Congratulations to the Columbia Lions, winners of the 2016 CIT, a third-tier post-season men's basketball tournament. Tell me again why the Ivy League chooses not to participate in post-season NCAA playoffs in football. What are the shared high values and principles?The post includes this:
How is playing Norfolk State, Ball State, NJIT and Cal-Irvine a fully sanctioned affair in hoops while football lacks such sterling opportunities?And the AGS post asks this question:
Irony or Hypocrisy?Lehigh Football Nation answers:
I think the point was that the Ivy League supposedly didn't have time for any postseason tournament that 1) wasn't the "top tier", and 2) wasn't an official NCAA competition. The CIT is neither. The FCS playoffs is both.
The original Ivy agreement stated:
The members of the Group shall not engage in post-season games or any other contests designed to settle sectional or other championships. (NOTE: National Collegiate Athletic Association, Eastern College Athletic Conference, A.A.U., competitions and international competitions such as the games, meets and matches with Oxford and Cambridge Universities shall not be considered as post-season games or contests within the meaning of the above rule.)
This puts the needle squarely on "hypocrisy" instead of "irony", but I don't think we're saying anything that everyone doesn't know already.
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Dartmouth and coach Buddy Teevens get a mention in a Vice Sports story looking back at how John Gagliardi ran his über successful program at Minnesota Division III powerhouse St. John's. From the story:Dartmouth shared the 2015 title, five years after coach Buddy Teevens eliminated season-long full-contact practices. But as the Times noted, even the Big Green "hit pads and tackling dummies, including a specially designed 'mobile virtual player' that moves across the field the way a player would." Those things weren't found at St. John's. "Winning With No's" included no tackling dummies, apparatus or, we can presume, robots. ("You don't see blocking sleds or tires on the field during a game," Gagliardi explains.)And:
"A lot of the things we did, I thought they were just common sense," Gagliardi says. "I was just trying to survive. I wasn't looking to make any converts."
The "converts" bit is a common Gagliardi quote. He insists he didn't care if others agreed with his tactics, but in retrospect it's puzzling that no coaches followed suit, if not out of any deeper concern than keeping their own players healthy. "The most logical explanation is he was terrified of having players get hurt," (former quarterback Tom) Linnemann says of Gagliardi's no-tackling edict. "And having to face their parents, and then having to face teams on Saturdays without his best players."
Or, to use another famous Gagliardi line, most teams protect their quarterbacks in practice, but "other players have mothers, too."
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STATS does a mock first-round draft with just FCS players. Two are chosen, both from Harvard: offensive tackle Cole Toner and tight end Ben Brauncecker.
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Allen Lessels writes in the UNH Insider that Dartmouth Game One opponent New Hampshire kicks off the first of its 15 spring practices tomorrow. From the story:The first order of business on the field is coming up with a starting quarterback after a four-year run by Sean Goldrich, who finished up last fall, and Andy Vailas, who closed out his career the season before.The story also notes that Ricky Santos, who won the Walter Payton Award as the UNH quarterback, will be coaching the position at this year at Columbia. UNH coach Sean McDonnell:
"He's gone from coaching the receivers here and being a guy that's been in this system to going to Columbia and working for a great coach in Al Bagnoli and helping a program that they're trying to turn around. The biggest thing for Ricky is he's going to coach the quarterbacks, a position that he played and a position he would like to coach all the time. Everybody on offense wants to be quarterback coach."
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Speaking of coaches, former Dartmouth defensive back and assistant coach Joe Scola has landed at Prairie View A&M according to Pro Football Scoop. Scola '07, coached for the better part of three years at Dartmouth, then took a grad assistantship at Florida State, worked as director of player development at Kentucky for two years and eventually moved on to the San Francisco 49ers, where he served as an offensive assistant until Chip Kelly took over. Scola will coach linebackers at Prairie View.
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Dartmouth defensive line coach Duane Brooks is center stage in the lated mic'd up for mat drills video from the Big Green football program: