The Dartmouth Way

Download the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program Analysis here.

A CBSsports.com story begins this way:

Flag football should be the national standard for competition until high-school age, according to a study released Wednesday by the Aspen Institute Sports and Society Program.

From the story:

High school and colleges minimize non-game tackling and player collisions by adopting Dartmouth-style instruction and practice standards

And . . .

The Dartmouth-style technique has been widely discussed. In 2016, Ivy League coaches decided to eliminate full-contact hitting during the regular season. 

"I think there's way too much contact at any level," Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens said in the study. "I think coaches are the ones who drive it. [When] I spoke with [the] American Football Coaches Association, I said that our collective body can fix this right now. We design practices. We approve drills. We say yes or no. If we push contact and aggressiveness, our players are going to reflect it and they're going to get hurt.

"It's a real simple equation: The more you hit, the more you will get hurt. [So] minimize contact." 

Green Alert Take: That's high praise for the role Dartmouth and Teevens have played in advancing safety in football.

Green Alert Take II: Hard to believe this mistake could make it into the Aspen Institute's white paper: "In Vermont, where Dartmouth is located and high school football has faded, tackle football at all middle schools has been eliminated, with a mandated shift to padded flag."

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The Manchester Union Leader has a Dartmouth preview HERE.

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The local Valley News has a blurb about Hanover relaxing its parking rules for home football Saturdays. From the story (LINK):

For Saturday home games, all meters will be enforced until 1:30 p.m., the start time of the game. There are no changes to parking enforcement for the night time games.

During the Saturday day games, prohibited parking spaces, permit-only parking, and other violations will continue to be enforced (with the exception of permit-only spaces on Hovey Lane and Lebanon Street).

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There's something kind of funny in an Ivy League football preview in the Daily Pennsylvanian (italics are mine):

If the team can silence worries surrounding (quarterback), particularly in its Ivy opener against Yale, then there is no reason the Big Green can’t win their second Ivy championship in the past four seasons.

What's funny about that? Dartmouth actually opens the Ivy League season with Penn and the Penn newspaper got it wrong ;-)

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The first of the Harvard Crimson's tongue-in-cheek Ivy League weekly previews can be found HERE.

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