LA Times Note And March Madness

Former Dartmouth football coach Joe Yukica and his successful court case to coach out his contract in the 1980s gets a mention late in a Los Angeles Times article about the futures of Los Angles Clippers basketball coach Vinny Del Nego and Ben Howland, hoops coach at UCLA.

From the story:

 In the mid-1980s, a veteran football coach named Joe Yukica was fired by Dartmouth. The school said it would pay his contract. Yukica sued, saying the contract gave him the right to coach, not just make money. He won and continued.

People Magazine, of all sources, had a lengthy story about the Yukica case in 1986.

Say what you want about the Learfield Sports Director's Cup – and I got an earful yesterday from someone who is not a fan – Dartmouth is sitting pretty after yesterday's latest release of the all-sport ranking of Division I college programs. It helps, of course, that Dartmouth has two things no one else in the Ivy League can claim: a successful varsity ski team and Abbey D'Agostino.

As is often the case, Princeton is highly ranked – the Tigers are the top FCS school and 16th overall – but Dartmouth is a very respectable 49th. The Big Green is the third FCS school behind only Princeton and Villanova.

As for the alum who shared thoughts about the Learfield Cup, stay tuned. At some point the BGA blog may have some very interesting news out of him. Sorry for the tease but that's all I can give you now.

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Speaking of Ivy League teams on the national radar, how about Harvard's stunning win over New Mexico in the men's NCAA basketball tournament last night? There are a bunch of stories out there including, if you can believe it, a good one in USA Today.

Harvard's win got me thinking about a colleague from my newspaper days who joked about the conflicted feelings he would have defending Larry Flynt's First Amendment rights. A great many Ivy League sports fans have been unhappy with how Harvard has gone about turning around its basketball program under Tommy Amaker (see this 2008 New York Times story) but they probably find themselves cheering the win this morning, and appreciating what it means for the Ivy League.

(By the way, with its two captains expected back next year after missing the season because of the cheating scandal, the addition of this recruit and the graduation of just one starter, Harvard would seem to be a strong candidate to make it four Ivy League titles in a row next winter.)

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Watching the NCAA Tournament has brought out the Andy Rooney in me so buckle up your chin straps and here goes.

• The USA Today story mentions how Harvard played in the second round of the NCAA Tournament last year. A few announcers referred to Thursday's action as the second round but to my ears an awful lot of them sidestepped the nomenclature. The NCAA can call it what it wants, but it's NOT the second round. Not for teams that haven't won a game. By the NCAA's definition, last year's Harvard team advanced just as far as the Princeton or Penn teams that won actually first-round games before the introduction of the play-in games (which is what they are). Pure NCAA silliness.

• The players and the game have gotten so fast that officiating has become impossible. It's maddening how many calls are flat-out wrong. There's no sport where officials' rulings are anywhere as subjective.

• If I could come up with a way to painlessly and effectively remove tattoos some day in the future, not only could I afford to send both my kids to college, I could buy them each a college. Or an entire conference.

• I enjoy the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament – but only games with a David and Goliath theme going on. I also enjoy the last weekend, but little else. Villanova against North Carolina? I can see that kind of game all season long. That's why I lived and died with Harvard, Bucknell, Davidson and Southern yesterday.

• Some of the names that people slap on their kids drive me nuts. I don't know that I'd necessarily go as far as they have in Iceland, but what are these people thinking? Right. They aren't.

• Speaking of Bucknell and Davidson, both have Dartmouth connections of sorts. Bucknell coach Dave Paulsen was a finalist for the Dartmouth job before withdrawing his name when Terry Dunn was hired. Paulsen, of course, was at Williams under Big Green athletic director Harry Sheehy. (I've always appreciated the professional way he dealt with me when I was reporting on the Dartmouth job search.)

• And 6-10 Davidson standout Jake Cohen is the brother of former Dartmouth quarterback Josh Cohen. I remember watching Jake playing pickup ball in Leede Arena as a high schooler and thinking about what a huge difference he would have made for the Big Green, which I was told did not recruit him. A fine student who took a visit to Penn, Cohen was described by the announcers yesterday as the only player in the NCAA's with some impressive combinations of points, rebounds blocks, steals and bags of popcorn sold. OK, maybe I made that last one up. ;-)

• I had a laugh watching the Harvard band, which one story described as wearing outfits that matched those of the ushers in the arena. I remember being at an NCAA Tournament game at Purdue and being astonished to learn that one school in a second game of a doubleheader rented the pep band from a school that played in the first game. I wonder if Harvard did the same thing and simply dressed the trumpeters and drummers in usherware after all. Nah, several of them actually looked like Bill Gates. (Apologies for the cheapshot.)

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Dartmouth baseball improved to 9-1 yesterday with a win over Bradley. The Green plays Babson and Bradley today before closing out its Florida swing against Bradley tomorrow. Weather permitting, the home opener is Wednesday against Siena.