Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Pay For Play Thoughts

I got hung up on several comments from Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris in a Bloomberg story regarding the possibility of the NCAA potentially allowing athletes to receive a stipend. Harris is quoted this way:
“If the student-athletes want to be paid, they have to find someplace else to play.” 
I can't help but think there might be a better way of saying that. I mean, there are a lot of people who already resent the Ivy League . . .

 And . . .
Harris said stipends or better food or benefits to athletes at competing schools won’t be a disadvantage for the Ivy League.
Nice to know they have a crystal ball down there in the Ivy office. For what it's worth, I heard the same thing over the past few years when the Patriot League started talking about football scholarships and guess what? I've been hearing something different since they started handing them out.

Green Alert Take: As someone who is footing the bill for two kids in college you can count me among those who believe scholarship athletes are already being paid – and quite handsomely.
The Daily Pennsylvanian has a column asking whether there is an Ivy League football team that can challenge the Penn-Harvard grip on the title. Most prominent among the teams named: Dartmouth.

Here's part of what the DP sports editor wrote:
. . . Dartmouth is going to pose a big challenge the rest of the way in the Ancient Eight. I think that the Big Green’s 20-13 win over previously-unbeaten Yale last week was a real statement win. Running back Dominick Pierre and quarterback Dalyn Williams torched the Bulldogs on the ground, just like they had done the week before against Penn…
And . . .
. . . I don’t think that Dartmouth can leapfrog both Penn AND Harvard to take the crown, but that Nov. 2 date with the Crimson in Cambridge is looming. I’m not so confident that Harvard’s defense can contain Dartmouth’s read-option (Penn just barely could), so that game could be an upset in the making. And remember, Williams is only a sophomore. He’ll be back next year, and the 2014 Ivy title could easily belong to the boys from Hanover.
Yesterday's BGA blog included a note about Princeton using three quarterbacks in different ways in the first two plays of Saturday's game. Here's the kicker: There's another quarterback on the Tiger roster who was more heavily recruited than any of the others.

A story in the Daily Princetonian under the headline, How a four-star recruit became a Tiger, includes this about Chad Kanoff (who decommitted from Vanderbilt to go to Princeton):
With siblings at Dartmouth and Amherst, Kanoff and his family were evidently attracted to Princeton because of its academics . . .
Christine Kanoff is a Dartmouth junior and member of the Dartmouth women's soccer club team.
Speaking of Harvard, Crimson defensive end Zach Hodges has been added to The Sports Network's Buck Buchanan Award watch list. He joins Princeton's Caraun Reid on the list seeking to identify the outstanding defensive player in the FCS.