From a story out of Indiana headlined Here is the 2025 South Bend Tribune All-Area High School Football Team (LINK):
Kayden Lee, Mishawaka Marian
The senior IFCA All-State selection and Dartmouth University (sic) commit had 34 tackles, 4.5 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks.
Variously listed at 6-foot-1, 275 and 6-2, 265, Lee was named to the Indiana Football Coaches Association Class 3А Senior All-State Team. Per his social media, he chose Dartmouth over an offer from Tufts.
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Dartmouth used to publish its football schedule at least four years in advance. This from the 1983 Big Green media guide – remember those things? – probably got a few alums and fans excited about an Oct. 4, 1986 game at Navy. (Don't be too excited. Navy won, 45-0.) And for the record, the listed 1987 visit from Connecticut was replaced by a visit from Davidson.
Given the changing nature of college football scheduling – it's not done nearly as far out as it was in the past – Dartmouth stopped posting its future schedules a few years back. But my email "in box" is a reminder that a good number of you are curious about next year's schedule, and aren't interested in waiting for another of those lame releases where the next schedule is "unveiled."
When I asked coach Sammy McCorkle in the final week of the season who the Big Green would be playing out-of-conference he confirmed it would be Lehigh, Monmouth and Merrimack, but did not offer the dates.
Doing a little digging, I was told that Lehigh would be Sept. 19. Given that the Mountain Hawks played here in 2023, the Lehigh-Dartmouth game next fall figures to be in Bethlehem. With a web search confirming the Monmouth game for Hanover on Sept. 26, that left the Merrimack game for Oct. 17, the final open date in the Big Green schedule. Because Dartmouth played at Merrimack in 2024, that game should be in Hanover.
Having connected all of those dots, and barring a late change (or worse yet, a mistake on my part), the 2026 schedule looks like this:
Sept. 19 at Lehigh
Sept. 26 Monmouth
Oct. 3 Penn
Oct. 10 at Yale
Oct. 17 Merrimack
Oct. 24 at Columbia
Oct. 31 Harvard
Nov. 7 at Princeton
Nov. 14 at Cornell
Nov. 2 Brown
A reminder, that's the unofficial schedule. Also, expect at least one Ivy League game – and very likely two – to be shifted to a Friday night for TV purposes.
A few thoughts . . .
Dartmouth figures to have a lot of windshield time next fall with games at Lehigh (700 mile round trip), at Princeton (635 mile round trip), at Cornell (600 mile round trip), at Columbia (500 mile round trip) and at Yale (380 mile round trip). That's 2,815 miles, or pretty much like riding the bus from New York City to Los Angeles. ;-)
There are back-to-back home games against Monmouth and Penn early, and back-to-back bus rides to Princeton and Cornell late.
The schedule features three home Ivy League games (Penn, Harvard and Brown) with four on the road (Yale, Columbia, Princeton and Cornell).
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EXTRA POINT
We have a 7-foot star with Christmas lights in the middle of our field, a string of lights around our "porch," and more lights that wrap around our garage doors and then up our driveway almost to the road.
Because the automatic timers running the lights went a little wonky after getting soaked by heavy rain the other night, I was going to turn the lights off manually last night at about 9. Instead I left them on per Mrs. BGA's wishes.
Before I turned on the Sunday night football game upstairs, I looked out the window at all the Christmas lights and laughed to myself. If Mrs. BGA's idea was to bring a holiday smile to the faces of people driving by, leaving them on was a sweet gesture. But by my estimate not a single car went up or down our road after I went upstairs. Not a one.
