The little blue bird reveals that nickleback and assistant coach Mike Bruno, who came to Hanover in a video capacity in 2011, has departed Dartmouth for a graduate assistant position at Mississippi State (where he joins former Dartmouth assistant Scott Sallach).
Twitter reveals that Dan O'Dea, who was sort of an adjunct staff member with the Big Green last fall, will assume Bruno's duties this year.
It tells us that former quality control coach Matthew Hewitt has landed at Rutgers as a "recruiting assistant."
And that Alex Dodds, a Hanover local who played Little League with That Certain Dartmouth '14 and That Certain Nittany Lion will be taking over for Dylan Moye as video coordinator.
•
An opinion piece under the headline, Race May Play a Role in Protecting Football Players, sees the writer perhaps trying a little too hard after reading the New York Times story about the Ivy League banning tackling in practice. From the piece:
But there was something odd about the two photos that accompany Times report. Gradually it came into focus: Of the 24 uniformed players depicted, only two are black.
Of Dartmouth's football team portrait for the year, of 111 uniformed players, 31 are black, or 28 percent.
This contrasts sharply with the NFL, where nearly 70 percent of the players are black, and with the Southeastern Conference, where 70 percent of the players are black, same as the NFL. About 6 percent of our nation's population is made up of black males.
I checked my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin. On a campus where fewer than 2 percent of the students are black men, they make up nearly 70 percent of the team.
So, the proportion of blacks playing on NFL and competitive college teams greatly exceeds the ratio in the general population. And the teams currently making significant moves to protect their players are mostly white. I won't go too far with this, but it's worth thinking about.Green Alert Take: Clearly, the writer hasn't been paying attention to what's been happening regarding the roll-back in tackling both in the NFL and in so-called major college football.
•
Huffpost Parents has a piece about player safety spun out of the writer's visit to Dartmouth last fall.The writer believes that, "no contact in practice makes sense." It's a worthwhile piece (with a nice video) but to suggest there is "no contact" in a Dartmouth practice is simply wrong. There's still a lot of necessary contact. They just don't tackle to the ground and try to rule out anything that might cause concussions or serious injury.
•
Speaking of That Certain '14, she's quoted in a Miami Herald story about the Every Kid in a Park initiative that has brought busloads of fourth-graders to the Everglades this school year. With a Dartmouth degree in earth science, a minor in education and a love of the outdoors she's in a pretty good place. She learned while we were visiting last week that she will return to Yellowstone in late spring for her second summer at the iconic park.She's in a couple of the Miami Herald pictures accompanying the story, including this one ;-)
