Commander In Chief

Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon visits with the team at Monday's
practice. The new president watched about half the practice and seemed
to meet and greet most of the team.

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The best wide receiver at Dartmouth not on the football team? That may well be high jumper/hurdler Jeremy Birck. A Chicago Sun-Times story about his quarterback at Libertyville HS notes that Birck was an all-county selection out in Illinois. Check out his Dartmouth bio here.

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The daily Dartmouth notes that the college is inaugurating a Fall Fling this year. From the story:

The schedule starts with a barbecue and carnival at 5 p.m. outside Alumni Gym and continues with the this year’s first home football game against Holy Cross at 7 p.m. Kap Slap and Timeflies, the main attractions, will perform on Gold Coast Lawn at 9 p.m.

That may draw more students to the home opener but those students are either going to miss the start of the music or the end of the football game because two hours ain't gonna cut it.

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Speaking of Holy Cross, this is from their game notes for this week's game against Monmouth:

During last Saturday’s 52-21 victory at Central Connecticut, Holy Cross
ran the ball 72 times for 419 yards. The Crusaders tied the school single game record with their 72 rushing attempts, while their 419 rushing yards  were their most since running for 583 yards on 72 carries against Columbia  on Oct. 29, 1983. Holy Cross also picked up 28 of its 33 total first downs  against the Blue Devils on the ground, breaking the Patriot League single game record of 23 rushing first downs which had been accomplished four  times before. The Crusaders’ 419 rushing yards also tied for the third-most  in the nation by any team in the football championship subdivision so far this season.

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The only Ivy notes that were up this morning belonged to Yale, which lists senior Henry Furman OR sophomore Morgan Roberts, the Clemson transfer, as starting quarterback in their opener at Colgate. Yale Notes

The only thing more maddening than an "OR" on the game notes is simply finding them. Ivy League websites have gotten so graphically busy that finding anything on them is frustrating. Move your cursor here and a window slides down and covers what you want to see. Move your cursor there and the "lead" story has already been cycled through and you have to wait until it comes back again. Finding what you want on most pages is like finding your car in the mall parking lot.

Now, maybe I'm more annoyed by it because I try to visit each home page every day, but honestly, they drive me nuts. Just finding a link to a roster or a schedule can be difficult.

Web people, listen up. Just because you can put everything on one page doesn't mean you have to. And just because you've got all these bells and whistles you can use doesn't mean you have to use them.

EOR. End of rant.

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Watching Brown a couple of years ago some of us were wondering why coach Phil Estes didn't make more use of tailback John Spooney, the Ivy League sprint champion. If the Brown Daily Herald is right, he may see the ball more this fall after taking the last season off from football. From the story:

The running game will get a boost from the return of John Spooney ’14. The lightning-fast Spooney placed second on the team in rushing with 375 yards two seasons ago but didn’t play last season to focus on his decorated track career. Spooney’s return is a major addition for the ground game, and he is expected to get most of the carries early in the season, Estes said. 

“Spooney’s a guy that can break open a ball game,” Estes said. “Easily, he is the best running back we have.”

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Forbes has a story about the success former Dartmouth assistant-turned-AmeriTrade CEO Joe Moglia has enjoyed so far as head coach at Coastal Carolina. From the story:

(Coastal Carolina)  just crushed Eastern Kentucky 51-32 this weekend to start the 2013 season 3-0. Eastern Kentucky was ranked number 25 in the FCS standings going into the game (CCU was ranked number 21 and is now at 15), and had manhandled Moglia’s team on CCU’s home field last year.

And . . .

(T)he Chanticleers had never made the second round of the FCS playoffs until Moglia took them there last year. The team had never started a season 3-0 until this year. CCU has never had an offense quite like this, one that racked up 631 total yards on what was supposed to be stout Eastern Kentucky defense.

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The Sports Network's weekly poll includes these teams of interest:

42. Penn
45. Harvard

And drum roll please . . .

52. Sacred Heart

The Coaches Poll:

38. Harvard
41. Penn

and . . .

43. Sacred Heart

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And finally, for those of you keeping score, it was a brisk 34 degrees at 6 this morning during my hike to South Peak of Moose Mountain. It's expected to be 65-68 during practice. Oh, and gametime temperature at Butler Saturday should be in the mid-70s with "some sun" according to our friends at AccuWeather.