Timing Is Everything

After Jacksonville University dropped its football program Dartmouth was left looking for an opponent for its Sept. 19 opener. Given the late date of the Jacksonville decision, the Big Green struggled to find a school to play and ultimately agreed to host the University of New Haven, a Division II team.

Flash forward and here's a posting from Twitter:

Valparaiso and Central Connecticut State won't play each other on Sept. 19 as originally scheduled. Both are seeking an 11th opponent.

CCSU schedule: https://t.co/DTQXsaRngD

Valparaiso schedule: https://t.co/yrcqqBKODZ

— FCS Football (@FCS_STATS) June 8, 2020

Green Alert Take: It's no secret that this space has advocated for more Patriot League and fewer Northeast Conference games but Dartmouth-Central Connecticut would have been a very interesting matchup. While the Big Green finished last year 9-1 and ranked 22nd in the FCS, Central Connecticut was 11-2 and ranked 23rd. The Blue Devils' only losses were by five points to FBS member Eastern Michigan and to Albany in the NCAA playoffs.

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From a story out of Providence, R.I. (LINK):

Currently, the state has its first vacancy in ten years on the court. The time to desegregate the court is long overdue.

The story lists five potential candidates including Matthew Lopes, Jr., "a nationally recognized Special Master for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, in the matter of Coleman v. Brown, overseeing prison reform and compliance with orders of the Court concerning care of seriously mentally ill inmates."

Mattey Lopes '84, was a three-year letterwinner for Dartmouth football:

Click to enlarge

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When I was at the local newspaper it started a weekly feature looking at the lives of people who had recently died. This piece about former Dartmouth dean and football player Charles Dey that features a picture of him chatting with legendary Jackie Robinson and a young man and is particularly timely:

Here's how the story began:

In 1963, Dartmouth College President John Sloan Dickey gave an important assignment to a young associate dean of the college.

Spurred on by President John F. Kennedy’s call to pay “special attention” to increasing educational opportunities for all Americans, Dickey asked Charles Dey to create a program that would prepare promising students from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend prep school and college, including an aim to better integrate the Ivy League.

They called it “A Better Chance” . . . 

Find the full story HERE.

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Dartmouth football  coach Buddy Teevens will be a phone guest on The Brett Franklin Show on 94 ESPN Radio (94.3-FM in Claremont and 94.5-FM in Hanover) at 12:20 p.m. Eastern time today.  You can also catch a rebroadcast of the interview on The Instant Replay of The BF Show at approximately 6:20 p.m. CLICK HERE for the live stream of the interview.

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As college athletes begin returning to campus, reports of COVID-19 cases among those athletes are increasing. (LINK)

And this fall's events aren't the only potential victims of the pandemic. The New York Times has a story under the headline, Pandemic Leaves a Void for Young Athletes Seeking to Make College Teams; High school juniors who would now be in the thick of recruiting are losing the benefits of in-person recruiting. From the story, which includes mention of a soccer player considering Dartmouth (LINK):

“Virtual campus tours have replaced on-site visits. Live talent analysis from sidelines, often shoulder-to-shoulder with college coaches, have ceded to hours of analyzing game tape. Meet the recruit and parents in their living room? Only through a Zoom call.”

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EXTRA POINT

Here at BGA World Headquarters we are big movie fans. But given the pandemic, with the exception of last week's visit to the drive-in, we are doing all of our movie watching at home. Last night we fired up the DVR to watch The Philadelphia Story, the 1940 classic featuring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.

Seeing Katharine Hepburn brought to mind one of my great disappointments.

A little background. Between college and grad school I worked for Bekins Moving & Storage, lugging nasty things like triple dressers, armoires, hide-a-beds, refrigerators, dish barrels and pianos around the Northeast, down to Florida and even out to California. Remind me to tell you about the time two of us moved an upright piano to the third (or was it the fourth?) floor of a walk-up apartment in Cambridge, Mass.

But I digress. The moving company was putting together a special crew for a particular move in New York City and I would learn later that my name came up. Because it would be another week before my fall term at grad school would be over, however, they didn't think I'd be interested in making the four-hour drive from State College, Pa., to help out with the move. They thought wrong.

Here's a photocopy I got later of the check the "shipper" wrote to cover her move (with the account number blocked out):

Yup, it was Katharine Hepburn. And I was told she was exactly how you'd expect her to be, marching right up the walk-board onto the truck and barking orders in that strange accent about what she wanted placed where. ;-)

I missed the move by a week. Yup, timing really is everything.