Visit BGA Premium tonight for the second in a three-part look with Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens at this year's freshmen, and a quick recap of the afternoon's proceedings on Memorial Field.
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This is not original but Dartmouth fans reading the Sports Illustrated story and hearing all the buzz about non-scholarship Butler beating a Youngstown team that played in the FCS championship game two years earlier might be feeling a little déjà vu.It was two years ago that the non-scholarship Big Green knocked off Towson, which had played for the FCS championship three years before.
OK, you are right, it's not the same thing. Butler won on the road and Dartmouth won at home. Youngstown has won four national championships and appeared in the national championship game eight times and Towson had appeared in the FCS playoffs just two times. Still . . .
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1st and Forever: Making the Case for the Future of Football, written by Bob Casciola, the former Princeton head coach and Dartmouth assistant under Bob Blackman, has hit the bookstores. Press materials describe it as an "homage to football (that) presents a counter-narrative to all the negative press that's out there, threatening the game. It seeks to make a case for football by showcasing the character of many of those who played it."
Two of the people of character who are portrayed prominently in the book are former Dartmouth greats Murry Bowden and Reggie Williams.
From the chapter on Bowden:
He came to visit Yale on his recruiting trip north from West Texas, where his student host was none other than fellow West Texas native George W. Bush.
“You need to come to Yale,” Murry recalls the future president telling him. “But Dartmouth has its redeeming qualities. For example, if you like reading poetry alone on Saturday nights, you’ll love Dartmouth.”
“Well,” Murry picks up, “I grew up around cattle, riding in rodeos, so Yale was a bit different and intimidating for a kid from Snyder, Texas. Dartmouth was too, but less so because it was located in the small town of Hanover.”And from the chapter on Williams:
He speaks reverently of one of his idols, the Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall.
“The ability to pursue a quality education made a dramatic change in the chances an African-American kid had in life, and I was determined to take advantage of it.”
So off Reggie went to Dartmouth, where Bob Blackman and his staff realized they had something special right from the start. So special that Lenny Nichols, an All-State linebacker out of New York State who’d received multiple scholarships offers but chose Dartmouth for academic reasons, was shifted to the offensive line to make room at linebacker for the budding star.To learn more about the book or order your copy from Amazon, CLICK HERE.
