Green Alert Take: Given how their respective seasons have gone, that was some forward thinking on RU's part ;-)
Also from the Dartmouth-Princeton/Princeton-Dartmouth story:
The schools are hoping to draw a crowd of about 20,000.Green Alert Take: Given that the 150th Lehigh-Lafayette at Yankee Stadium sold out 150 days before their game (LINK) and that the DIII Cortaca Jug game being played between Ithaca and Cortland next week across the river at MetLife Stadium had sold more than 39,000 tickets six weeks before the game you'd like to think more than 20,000 will show up for a battle of Ivy League unbeatens in The Bronx. C'mon people!
Apart from that nugget there's not much new in the Feinstein story about the Dartmouth-Princeton game for those who have already been reading everything they can get their hands on. Probably the most interesting part of the WaPo story is simply the byline: John Feinstein, which tells you just how novel the game really is.
Find the story on the Washington Post site HERE or, if you can't get through the paywall, you can read it HERE.
Feinstein had an accompanying opinion piece on the CBS site HERE that absolutely crushes the Ivy League presidents for their refusal to let Ivy League football players do what EVERY other Ivy League athlete is allowed to do, which is compete for a national championship. Feinstein writes:
The Ivy League presidents continue to insist that they worry about their “student-athletes” being asked to play more than 10 games. Oh please. To begin with, football players miss less class than any other varsity team. At most, they will miss five Fridays during the regular season. Adding another game or two or even three games for one or—occasionally—two teams, would hardly change the players lives as students.And then he goes off. . . .
This is about the massive egos of college presidents. Every one of them is always the smartest guy—regardless of gender—in the room. Just ask them.
(Dartmouth coach Buddy) Teevens isn’t about to call out his president or any of the other seven in the Ivy League, but he did say, “Logic and reason aren’t always part of the package with very smart people."
That’s true. But this is more about arrogance: we’re doing it this way because we say we’re doing it this way. What about doing what the athletes want and what is best for them as competitors? Oh, we’re protecting them.
Bologne. Garbage. Horsefeathers. To put it politely.Back on the subject of the ill-fated Princeton-Rutgers game, the column includes this:
Princeton and Rutgers tried to negotiate a deal to play this Saturday, but the Rutgers people, after initially trying to low-ball Princeton, bailed out even after the Yankee Stadium people got involved, proposing the game be played there. The Rutgers athletic department is such a mess I doubt if it could successfully negotiate a deal to give away ice cream at an elementary school.Ouch.
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After watching Princeton and Dartmouth in back-to-back weeks the Harvard Crimson football writer had this to say in his weekly predictions column:Dartmouth is good. Dartmouth is very good. Their defense is only rivaled by Harvard’s.And then . . .
The venue fits the occasion. Dartmouth is crowned the Ivy League Champion this weekend.
Dartmouth by 3.
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From the Daily Princetonian:The Empire State Building lit up orange and red on Nov. 6 in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first-ever college football game, played between the University and Rutgers University.Green Alert Take: The Dartmouth continues its week-long look at the biggest football game the school has played in almost a half century . . . oh wait. Maybe there will be a story tomorrow. Maybe.
