Thursday Notes

The area alongside the Boss Tennis Center used to be just a soggy practice field. Eventually they started calling it "the sunken garden." A year from now they'll call it the Dartmouth indoor practice facility. Here's one aerial view of the work on the project courtesy of Instagram and another from a College update with labels added:

Find the latest two-week update on the facility on the Dartmouth Campus Services page  HERE.

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The Dartmouth Sports Publicity Office (nee Sports Information Department) has a release on offensive tackle Matt Kaskey signing with the Los Angeles Rams. Find the release HERE.

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Athlon has a piece spun out of the NFL Draft Bible's too-early look at the top 250 prospects for the 2020 NFL draft. Included are 34 FCS players. (LINK)

Ranked the 157th overall prospect is Dartmouth corner Isiah Swann, the reigning NCAA interceptions champion.

Others of local interest who are ranked include Princeton corner TJ Floyd at No. 185 and Colgate defensive end/outside linebacker Nick Wheeler at No. 188.

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Dartmouth has a release recognizing the athletic department's success in the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate (APR) program. From the release:

Dartmouth had 18 teams that earned Public Recognition Awards, tying for the most at any school with fellow Ivy League schools Brown and Columbia, along with Holy Cross of the Patriot League.

Green Alert Take: All credit to Dartmouth and the other Ivies although to be fair, with rankings based solely on number of teams honored they have the built-in advantage of fielding many more teams than most other conferences.

The NCAA release notes that, "By percentage, Villanova led with 77 percent of its squads receiving recognition, followed by Columbia and Holy Cross, each with 75 percent."

Football is one of seven Dartmouth teams recognized all 17 years of the ranking.

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If you wonder about legalized gambling starting to worm its way into college sports consider this from CBSSports (LINK):

The NCAA Gambling Working Group will propose the first-ever standardized national player availability report for college sports, two sources told CBS Sports.

Later this month, the working group will propose a pilot program that would have coaches list players as "available," "possible" or "unavailable" for that week's game without mentioning a specific body part or injury.

And this . . .

CBS Sports reported in September 2018 that half of FBS conferences supported a national injury report.