of 122 ranked teams in the Football Championship Series, no school took a bigger graduation hit than Dartmouth. Here's how the Ivy League and Dartmouth's nonconference opponents rank in the Keeper's standings:
32 Cornell
46 Sacred Heart
69 Harvard
79 Penn
84 Columbia
96 Princeton
97 Holy Cross
98 Butler
113 Yale
121 Brown
122 Dartmouth
Keeper's also has a "preliminary" list of returning starters for each school. Here are the numbers for each Ivy:
Cornell - 8.6 offense, 7.3 defense, 15.9 total
Harvard - 6.4 offense, 7.0 defense, 13.4 total
Princeton - 6.0 offense, 7.1 defense, 13.1 total
Penn - 7.3 offense, 5.1 defense, 12.4 total
Yale 7.7 offense, 3.8 defense, 11.1 total
Columbia - 5.8 offense, 4.7 defense, 10.5 total
Brown - 4.3 offense, 3.6 defense, 7.9 total
Dartmouth - 3.9 offense, 2.3 defense, 6.2 total
