This is a tough one to write so I might as well get straight to the point. After 18 seasons Big Green Alert Premium is shutting down. There will be some coverage of spring practice next month and I have thoughts about doing a little something in the fall, but the days of attending every single practice and writing full-length stories seven days a week from mid-August until the Monday of Thanksgiving Week after the final game have come to an end.
This wasn't an easy decision. Like Buddy Teevens before him, head coach Sammy McCorkle could not have been more welcoming and helpful in his first season. Stopping by the football offices in Floren Varsity House some time back to tell "Coach Mac" I was probably shutting BGA down was difficult because of how unbelievably accommodating he was last year, as he has been ever since he arrived as a young coach during my first year of BGA. I will miss my daily interactions with him, with the terrific group of assistant coaches and with ops director Dino Cauteruccio, who to a man have always been obliging with their time and thoughts, and who have become friends over the years.
I will miss my interaction with the players, who have been unfailingly helpful and always – that's always – said the right things. At a difficult time last fall Coach McCorkle said to me that he trusted his players to a man in their interactions with me, and I'm here to tell you after 18 seasons of talking to the kind of young people he and Buddy and the others brought to campus, his faith in his student-athletes was well-placed.
Finally, I will miss all of you. I have had subscribers who stuck with me every year since I came up with the idea of BGA in 2005. There are parents of players who graduated years ago who continued to sign up for the service when I knew their only reason for coming back was to help me out. With subscriptions falling, the last couple of years I invited you to send along a little extra and you were wonderfully generous. I can't begin to tell you how much that has meant to me.
I had thought I would keep this thing going for 20 years and I almost made it, but after covering 180 games – all but the 2021 Valpo contest in person (because, as local Noah Kahan sings in Stick Season, there was "COVID on the planes") – the time has come to step aside.
This spring Mrs. BGA and I are going to spend a full month seeing the country by train. Come early September, when schoolchildren are back in class, we'll load the '84 VW camper up and check out a lakeside campground or two while the weather is still warm, something I haven't been able to do since finishing graduate school all those years ago. I expect to be in the Memorial Field stands for all of the home games this season, but when the Big Green is on the road there just might be a Saturday afternoon or two spent in Happy Valley instead of the Upper Valley.
Alert eyes may have noticed BGA Daily transitioned to BGA a couple of months ago. That wasn't an accident. The blog – not a term I care for because I consider myself a journalist and not a blogger – will continue, but it won't always be seven days a week. When Mrs. BGA and I vacationed in the past BGA Daily continued every day, but that won't be the case when we ride the rails this spring, nor will I continue to bow to the need to find something – anything – to keep a streak going after we return.
I will miss the coaches, the players and all of you, but I'm at peace with the decision to step aside. Please continue to visit the BGA blog (argh) and keep those emails and notes coming. As I've said before, I answer 'em all . . . eventually.
Cheers,
BW
BGA By the Numbers: Most of these are estimates but I'm sure they are in the ballpark.
• 1,890: BGA Premium stories posted behind the paywall over 18 seasons.
• 2 million plus: Words, give or take a hundred thousand or two, appearing on the Premium site over the years. ;-)
• 500: Different Dartmouth players appearing on the site during the BGA Premium run.
• 5,000: Miles driven back-and-forth to Memorial Field for football practices and home games.
• 45,000: Miles driven to away games.
• 120,000: Total miles driven for BGA Premium, give or take.
• 8,206: As of this one, the number of blog entries on this platform (and counting the first blogging platform I used, 8,500 entries or so total).
• Unknown: Number of days since the last time the daily site was not updated – vacations, broken ribs, illness or worse, holidays and everything in between notwithstanding.
• 150: Average dollars brought in each year by those annoying ads on the blog.
• 915: Hours spent annually on the blog.
• 16.4: Cents ad revenue earned per hour working on the blog – so it must be a labor of love, as many of you have told me. Or I must be crazy. Or more likely both. ;-)
• 1: Person I have to thank more than anyone else for allowing me to do this. That would be the ever-patient, ever-tolerant Mrs. BGA, who I suppose will have go by Mary Ellen after this.
• 0: Regrets about leaving daily journalism to do BGA.
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EXTRA POINT
If you are an out-of-towner and are considering coming to Hanover to watch a spring practice or two, the May 4 Green-White game would probably be your first choice (even if they don't tackle). But if you are in town to double up the Saturday, Apr. 6 and Tuesday, Apr. 9 practices, you are in for a treat. You can also catch the total eclipse on April 8.
Hanover will be a little south of the line of totality, but it should be a pretty good show. Per ChatGPT 96 percent of the sun will be blocked in Hanover. If you drive a little over an hour north on I-91, the eclipse will be total for upwards of 3½ minutes.
