Dartmouth Picked Third in Ivy

Keeper's Football national FCS rankings:

16. Penn
21. Harvard
57. Dartmouth
76. Brown
78. Yale
94. Columbia
104. Princeton
114. Cornell

Rankings of other current and future opponents:

35. New Hampshire
44. Colgate
65. Holy Cross
84. Sacred Heart
98. Bucknell
79. Butler
112. Georgetown

A total of 124 FCS teams were ranked. The conference preview rankings are here. They have Dartmouth finishing 5-2, 7-3.

The Ivy League was ranked 8th of 16 conferences (including "Independents").

The Keeper's Football index page for the FCS is here.

Green Alert Take: OK what, I'm sure you are wondering, is Keeper's Football? Even after looking over their web pages I have no clue, although frankly, the photo on Keeper's home page doesn't exactly inspire confidence. But like they used to say in WWII, "Smoke 'em if you got 'em." If there's a poll giving Dartmouth some love, I'm guessing you aren't going to be too particular about who is giving it, now are you?

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The Ivy League has debuted its much-awaited new web page. Find the football page here. There's even an Ivy League TV link, although right now there's only a PSA on it.

Green Alert Take: The look is certainly a lot cleaner than the old page. As with any updated site it is always a shakedown cruise at the start so we'll have a better idea how the page works as more information is moved over. One immediate concern: I haven't found a "search" box yet. Perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong place. Maybe it was just me, but even after trading a couple of emails with the Ivy office I never really understood how the search mechanism on the old site worked. I'd find myself actually leaving the Ivy page and using Google search just to find what I was looking for back on the Ivy site.

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Dartmouth could be debuting a reworked site before long. Stay tuned.

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Speaking of new, Cornell will have a new helmet design this fall. You can check it out in this picture from the second day of Big Red practice.

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Brown opens practice Friday, the same as Yale.

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Rutgers coach Greg Schiano did a radio interview in Florida – a recruiting hotbed for the former Miami assistant – in which he called his strength coach the best in America. That strength coach is none other than Jay Butler, who was at Dartmouth from 1996-2000. Butler, who stands about 6-foot-7 and played around 300 pounds or so, was fondly referred to by his many friends in these parts as, "The Big Bopper." Find his Rutgers bio here. Still hard to believe anyone that big could be such a good golfer ;-)

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A 6-4, 290 high school lineman from San Marino, Calif., named Alan Felix attended Dartmouth football camp and has his heart set on playing for the Big Green according to a story in the Pasadena News. ... Check out this story and video about another Southern Californian who is getting steered toward the Ivy League. (Thanks for the link.)

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Week One opponent Bucknell scrimmaged with officials yesterday. Find a video report here.

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New Hampshire's game against UMass at Gillette Stadium is going by the contrived name, The Colonial Clash.

If you are curious what Dartmouth is missing when it plays Sacred Heart on Sept. 25, here's a UNH preview from the school's media day.