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| Click to enlarge this scan from the 1986 Dartmouth press guide. |
Don Brown, who got his start as a college coach at Dartmouth in the 1980s, has been named the 2015 Assistant Coach of the Year in the FBS by the American Football Coaches Association for his work this year at Boston College. His Eagle defense led the nation in several categories this fall, including fewest yards allowed per game.
Brown was a young high school assistant coach with a family here in the Upper Valley when he took a gamble and moved across the river to join Joe Yukica's staff, first as a full-time, part-time assistant. He even worked at the Hanover Inn to make ends meet. Turned out to be a pretty good gamble ;-)
Find the BC release Brown's honor HERE.
Brown, who went 43-19 in five years as head coach at Mass (2004-08), had a 95-45 record in 12 years as a head coach at three schools. He was the highly regarded defensive coordinator at Yale from 1987-92. He even took over as the Bulldogs' interim baseball coach in '92, leading the team to the league title and the NCAA tournament.
Media reports had the hugely popular, then-UConn defensive coordinator as a favorite to return to New Haven as head coach in 2012 (LINK), but what many thought would have been a game-changing hire by Yale fell through. Instead he moved on to Boston College the next year. He also has been defensive coordinator at Maryland. (LINK)
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Speaking of Yale, it turns out the Bowl will not be getting FieldTurf anytime soon. From the Yale Daily News:
In August, football head coach Tony Reno told the Hartford Courant that a renovation was being planned to add artificial turf and a 65-foot-high protective bubble roof to the Bowl, a temporary structure that would be installed in the winter months to allow multiple Yale teams to practice indoors. But four months later, this plan is no longer under consideration, according to Associate Athletics Director and Sports Publicity Director Steve Conn.And this . . .
Director of Athletics Tom Beckett confirmed that the Yale Bowl’s field will remain grass, but did not comment on the reason that the project is no longer being discussed.
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In response to my comment yesterday about the Ivy League and Rose Bowl being strange bedfellows, a loyal reader mentioned that the conference does indeed have a history with the Grandaddy of Them All. In case you are wondering, here are the Ivy League results out of Pasadena:
- 1916 Brown lost to Washington State, 14-0
- 1917 Penn lost Oregon, 14-0
- 1920 Harvard beat Oregon, 7-6
- 1934 Columbia beat Stanford, 7-0
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The November/December Cornell Alumni Magazine has a terrific story on the 75th anniversary of the famed Fifth Down Game. A couple of outtakes:A decade ago, ESPN football historian Beano Cook ranked the most important moments in the sport's history. He placed the Fifth Down Game second, behind only the famous "Win one for the Gipper" speech (which happened to be immortalized on the silver screen that same autumn in 1940). But while George Gipp's quotation may well have been apocryphal, the Fifth Down Game is in the record books. Twice, you might say.And this regarding the referee who took responsibility for the error . . .
The only man to officially score in the Fifth Down Game, Dartmouth placekicker Bob Krieger, went on to play for the Philadelphia Eagles. During one of his pro games in 1941, a referee suffered a severely broken leg and never officiated again. It was Red Friesell—who eventually became a welcome face at Dartmouth and Cornell reunions and had a racehorse named after him, dubbed "Fifth Down Red."
