•
The NFF Scholar-Athlete of the Day, presented by @Fidelity, is @DartFootball WR and Government major @DrewBreezy3#FootballMatters pic.twitter.com/FZBzXgy1cm— Football Foundation (@NFFNetwork) February 19, 2019
•
From the go-figure department . . .Long Island University, which played last year at the Division II level and will be joining the FCS ranks for the first time only this fall, already has scheduled an FBS game against Miami University of the Mid-American Conference. LIU will begin play in the Northeast Conference in 2019.
Interesting that just about everyone else is giving their kids the chance to test themselves against FBS programs but the Ivy League – with the exception of Yale's game against Army several years ago and a Dartmouth game scheduled at Army in 2024 – is not.
In case you are wondering, the NEC master schedule for 2019 features games against Eastern Michigan (Central Connecticut), Buffalo (Robert Morris), Florida Atlantic (Wagner) and UConn (Wagner).
The Patriot League will have games against Syracuse (Holy Cross), Air Force, (Colgate), Navy (Holy Cross), Temple (Bucknell) and Ball State (Fordham) next fall.
The Colonial Athletic Conference (which features UNH and Maine) has the most testing FBS schedule with contests against Virginia Tech (Rhode Island), Wake Forest (Elon), Virginia (William & Mary), West Virginia (James Madison), Boston College (Richmond), Pitt (Delaware) and Florida (Towson) among its 13 FBS games.
Green Alert Take: If the Ivy League's competitive posture has risen the way we all think it has, is it time for Ivy teams to have the opportunity to prove it against an occasional FBS opponent? A nice check certainly wouldn't be bad for the bottom line and it wouldn't exactly hurt recruiting to be able to offer the kids a chance to play a game every year or every other year at the FBS level.
Green Alert Take II: Maybe the outlets that compare conference records against each other should filter out those FBS games so it's more of an apples-to-apples comparison.
•
The New York Times writes about the passing of longtime Dartmouth professor Jeffrey Hart at age 88. (LINK) While the well-known conservative writer was certainly a lightning rod both at the college and on the national scene, we had many a pleasant conversation about the Big Green football team when I worked in the Dartmouth sports information office and he would amble in unannounced to use the fax machine (remember those?) to send one of his columns to this or that publication. At six screeching minutes a page, we had more than enough time to discuss the last game or the next. Agree or disagree with his politics, I enjoyed his company.This from the Times made me smile:
Professor Hart liked to flaunt his nonconformity, commuting to campus in a gas-guzzling Cadillac limousine that occupied two parking spaces; sporting an ankle-length raccoon coat at campus football games; coupling a meerschaum pipe with lumberjack boots and a Budweiser tie . . .
