I reached out to Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens yesterday for a story about what his coaches and players are doing in this unprecedented time. I hope to have something for you in the coming days. In the meantime, the story below is proof enough that coaches aren't sitting in front of the TV watching The Price Is Right.
Here's the lede from the story that goes with the screengrab below (italics are mine):
Oak Grove’s Jared Gibble will get the chance to play college football.
That is a certainty. The question is where and the 6-foot-4, 225-pound junior tight end has many offers to choose from. Lately, they’re coming in droves.
Gibble just got an offer from Ivy League school Darmouth(sic) on Tuesday.That's right. The high school junior from Davidson County, N.C., already holding offers from Yale, Army, the Air Force Academy, Coastal Carolina, Furman, Charlotte and Alabama A&M, received his Dartmouth offer yesterday. Read the full story HERE.
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Speaking of offers, Pittsburgh Sports Now has a story about Dartmouth shooting guard Brendan Barry, who missed his senior season with an injury and is considering Pitt among a list of schools showing interest in him as a grad transfer. The list also includes Notre Dame, Iowa State and Temple.
Playing into his decision, Barry told the site:
I want to win. I want to go NCAA tournament.
What's interesting, beyond the fact that Pittsburgh associate head coach Tim O'Toole is Barry's godfather, is something other stories have not mentioned. Barry told PGH Now:
I still actually have the opportunity to go back to Dartmouth to play a fifth year. So that’s obviously fresh in my mind from playing there for three years and being involved this last year, even with the injury. So, that’s definitely up there.”Green Alert Take: It seems everything I've seen about Barry previously said he would be graduating this spring and therefore could not return to Dartmouth as a fifth-year senior. To return to the Big Green next winter would require putting off graduation, something a fully online spring might make appealing. But if he chooses Pitt or Notre Dame or one of the others as a graduate transfer he'll have to graduate first.
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Difficult times at the local Valley News. Per a story this morning, the paper has laid off its last two sports reporters and moved the sports editor to the news side.Green Alert Take: Beyond feeling for the affected reporters, I am sorry for Dartmouth sports fans. It's a sign of the times, I suppose, but when I was the beat writer covering Dartmouth I never missed a football game, home men's or women's basketball game, had stories on most home baseball games and a good number of soccer, field hockey and lacrosse games among others. Going forward the best source of Dartmouth sports news (apart from football on BGA) will be on the school website and while the sports info office does a good job it's still in-house. Hopefully when there is breaking news that needs a critical eye like the potential transfer of a basketball star, the newspaper will assign someone to cover it, although without the kind of sources a beat reporter has it will be difficult to get the inside story. I can't tell you how many stories I "broke" about hirings, firings, scheduling issues, eligibility and more because I was a familiar face on campus, had great sources and people trusted I would be fair. That's really, really hard to do coming in cold and Dartmouth (and Ivy League) fans will be worse for it.
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ESPN has a story under the headline, NFL Draft - League wants April but GMs want it moved. From the story:General managers are concerned that, in this current environment, with offseason activities and some teams' facilities closed, there won't be enough time for player physicals, gathering psychological testing, getting further verified information about the players and some teams having to conduct the draft from home.Green Alert Take: Dartmouth and other FCS players would be huge beneficiaries of a delay.
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A Saturday Blitz story under the headline An irreverent look back at the 1870 college football season includes this tidbit that's kind of funny:While Princeton, Rutgers, and Columbia were the only three teams to play intercollegiate competition in 1870, other institutions of higher learning were beginning to embrace the game as a worthwhile pursuit. At Dartmouth, for instance, the faculty voted not only to allow students to begin playing the game again but also opted to furnish those students with the ball necessary to take the field.Green Alert Take: Wow. They got 'em a ball!
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Liberty University is opening up this week and bringing 5,000 students back to its Virginia “I think we have a responsibility to our students — who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here — to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life.”Green Alert Take: Out of curiosity I checked the Liberty football schedule to see who they were playing on Sept. 19, the day of Dartmouth's opener. It's Western Kentucky. If New Haven hadn't come through the Big Green might have been able to play Liberty's opponent on that day because one of two things might well happen before then. The Liberty team might be in quarantine or their opponents might refuse to play them. I know I would on principle. End rant.
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Sports Illustrated has a story by Dartmouth alum Alex Pappas '12 and a lengthy video with her from Greece, where she was/is training for the nation's Olympic marathon trials. (LINK)
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From a Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center release:
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health develops COVID-19 testing to be used for hospitalized patients and health care workers
The number of tests that can be performed daily could be up to 1,000, but because of the ongoing shortages of test collection supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE), DHMC is limited to testing only hospitalized patients within the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health system and healthcare workers, including first responders, who have direct contact with patients. Once fully operational over the next week to ten days, the turnaround time from test to results should provide results to patients within 24 hours or less.
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EXTRA POINTAbnormal is the new normal. Up is down and down is up.
Waking early and unable to fall back asleep yesterday while my mind raced, I found myself thinking how everything is changed. Maybe it was a personal therapy but I spent some time yesterday afternoon pulling together this graphic. Feel free to share it if you think it might help.
