USC’s holder, Wyatt Schmidt, knelt at the 36-yard line, alone. A back-and-forth game against Penn State that will go down as one of most exciting in the Rose Bowl’s 103 editions was in its final seconds on Monday evening, and Schmidt was thinking two things.
Get the ball down. Hope Matt Boermeester was right.Now, anyone who knows a football is filled with air and not with feathers knows why it's painful for a Penn Stater to read that.
Why would it be hard for a Dartmouth fan? Because Wyatt Schmidt, brother of Big Green kicking great Foley Schmidt, was signed and sealed as a Dartmouth kicker, only to be delivered to USC, where he is the holder, backup longsnapper, reserve kicker and jack-of-all-trades.
All Schmidt did as a high school senior in Minnesota was be chosen the national high school kicker of the year when he was 15-of-15 on field goals made (47 yards, 46, 40, 40, 38, 37, 33, 33, 30, 28, 28, 27, 27, 23, 22) and 39-of-39 on extra points. You can read more about him in an old BGA Daily posting HERE, and he was listed in the incoming class HERE before calling an audible and choosing instead to head west where he is studying real estate development.
Find Wyatt Schmidt's USC bio HERE.
The kicking Schmidts (third brother Macalaster is a sophomore kicker for former Dartmouth coach Chris Wilkerson at the University of Chicago) weren't the only folks with a Big Green background that had a dog in the fight in Pasadena.
Dartmouth defensive lineman Rocco De Leo's brother, Frank, is a walk-on linebacker for Penn State. (LINK)
There just happens to be a Rose Bowl program sitting around BGA world headquarters and a quick flip through the pages turned up the would-be Dartmouth kicker and the Big Green brother:
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Proving that sometimes you actually can go home again, former Dartmouth running backs coach Chad Nice will return to Cornell to work with the wide receivers according to FootballScoop. Nice is a 2005 graduate of Cornell, where he was a three-year starter for the Big Red. He caught 43 passes for 652 yards and four touchdowns as a senior.
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The Dartmouth follows up on the local daily's report about the college decision to appeal the town's denial of the OK to build an indoor athletic practice facility in the "sunken garden" behind Thompson Arena and the Boss Tennis Center.
