Hail Victor

Surprise, surprise.

Victor Williams

Want to guess who finished fourth in the long jump at the Dartmouth Relays over the weekend? If you said football wide receiver Victor Williams, give yourself a gold star. Williams leaped 21 feet, 1 and one-half inch to help the Big Green win the team championship. The Dartmouth sophomore also ran a 7.31 in the 60-meter dash.

Williams captained the Muskogee High School track team as a senior, jumping 22-5 in the Oklahoma 6A Region meet. He also was an accomplished hurdler.

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It surprised me but former Brown and Massachusetts head football coach Mark Whipple is returning to UMass as head coach. The Gazette writes, UMass hits home run with hiring of Mark Whipple as football coach. It will certainly help that the Minutemen will play three games in Amherst next fall instead of traveling 90-plus miles to play in front of "crowds" rattling around Gillette Stadium, but Whip will still face a huge uphill battle making the team competitive at the FBS level.

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From a column in The Dartmouth:

Dartmouth places too great an emphasis on athletic success to the detriment of our community. This lays an absurd burden on those who choose to participate in athletics. I can identify four reasons we care so much about athletic success, all of which, to me, seem nonsensical.

And this . . .

Dartmouth claims to be an academic institution whose goal is to educate its student body. Yet we increasingly waste time and money by placing too high a priority on athletics for a small material benefit. Camaraderie, teamwork, encouraging excellence and other oft-evoked benefits of sports are all very nice. I just think we need to tone it down and adopt an approach more like Division III schools — except for basketball. A Sweet Sixteen run would make everyone happy, including admissions officers. 

Discuss among yourselves because it is giving me a headache.