Coming And Going

Dartmouth-bound quarterback Woods Ray was featured in a photo posted on the Homewood Star site accompanying a list of his high school classmates headed to college sports teams in the fall.

The All-South Metro Player of the Year and Class 6A all-state selection at the "athlete" position, Ray threw for 27 touchdowns with just four interceptions, and rushed for 11 more TDs last fall while helping the Patriots to the 6A quarterfinals. He passed for 2,677 yards (62.1 percent completions) and ran for 812 yards. On his Twitter he is listed at 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds. 

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Woods Ray will be one of the young guys in Hanover this August. Barring a change, here are the "old" guys expected to return as fifth-year "Super Seniors:"

• Quarterback Nick Howard

• Safety Quinten Arello

• Linebacker Marques White

• Safety Sam Koscho

• Defensive lineman Hank Knez

• Defensive lineman Charles Looes

• Defensive lineman Jaylin Rainey

• Longsnapper Josh Greene

Of the other 17 true seniors from last fall who might have returned, five have announced where they are grad transferring. All have graduated or are graduating:

• Tight end Zion Carter - Buffalo

• Wide receiver Dale Chesson – Michigan

• Defensive end Shane Cokes - Colorado 

• Defensive back Tyron Herring - Delaware 

• Tailback Noah Roper - Colorado School of Mines

• Defensive back Seth Verilus - Robert Morris

(At least two other true seniors are still weighing offers.)

Destination of this year's fifth-year seniors who exhausted their Ivy League eligibility but still have COVID Super Senior eligibility:

• Tailback Zack Bair - Robert Morris
• Defensive back Robert Crockett III - Bryant
• Defensive lineman Bobby Jefferson - Robert Morris

Editor's Note: Corrections and additions to these lists are encouraged. 

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From an Athlon story headlined, Four bold predictions ahead of Colorado Buffaloes spring practice (LINK): 

While most people are fixated on all of the SEC transfers that Sanders and the Buffs brought in, one addition that flew under the radar is Dartmouth defensive line transfer Shane Cokes. The two-time All-Ivy leaguer comes in as a grad transfer, and while most people have heard of Arkansas transfer Jordan Domineck, Cokes is someone who made an impression during the workout periods.

At 6-foot-3 275-pounds, he can slide across the line and be used in a variety of different ways. He is also someone who may lean into a leadership role on a defense that is anchored by all new players, with a handful of them being on the younger side. He recorded 8.5 sacks the past two seasons, and will look to help contain some of these elite Pac-12 quarterbacks. 

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Per The Analyst: Upcoming Pro Days for Ivy League hopefuls:

March 8: Columbia – Linebacker Scott Valentas
March 9: Harvard – Edge Truman Jones, corner Alex Washington
March 21: Princeton – Wide receivers Andrei Iosivas and Dylan Classi
March 23: Yale – Defensive lineman Reid Nickerson

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Being an English major as an undergraduate before studying journalism in grad school, I found a lengthy story in the New Yorker headlined The End of the English Major troubling but not completely surprising. From the story (LINK):

From fifteen years ago to the start of the pandemic, the number of Harvard English majors reportedly declined by about three-quarters—in 2020, there were fewer than 60 at a college of more than 7,000. ... “We feel we’re on the Titanic,” (said) a senior professor in the English department. ...

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EXTRA POINT
I've spent hours poring over the Ivy League record book for a series of upcoming posts that I think you will find interesting. Because jumping back and forth from one screen to another was going to be torturous, I printed up a bunch of forms and have been filling information in by hand. It's been a bit of a mind-spinning process and as such I found myself occasionally filling something into the wrong box.

I suppose I could have just crossed out my mistakes but as my family can tell you, I like to keep things like that neat, so I was thrilled to find a small bottle of wite-out on a shelf here at the BGA World Headquarters. I've never been particularly diligent about sealing paint cans effectively so I was pleased to find that I had screwed the top down tightly on the wite-out and that who-knows-how-many years after buying it, it still worked.

Wite-out? Ask your parents.

Speaking of wite-outs – in this case whiteouts – this was the view out the window this morning while huge flakes of snow were coming down here at our Vermont hillside home. Keep in mind, this is a color photo:

It feels as if it's been snowing every day for the five or six days. We could get a little rain this afternoon but then eight or so more inches of snow are expect tomorrow night, just in time for Mrs. BGA's side of the family to arrive for a ski weekend. To think, a week ago there was nothing on the ground!