Not Quite A Monday Morning Bombshell

Cruising around Ivy football websites I stumbled across a page headlined, Brown Football Future Schedules. Listed are the Brown schedules through 2021, and what the page shows seems to confirm a rumor I'd heard a while back.

Here's the 2018 Brown schedule. See if something catches your eye:

Sept. 15 - Open
Sept. 22 - Harvard
Sept. 29 - Open
Oct. 6 - at Rhode Island
Oct. 13 at Princeton
Oct. 20 Cornell
Oct. 27 Penn
Nov. 3 at Yale
Nov. 10 - Columbia
Nov. 17 at Dartmouth

Yup.

On the 2018, 2019, 2020 and  2021 schedules the Bears' final game is not against their traditional rival Columbia, but against Dartmouth, which has closed out against Princeton every year since 1990.

Here's an overview of Dartmouth's season-ending games since 1946, starting with the present day and working backward:

• 1990-today: Princeton
• 1964-1989: Princeton and Penn in alternate years
• 1946-1963: Princeton

The switch to the Dartmouth-Brown game at season's end will mean changes elsewhere in the Ivy League as well. While other schedules haven't been posted you can just about bet the mortgage that Columbia will finish with Cornell, and Princeton will finish with Penn.

Green Alert Take: Back when Jay Fiedler was playing for the Big Green and Keith Elias was the "Back in Black," the Dartmouth-Princeton game was pretty special.

With both teams on the upswing and Dartmouth costing Princeton an undefeated Ivy League season last fall, the rivalry could be heating up again.

But try as a few alums might – and my how they've tried – a win in the Dartmouth-Princeton game has never felt like something that, in and of itself, makes your season. It's not Harvard-Yale or Lehigh-Lafayette, or even Amherst-Williams. Not even Ithaca-Cortland.

That being the case, and with the rearranging of the Dartmouth academic calendar meaning the final game is in the middle of exams, a shorter trip to end the year makes some sense.

Elsewhere in the league, it makes a ton of sense. Princeton-Penn may not raise that rivalry to anything resembling the old basketball rivalry between the schools, but playing the football game at the end of the year will certainly help. And Columbia-Cornell can be pitched as a season-ending battle for New York State supremacy.

And here's a surprise. Harvard and Yale will still play on the final Saturday of the season.

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Kudos to the Dartmouth men's ice hockey team for fighting back from a 4-2 deficit to win their opening-round ECAC hockey series against RPI and earn the right to play Union in the next round.