From the column:
The football players in the Ivy League deserve the same chance to play for a national title as the soccer players, basketball players and lacrosse players they go to school with every day.
Bob Surace, the Tigers’ head coach, and his staff and players work as hard as anyone. They play 10 games a season and compete for an Ivy League title. But unlike the other coaches and athletes in the league, the season ends for the football team when the final game is played on Nov. 19.Well said, but Dartmouth fans might take issue with this from the column:
Princeton deserved to be in the field of 24 teams playing for a national title. Just as Penn deserved that chance last year and Harvard did in 2014 when it went a perfect 10-0.Green Alert Take: Yes, Princeton deserved to be in the field this year. As for Penn deserving the chance last year, the Quakers were 2015 tri-champions and if Princeton deserved the nod this year because it defeated Penn then Dartmouth had the edge on Penn a year ago for defeating the Quakers. (Of course Harvard had the edge on Dartmouth because of the head-to-head, and Penn had the edge on Harvard for the same reason. Like a certain "Committee" that has a massive headache today, deciding which team was most deserving wouldn't have been easy, but all three teams deserved to have the chance. ;-)
Green Alert Take II: You've read it here before but the Ivy League ban on football being allowed to do what every other Ivy League sport can do is reprehensible and indefensible.
•
Speaking of Princeton, there's been a clamor among some Tiger faithful for Princeton and Rutgers to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the first-ever college football game with a rematch of the Nov. 6, 1869 game that saw Rutgers defeat Princeton, 6-4, in New Brunswick.Here's the thing. After covering the Dartmouth-Princeton football game a couple of weeks ago, we headed up the road a half hour to catch the Penn State-Rutgers game. Having watched both teams just a few hours apart I couldn't help but think it was a shame Princeton and Rutgers didn't celebrate the anniversary a little early because the Tigers very likely would have gotten payback after 150 years.
Green Alert Take: Don't hold your breath waiting for a Princeton-Rutgers game or the Ivy League doing the right thing and allowing its football players to do what every other Ivy League athlete can do. Such a shame.
