Saturday, September 13, 2025

Final Chance

A little housekeeping to start your morning.

• Today is your final chance to send along a question for Dartmouth football coach Sammy McCorkle. Click HERE and I'll ask it for you. The story with his responses will go up either Sunday night or Monday morning.

• Look for my capsule review of Ivy League teams tonight or early tomorrow on BGA Overtime. On tap during the week: a look at the nonconference opponents followed by a Dartmouth season preview and a preview of game one against New Hampshire.

• It’s the weekend and you have time. If you would like to stream the documentary, 8: Ivy League Football & America, drop me an email and I’ll send you the URL and password to stream the film free of charge.

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Here is today’s slate for Dartmouth’s nonconference opponents:
1-1 Central Connecticut vs. 0-2 St. Francis, Noon
2-0 New Hampshire at 0-2 Ball State, 2 p.m.
0-2 Fordham at 0-2 Stony Brook, 3:30 p.m.

Green Alert Take: Several outlets have New Hampshire on upset alert with a chance to defeat FBS Ball State. While UNH had a run of FBS victories some year’s back and Ball State is off to a difficult start, it’s worth noting that the Cardinal losses came at Auburn and Purdue. That said, they were outscored in those two games, 73-3. The teams also met in 2009, with UNH earning a 23-16 win. New Hampshire is reportedly taking home $325,000 for playing today’s game, a lot for Ball State to pay if UNH pulls the upset.

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As long as the topic is money, HERO Sports has a posting with the football operating budgets for public FCS schools. (Private schools such as the Ivies are not required to make that information available.)

Topping the list was South Dakota State with a budget of $9,620,366. New Hampshire came in 16th of the 62 schools listed at $5,963,553. Central Connecticut was 60th at $2,629,738. Bringing up the bottom was Morehead State, at $1,585,146.

In case you are wondering, the overall FBS leader is the University of Alabama at a hard-to-believe $113,835,360. Yikes!

Find the FCS budget story HERE, and a list of FBS budgets HERE.

Green Alert Take I: When I was at the newspaper I wrote a story regarding Dartmouth and Ivy League athletic budgets reported to the federal government, I believe for Title IX purposes. (It was a long time ago, so maybe I’m wrong about that.) Anyway, cross-checking the numbers with Dartmouth, a dean gave me a great quote I remember to this day about discrepancies in the way budgets are reported made the numbers virtually useless. He said:

 “It’s not apples and oranges. It’s apples and hubcaps.”

Literally, a money quote. ;-) 

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Can’t say I’ve always been a fan of these “man on the street” videos colleges have started posting, but this one with the Dartmouth football team is kind of fun:

Green Alert Take: I’m reminded of the questionnaires Dartmouth sends to incoming athletes. Former SID Kathy Slattery was rewriting the questionnaire one year and she asked me, as a writer, what could she add that might intrigue reporters enough to stir up more press coverage? I suggested a final question of each athlete that went something like this: What is something about you that would surprise people? Each year I’d write a story listing a bunch of those responses, and more than a few times I’d find an angle worth exploring when I wrote profiles of the various players.

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Not surprisingly, as a highly paid CFL veteran, former Dartmouth standout Flo Orimolade is a Canadian Football League Players Association representative:

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EXTRA POINT

Gotta run. There's a “Charging Ahead” celebration in town today with EV demos, e-bikes, e-tools and more on display. As the owner of two EVs, an electric tractor and a portable power station, this solar advocate is eager to learn other possible ways we can have the solar tracker  we installed in the field at our Vermont hillside home work for us. 

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