TSN calls the game, "basically a title eliminator," and that's true. Since official Ivy League championship play began in 1956 only twice has a team with two losses won a share of the title and whichever team loses Saturday at Harvard Stadium will have two losses. (In case you are wondering, the two-loss champions were in 1963 and 1982 and both times Dartmouth got a share. The Big Green and Princeton split the title in '63 and in '82 it was Dartmouth, Harvard and Penn splitting it three ways.)
In other games featuring Ivy teams and Dartmouth opponents Saturday, TSN has it this way:
- Yale over Columbia
- Brown over Penn
- Princeton over Cornell
- Colgate over Bucknell
- Fordham over Holy Cross
- Butler over Dayton
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While The Sports Network is calling for a Dartmouth win, Massey Ratings has it the other way. According to Massey, Dartmouth has a 12 percent chance of beating Harvard. Here's how Massey sees the other Ivy games this weekend:- Brown 54 percent chance of beating Penn
- Yale 98 percent chance of beating Columbia
- Princeton 94 percent chance of beating Cornell
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The latest Gridiron Power Index numbers are in and they look like this (last week's ranking in parentheses):
- 27. Princeton (28)
- 31. Harvard (22)
- 46. Penn (54)
- 49. Brown (47)
- 54. Yale (49T)
- 64T. Dartmouth (78)
- 99. Cornell (99)
- 119. Columbia (116)
- 81T. Holy Cross (72)
- 89. Bucknell (109)
- 94T. Butler (85)
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It's only getting worse at Columbia. From today's Spectator:
Columbia football (0-6, 0-3 Ivy) will be without two of its best players on Saturday against Yale (3-3, 1-2 Ivy), as head coach Pete Mangurian told Spectator senior running back and co-captain Marcorus Garrett and senior punter Paul Delaney have been suspended for the game.Correction. That's not "two of its best players." That's the two best players.
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Call me Chicken Little but the more I watch what is going on in the Patriot League in this first year of football scholarships, the more I start to wonder if the sky is falling on the Ivy League.• Fordham got the jump start on the rest of the PL with scholarships and with its first class of scholarship players now seniors the Rams are 8-0 and ranked 8/9 nationally by the two polls.
• Holy Cross has come back to the pack since beating Dartmouth but quarterback Peter Pujals, who engineered the Crusaders' win over the Big Green, is a candidate for the Jerry Rice Award as the nation's top freshman in the FCS ranks.
• Bucknell, which last week thrashed Lehigh, got 154 yards rushing from CJ Williams and 130 yards in receiving from Will Carter, two of the five freshmen who started for the Bison.
• Lafayette freshman quarterback Drew Reed completed 21-of-22 passes – including his last 20 – for five touchdowns and 283 yards last week against Holy Cross.
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That Certain '14 and That Certain Nittany Lion are true baseball fans. She can explain the "double switch" to you and he may be the only Penn State student who made it a point to go to every State College Spikes Class A minor league game that was played after classes began out there. When the kids were young I explained to them that they were the product of a mixed marriage. Mrs. BGA grew up a Red Sox fan. I grew up rooting for Mickey Mantle's team. I told the kids their choice was simple. They could follow Mrs. BGA and have a lifetime of agony. Or they could make the smart choice and root for my team. Fortunately, Mrs. BGA isn't rubbing our noses in it. Not yet, at least.
