The Dartmouth roster has not yet been updated on the team's official website, so this chart is based on last year's roster and freshmen the website announced are headed this way. (Click the chart to enlarge it.)
The defensive chart will appear here tomorrow, and special teams on Saturday.
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On July 1 BGA showed the Minnesota Vikings' No. 62 jersey being worn by Dartmouth grad Delby Lemieux '26 that is available for purchase. (LINK) Now available is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' No. 96 jersey being worn by Josiah Green '25, who signed with the Bucs after one season as a grad transfer at Duke. (LINK)
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Speaking of Lemieux, this mention is from the latest posting on Minnesota's Purple Insider site under the heading Training camp preview: Offensive line – A deep dive into the trenches as we approach training camp (LINK):
The Dartmouth lineman played tackle in college but is expected to move to the interior in the NFL. He played almost 2,000 snaps and is considered a quality athlete but he will need to pass block inside better than in college in order to have a chance.
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Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets on SI has a piece headlined Buy Or Sell: Is Georgia Tech's TE Room Good Enough To Win The ACC? that includes this about grad transfer Chris Corbo '26 (LINK):
Chris Corbo is another impressive receiving tight end from Dartmouth, who will finally get a chance to show his ability in fall camp. Last season, he finished with 45 catches, 516 yards, and four touchdowns. Corbo will be another option Georgia Tech can use in different areas of the field, and he can use his ability in certain situations.
And . . .
They haven’t had a tight end room like this in the Brent Key era, and they will have something to say about the success of the 2026 iteration of the Yellow Jackets.
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EXTRA POINT We had a seriously orange-tinted sky earlier this week largely as a result of 184 wildfires burning in Ontario, but yesterday was much better, and we're on the lucky side this morning. Here's a look at the smoke forecast via NOAA's Global Systems Laboratory. The darker the color, the more intense the smoke. Find the full map HERE.
For years, the Saunier name has been a familiar one at Lafayette High School.
This fall, senior quarterback Richmond Saunier is adding another chapter to the family's football legacy while preparing for his future at Dartmouth.
Saunier is the third brother to serve as Lafayette's starting quarterback, following older brothers Xan and Grayson. Grayson, a former Super 16 selection, now starts at quarterback for Dartmouth, where Richmond will continue both his academic and athletic career after committing to the Ivy League program in May.
Find the full story about the future Big Green quarterback, the current Dartmouth QB, and their older brother who chose to play college baseball, HERE.
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In this video, Georgia Tech-bound tight end Chris Corbo '26 talks about how being on the scout team as a Dartmouth freshman aided his development, about how his Ivy League education prepared him for his MBA studies at Tech, about the different pace of life in The Woods compared to Atlanta, and how Dartmouth got him ready for his grad transfer experience in the ACC.
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Following up on yesterday's note about Dartmouth opponents on the initial watchlist for the Payton Award as the top offensive player in the FCS, today the Analyst has its first watchlist for the Buchanan Award to the top defensive player in the FCS. (LINK)
Among the 30 players named to the Buchanan list are two from the Ivy League, and another Dartmouth will face early in the season:
• DB Abu Kamara, Yale
• DB Demien Henderson, Harvard
• DB Nick Peltekian, Lehigh
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EXTRA POINT I listened to a 1A public radio program yesterday titled, How cities and states are fighting subscription traps. The intro began this way:
The average American spends $219 every month on subscriptions. That's more than $2,600 a year. Subscriptions mean predictable profits for companies. That is unless you cancel. Enter subscription traps. That's when companies make it easy for customers to sign up but difficult to cancel. Some also use deceptive tactics that automatically enroll customers into a subscription after a free trial ends without making the terms clear. In recent years, cities and states have moved to crack down on subscription traps.
That hit home for me. Not because I have fallen into subscription traps – I haven't – but because I almost created one a few years ago.
I used to start signing people up for BGA Premium each year on July 1. As a shoestring operation, I had to do the behind-the-scenes stuff manually, and that was always a massive headache. I thought I had a solution when I found a "subscription" functionality – only to discover to my horror a couple of days after turning it on that it would automatically renew each year.
When I realized renewals were automatic, I went back in and removed the "subscription" button. I'm sure that cost me a lot of readers, but at least I knew there wasn't anyone paying for BGA without realizing it. In the final analysis, converting to a donation model for BGA Overtime a couple of years ago probably wasn't the best business decision I ever made, but at least I can sleep at night. ;-)
Three Dartmouth players are included on the NFL Draft Diamonds 2026-2027 Small School Prospect Watch List. The Big Green players (LINK):
QB Grayson Saunier S Harrison Keith K Owen Zalc
Other Ivy Leaguers named:
Brown DE/LB Ike Odimegwu QB James Murphy FS Miles Brophy
Columbia TE Braden Dougherty WR Titus Evans
Cornell CB Braylon Howard OT Dylan Page DB Johnny Williamson TE Ryder Kurtz WR Samuel Musungu
Harvard FS Jack Donahoe TE Seamus Gilmartin LB Sean Line OT Spencer Doan OG Thomas O'Brien RB/KR Xaviah Bascon
Penn CB Devin Malloy CB/RS Jayden Drayton OG Luke Sacchetti OLB Raashed Hall LS Zach Darche
Princeton OG Barrett Eddlemon P Brady Clark LB Chase Christopher CB Evan Haynie OG Justin Selbert OT Oyintare Porbeni LB Torian Roberts
Yale FS Abu Kamara CB Brandon Webster DT Jaylin Tate LB Phoenix Grant OG Quinton Lewis DE Zairion Jackson-Bass
Players from Dartmouth's nonconference schedule mentioned:
Lehigh DB DJ Brown DB Jackson Dowd DT Jadin Nelson RB Luke Yoder S Nick Peltekian
Merrimack DT Bryce Ricks
Monmouth DT Brendan Bigos DT Bryce Rooks WR Gavin Nelson P Luke Schabel CB Zachary Ricci
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Named to the Stats Perform FCS Preseason All-America Team (LINK)
First team TE Ryder Kurtz, Cornell DB Abu Kamara, Yale RB Luke Yoder, Lehigh
Second Team DB – Damien Henderson, Harvard OL Aidan Palmer, Lehigh DB – Jaeden Jones, Monmouth
Third Team WR – Samuel Musungu, Cornell TE – Seamus Gilmartin, Harvard OL – Thomas O’Brien, Harvard DL – Ike Odimegwu, Brown LB – Sean Line, Harvard DB – Nick Peltekian, Lehigh
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This fall Dartmouth will face two players on the preseason watchlist for the Walter Payton Award, presented to the national offensive player of the year in FCS college football. Selected were (LINK):
• Yale quarterback Dante Reno • Lehigh running back Luke Yoder
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Sorting through some old photos the other day I came across one that appeared on BGA years ago but disappeared due to user error. (Mine ;-)
It was posted so far back that I thought it worth sharing again. It's a shot of telegram now buried deep in the files at Dartmouth:
For Ivy League newbies who may not know the back story, here's what BGA culled from the SI Vault the first time this was posted:
(W)hen Dartmouth was awarded the Lambert Trophy as the best team in the East, Penn State coach Joe Paterno felt obliged to register a tongue-in-cheek protest. Paterno suggested-through the press-that Dartmouth and Penn State play each other to determine which was really the top Eastern team. Responded Blackman, "Of course, Coach Paterno knows that under Ivy League rules we're not allowed to play in a postseason game, but if we were allowed to play a postseason contest, I would prefer to play a team that had a better record," a dig at the Nittany Lions' 7-3.
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EXTRA POINT I've probably mentioned this before, but it's like fingernails on a chalkboard (remember those things?) when I see things like this in The Athletic:
Two points. First, you would never write about the Big Green's first game at Lehigh, "Dartmouth are opening the Ivy League season Saturday." The writer is trying too hard.
And second, if you want to sound like one of the cool kids and write, "England are (unmistakably) through," in your headline, two sentences into the story you have to write, "In essence: Are England in trouble?" Not, "In essence: Is England in trouble?" At least be consistent.
Fingernails. Chalkboard.
Another one from someone at The Athletic trying to be like the cool kids:
An SB Nation story headlined Projecting Every FCS Starting QB for 2026 includes this (LINK):
Dartmouth: Grayson Saunier – Saunier comes into his senior season at Dartmouth with 2,676 career passing yards, 644 rushing yards and 33 touchdowns. He was a second-team All-Ivy League selection last season.
The article has a paragraph on each of it's projected Ivy League starters:
Green Alert Take: Like Saunier, Reno and Murphy are sure things and someone will have to really step up to replace Goodwin or Bass-Sulpizio. Harvard, Penn and Princeton could be anybody's guess.
As for the nonconference quarterbacks Dartmouth will face, Lehigh's is a lock and Monmouth's h may be as well. Here's what the SB story has to say about those two:
Lehigh: Hayden Johnson – Johnson took the Mountain Hawks to their first ever top eight seed in school history last year as a sophomore. The first-team All-Patriot League signal-caller is completing passes at a 64% clip on his career.
Monmouth: Frankie Weaver – The Hawks found their guy when star Derek Robertson went down last year. Frankie Weaver stepped in and stepped up as a redshirt freshman, throwing for 1,355 yards and 14 TDs coming off the bench. Now Robertson is gone and the keys to the offense get handed over to Weaver for good.
The third nonconference opponent has an interesting option behind center, to be sure:
Merrimack: A.J. Hairston Jr. – The ex-UMass signal caller threw for nearly 1,000 yards as a redshirt freshman with the Minutemen last year. He'll likely be the one to take the reins at Merrimack now after Ayden Pereira left the team.
And one more projected starter of interest:
South Dakota: Jackson Proctor – Proctor comes in after not playing last season at Northern Illinois and is in a QB battle to see who takes over for Aidan Bouman. He's most known for his success at Dartmouth where he threw for 2,355 yards and accounted for 23 scores over three seasons.
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The Boston Globe has a story behind its paywall headlined Meet Bedford's Ryan Paganetti, a former NFL coach bringing analytics from the headset to the masses. From the story about the onetime walk-on Dartmouth running back in the Class of 2014 whose career was derailed by injury (LINK):
Ryan Paganetti is no longer coaching on an NFL sideline; he’s switched to media and consulting, using his public posts (and recent podcast appearances) to share NFL analytics and decision-making insights.
If you don't have access to the Globe, Paganetti's website has all the details HERE.
You can hear an interview with Paganetti in the podcast linked below. The intro begins this way:
He is a Dartmouth grad. He's cooked up some unbelievable special sauce that got him hired. His NFL research is strategy. Game management tendencies got him hired by the Eagles, Jaguars Raiders. He was on the headset for that Eagles team that won the Super Bowl.
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The Harvard Crimson had a column a couple of weeks ago under the headline NCAA Ratifies Age-Based Eligibility Guidelines, Reshaping Postgraduate Opportunities for Harvard’s Athletes (LINK) and the Daily Pennsylvanian has one today headlined The NCAA eligibility change levels the playing field for the Ivy League (LINK). Both argue that the five-for-five rule will benefit Ivy League athletes even if they can't participate in the Ivies for five years.
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Click HERE for Dartmouth 's bio of the 6-foot-6, 235-pound Nate Isler, who was a junior in the spring.
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EXTRA POINT
Click photos for a closer look.
Even with our '84 VW poptop camper left at home because of mechanical concerns, we had a wonderful weekend tent camping at the annual West River Westies bus meetup in southern Vermont. Because there river was running low the tubing wasn't what we hoped, but the water was warm, so there was that.
Not sure the official bus count but it was probably right around the usual 100 or so. Most were from around the northeast, although our closest neighbors were from Virginia and Montreal.
In addition to tubing, the weekend included a pot luck supper, a raffle of all kinds of VW and camping paraphernalia, campfire sing-alongs, interesting smells (think about it), and a lot of technical talk about these treasured antiques that you can be absolutely sure went completely over my head.
Two rising high school senior linebackers headed north for their college careers . . .
Odin Erickson is a 6-foot-2, 222-pound player out of Louisa County High School in Mineral, Va. He chose Dartmouth over offers from Marshall, East Carolina, Lehigh, East Tennessee, Georgetown, Citadel, Towson, Campbell, Howard, Wagner, Wofford and Hampton.
Bobby Wakefield is a 6-2, 220 player from Charlotte Country Day. Wakefield has camped and visited around the Ivy League and reports an offer from Davidson.
Here's the list BGA has compiled to date:
OL Oliver Costello, 6-5, 285, St. Paul's School/Plymouth, Mass. RB Hezekiah Davis, 5-10, 185, Tampa Jesuit HS/Tampa, Fla. LB Odin Erickson, 6-2, 222, Louis County HS/Mineral, Va. DB Rowan Martin, 6-1, 180, Williston-Northampton School/East Longmeadow, Mass. QB Webber Marx, 6-6, 210, St. Paul's School/Wellesley Mills, Mass OL Henry Reagan, 6-3, 275, New Canaan HS/New Canaan, Conn. QB Richmond Saunier, 6-2, 195, Lafayette HS/Lafayette, La. DE KJ Sims, 6-3, 192, Seckinger HS/Buford, Ga. OL Brysen Terry, 6-6, 325, Webster Schroeder HS/Webster, N.Y. LB Bobby Wakefield, 6-2, 220, Charlotte Country Day/Charlotte, N.C.
As always, additions and corrections are encouraged via the contact box over to the right.
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EXTRA POINT BGA is going dark for the next two days as we head off to the VW Westfalia event in southern Vermont we nicknamed "Vanagon-palooza." There will be upwards of 100 VW campers probably ranging from the early '60s to the new electric VW Buzz. With no wifi at the campground updating the site is impossible.
Unfortunately, our 1984 VW Vanagon will not be making the trip. Given our concerns about how it is running right now, we're opted to tent camp this year. It's hugely disappointing but such is life with a 42-year-old vehicle.
A grad transfer from Dartmouth is among four Ivy Leaguers who get a mention in a story headlined Ranking all 19 Duke football transfers by projected 2026 impact posted by Duke Blue Devils on SI. From the story (LINK):
13. DL Dakota Quiñonez
Quiñonez is another graduate transfer who comes to Duke after spending his entire career at Dartmouth. He tallied 21 tackles and a sack throughout his time with the Big Green. The defensive front seven will be one of the Blue Devils' best aspects next season, and Quiñonez is likely towards the bottom of the depth chart.
Two Ivy League transfers expected to be lower on the depth chart:
2. WR Jared Richardson I'd be surprised if, come the 2026 season's end, Richardson wasn't the Blue Devils' leading receiver. Richardson comes over from Penn, where he had a breakout season in 2025, leading the Ivy League in receptions (80) and receiving touchdowns (12), and finished second in receiving yards (1,033), being named a First Team FCS Football Central All-American. At 6'2", 215 pounds, he should be Eget's top target.
Reading the story down, it was interesting to see that even a school like Duke is party to the transfer madness. Consider:
Ranked No. 8 among the incoming players in Durham is safety Patrick Smith-Young Smith-Young, who spent two seasons at North Texas, then one at Old Dominion, then another back at North Texas, before landing at Duke.
No. 7 is running back CJ Campbell, who was at Florida State for three seasons, then spent one at Florida Atlantic and last year at Rutgers before arriving at Duke.
The most peripatetic incoming transfer is corner Dylan Flowers, ranked at No. 5. He began his college career with two years at Southern Utah. Then came a season at BYU. Next it was a junior college year at College of the Canyons. Last year he was at Western Kentucky. That makes Duke his fifth collegiate stop.
Green Alert Take: When a school like Duke is playing the game that way it's yet another reason to appreciate Ivy League and Patriot League football.
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No Dartmouth game is mentioned but two annual Ivy League contests are included in this video:
Green Alert Take – Of course Harvard-Yale is included. It's a little surprising that The Game doesn't come in any higher than at No. 4, just one spot ahead of the Ram-Crusader Cup between Fordham-Holy Cross, and one spot below The Rivalry between Lehigh and Lafayette. I get The Rivalry being where it is, but the Ram-Crusader Cup? Have you heard of it?
Green Alert Take II – Penn-Princeton coming in at No. 10 is bizarre. That's always an absolutely huge game – in basketball. I'd argue that both Penn and Princeton consider Dartmouth a bigger rival. And certainly, Princeton-Yale and Princeton-Harvard are both bigger games for the Tigers. The video isn't wrong in thinking Penn-Princeton has what it takes to be a big rivalry game, but not even the Ivy League shifting the contest to the final Saturday of the season has been able to really move the needle.
In case you were wondering, here are the top-10 rivalries per the video:
1. North Dakota State-South Dakota State (The Dakota Marker)
2. Montana-Montana State (Brawl of the Wild)
3. Lafayette-Lehigh (The Rivalry)
4. Harvard-Yale (The Game)
5. Fordham-Holy Cross (Ram-Crusader Cup)
6. Southeast Missouri-Southern Illinois (War for the Wheel)
7. Richmond-William & Mary (Capital Cup)
8. South Dakota-South Dakota State (South Dakota Showdown)
Green Alert Take: What? The season-ending Tussle between Dartmouth and Brown didn't make it? ;-)
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EXTRA POINT The good news? We have plenty of yummy blackberries these days. The bad news? Blackberry plants are seriously invasive, and we have them growing like crazy where they shouldn't be. The worst news? Blackberry thorns are no joke. None of that is news to me, but if I needed a reminder I got one yesterday when I got to work cutting, clearing and pulling up thorny blackberry canes that have invaded the landscaping around our house. I'll be back at it today and I'm here to tell you it's a pain. Literally.
The Ivy League football preseason football poll is scheduled to be released Aug. 3 and the conference preseason media day is slated for Aug. 10. Thanks to Craig Haley of Opta Analyst for digging up the dates.
Green Alert Take: As someone who has been covering the Ivy League closely for longer than I care to admit and who might have a decent grasp of the Ivy football landscape, I was a voter in the poll as far back as the late '80s (or was it the early '90s?). For the first time last year I was not one of the two media members selected by Dartmouth to vote in the poll. I have no quarrel with that, but have to admit I found it curious.)
Oh yeah. I almost forgot. Haley also lists one more date that Dartmouth followers have to hope is worth marking on their calendars. The opening round of the 2026 FCS playoffs is Nov. 28.
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Danny O'Dea, who transitioned from running backs coach at Dartmouth to recruiting director a couple of years ago, gets a well-deserved nod from Mike Farrell, widely recognized as "the Godfather of college recruiting:"
Here's what would seem to be a pretty effective graphic put out on O'Dea's watch illustrating the value of attending the Dartmouth football camp:
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And speaking of recruiting, remember the placekicker from Hanover High School BGA blogged about just yesterday? Turns out he already has a Big 10 offer from Iowa. (LINK)
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Rocco Gasparro, who served as assistant director of sports information at Dartmouth from 2001-03, has been named Senior Director of Communications for the All State Sugar Bowl after spending the last 23 years at the University of Louisville. (LINK)
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YesPress, which bills itself as delivering "Breaking news, bold profiles and stories of companies shaping our world," has a piece on Cirkul, the company founded by former Dartmouth safety Garrett Waggoner '13 and quarterback Andy Gay '14. Find the story HERE.
While the Cirkul story has been well told since the company hit it big, this chart from YesPress offers up an easy-to-digest outline of how it got where it is today:
2010 Waggoner and Gay meet on the Dartmouth football team. The powder-in-a-bottle frustration begins.
2016 Cirkul is founded around the cartridge-and-dial concept.
2018 Product launches after the founders rent a Tampa warehouse and assemble cartridges by hand.
2021 $30M Series B led by AF Ventures. TikTok flavor taste-tests start going viral - mostly by accident.
2022 $70M Series C led by SC.Holdings lands a $1B valuation. Cirkul launches nationwide in Walmart.
2023 Becomes one of Walmart's fastest-selling home-division products; expands into Canada via Walmart
2025 Rolls out new beverage brands and 50+ flavors; named Official Hydration Partner of i9 Sports.
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A very special old friend sent along an email yesterday wondering if Ben Rice '22, has the record for most single-season home runs by an Ivy League graduate* in major league history. It turns out that last year he broke the record of 22 set by Princeton alum Will Venable with the San Diego Padres in 2013. Rice finished with 26 home runs, a number he matched with a home run for the Yankees last night.
* Lou Gehrig attended Columbia but did not graduate.
And speaking of Rice, not only is he headed to the All-Star game, but he'll be in the home run derby. Find a story under the headline Yankees' Ben Rice headed to first home run derby — and he's bringing a special guestHERE.
Spoiler Alert: The special guest is his father Dan, a former pitcher at Brown, who will throw to him in the Derby.
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EXTRA POINT Tuesday evening concerts on the green have started in the town just south of us. Griff the Wonder Dog very much enjoyed being my footstool during the performance. What I think enjoyed even more was having his ears scratched by my foot. ;-)
Yesterday's BGA note about top college football recruits in New Hampshire probably should have emphasized more strongly that the list was of high school class of 2027 recruits.
An email from a good friend of BGA offers a reminder that there's a player in the 2028 high school class who might well belong on that list.
For the record, he plays in the shadow of Memorial Field.
Click HERE to read a January story about Hanover High School's Dima Petrov, who traded soccer for football as a freshman, and then opened eyes as a sophomore placekicker and punter at the Kicking World 2025 National Showcase in Austin, Texas.
Per the story, the Hanover kicker finished second in the culminating field goal kicking challenge down in Texas, nailing every attempt out to 55 yards and going 9-for-11 overall, with a 60-yard long. He also averaged 42.4 year per punt with an average hang time of 3.67 seconds.
From the story:
“Dima had a fantastic weekend at our 2025 National Showcase,” said Brent Grablachoff, a coach and the owner of Kicking World. “We expect big things out of Dima and feel he will evolve into a collegiate-level kicker and is someone that the New England and Northeast college football programs need to jump on early.”
The story about the rising junior, who was 5-for-5 on field goal tries and 31-for-31 on PATs last fall for Hanover High School, includes this:
“My goal is to play for a big school eventually,” Petrov said, even mentioning the possibility of donning a Dartmouth College jersey.
A former Bucknell strength and conditioning coach was charged Monday with felony aggravated hazing following the 2024 death of a freshman football player who collapsed during his first workout with the team, according to a statement from the Pennsylvania attorney general and court documents.
Mark Kulbis was also charged with misdemeanor counts of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and hazing in the death of 18-year-old Calvin "CJ" Dickey Jr., according to the statement.
Immediately prior to Bucknell, Mark Kulbis spent three years on the strength staff at Dartmouth. Find his bio on the Big Green women's basketball site HERE.
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Occasionally random videos show up on YouTube, and that was the case several days ago when someone posted an hour-long look at the 1988 Dartmouth-Davidson football game shot from the sidelines in North Carolina.
The Big Green won the game, 24-3, but here's a suggestion. You might want to fast-forward to the fourth quarter because until that point Dartmouth was tied, 3-3, with a team that would finish the year 0-10.
Dartmouth finally took a 10-3 lead on a 32-yard touchdown reception by Craig Morton before tacking on a short Chris Pollard run for a score, and a Mike Campanale pick six. Morton finished his day with six catches for 120 yards.
Among those watching the first win of Buddy Teevens' second year at Dartmouth was legendary coach Bob Blackman, who made the drive from his retirement home in Hilton Head.
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EXTRA POINT Something to think about that I read this morning regarding the Hoover Dam: "The dam used enough concrete to pave a highway from San Francisco to New York."
