The Optimist and The Pessimist made their season debut last night on BGA Overtime. Don't say you weren't warned.
I'll be back at practice this afternoon. I'll be posting the Fearful Forecast on the site tonight, and the Lehigh preview tomorrow night.
Not that anyone is counting, but including coverage of spring football, BGA OT has posted 45 stories about the 2026 Dartmouth football team in advance of Saturday's season opener. ;-)
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WFMZ-TV sports from the Lehigh Valley has a report headlined Lehigh football plans to carry momentum from win last week that includes this about Dartmouth from coach Rich Nagy:
(T)hey're a good program and we know they're gonna be well-coached. We know they're gonna be big. We know they're gonna be athletic and we know their quarterback's back. So, he's experienced and you know, I know they have a new coordinator on the defensive side of the ball and some new staff there. But you know, they're probably gonna play the style of brand of football they do, where they want to run the ball. They want to take advantage of certain things and they're gonna playsound. They're gonna be physical and you know, we have to be up for that challenge. You know, we understand those pieces that we're gonna face, while schematically, like I said, there's gonna be some things that we have to figure out as the game goes along. But our preparation for the type of team we're playing is no different than it was last week."
Watch the video and/or read the story HERE.
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Back-to-back notes of interest in a column in The Analyst headlined FCS Football Week 3 Preview & Predictions: What’s Next in a Season With Everything? (LINK):
3. Lehigh senior Luke Yoder has begun the season by doing something both Youngstown State QB Beau Brungard and former Southern Utah RB Joshua Dye did to end their 2025 campaign – rush for three or more touchdowns in three straight games. But no FCS player has done that in four straight games since Towson’s Terrance West in 2011, and Yoder will seek to accomplish it when the No. 7 Mountain Hawks (3-0) host Dartmouth.
And . . .
4. The Ivy League kicks off its 10-game regular season on Saturday and rarely has to play catch-up against opponents. The league has posted a winning record in its opening weekend in 14 of its last 15 seasons for a combined 76-44 (.633) record. Yale and Harvard qualified for the 2025 FCS playoffs in the league’s first season of postseason eligibility in 80 years and are both nationally ranked as they open on the road against Holy Cross and New Hampshire, respectively. Columbia is the only Ancient Eight team to be opening at home, facing Lafayette.
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The wise guys haven't posted their odds yet, but per Sagarin Ratings, which admittedly tend to struggle in the early going, here's what the weekend looks like:
• Lehigh over Dartmouth by eight points
• Harvard over New Hampshire by six points
• Brown over New Haven by four points
• Columbia over Lafayette by six points
• Colgate over Cornell by nine points
• Princeton over Bryant by three points
• Yale over Holy Cross by eight points
• Penn over Bucknell by three points
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The NCAA has a piece headlined Every former NCAA student-athlete on 'Survivor' — from NCAA champs to DIII standouts that lists seven former Ivy Leaguers taking part in the show. The only former Ivy League football player to appear on the program was Dartmouth's Malcolm Freberg '09, a defensive end. His teammates would often chant "Freeeeeberg"in the manner in which "Free Bird" would be chanted at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, each time he made a play in practice. Find the story HERE.
I've still never watched a second of the show, but had an update on Freberg's appearance on BGA a while back HERE.
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From FootballScoop (LINK):
NCAA's FBS Oversight Committee found that instant replay protocols were not followed on the second-to-last play of Michigan's 13-12 win over Western Michigan on Sept. 5. In its statement, the committee said it consulted with national officiating leadership, agreed the protocols were not followed on that play, and that "had the protocols been followed, the outcome of the game would have been different."
Green Alert Take: Still waiting for Michigan to do the right thing, à la Cornell in the Fifth-Down Game? Good luck with that.
EXTRA POINT
When were were at Acadia National Park a few weeks back, That Certain Nittany Lion '16 stayed at our house to watch after Griff the Wonder Dog. For some reason, our smoke/carbon monoxide detectors always seem to act up when he's at our house and this time was no different. We got a call from TCNL'16 late one afternoon complaining that one alarm would not stop "chirping" and it was driving both him and Griff crazy. Even changing the batteries didn't help. Thanks to That Certain Fellow, who knows about such things, the temporary solution was pinching the hard-wire connector and taking the alarm down.
