Big Day

It's Ivy League football media day. Be sure to check back later today for the poll, a report on the conference call, and hopefully sound from Dartmouth Coach Buddy Teevens.

I voted in the annual media poll and this is NOT my ballot. This is how I anticipate it will go:

1. Harvard

2. Dartmouth

3. Yale

4. Princeton

5. Brown 

6. Penn

7. Columbia

8. Cornell

Green Alert Take: That's not exactly going out on a limb. The poll almost always is a close approximation of the previous year's standings ;-)

What do YOU think?

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Dartmouth Football 101 is at 6 tonight. LINK

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The Sports Network has been absorbed by STATS, which has debuted its new FCS pages. Dartmouth quarterback Dalyn Williams is on the STATS Offensive Player of the Year Watch List and here's his page, which will be updated each week HERE:

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Make no mistake about it, Dalyn Williams hopes to join another list next year – the list of Ivy League graduates in NFL camps. Courtesy of the Ivy League website, here's a list of former Ancient Eight standouts who began summer camp with an NFL team:

Jeff Adams, Columbia - Houston Texans (3rd Season)

Desmond Bryant, Harvard - Cleveland Browns (7th Season)

Cameron Brate, Harvard - Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2nd Season)

Mike Catapano, Princeton - Kansas City Chiefs (3rd Season)

Courtland Clavette, Brown - Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1st Season)

Brandon Copeland, Penn - Detroit Lions (2nd Season)

AJ Cruz, Brown - Chicago Bears (1st Season)

Zak DeOssie, Brown - New York Giants (9th Season)

James Develin, Brown - New England Patriots (4th Season)

Nick Easton, Harvard - Baltimore Ravens (1st Season)

Ryan Fitzpatrick, Harvard - New York Jets (11th Season)

Zack Hodges, Harvard - Indianapolis Colts (1st Season)

Kyle Juszczyk, Harvard - Baltimore Ravens (4th Season)

Josh Martin, Columbia - Kansas City Chiefs (4th Season)

Tyler Ott, Harvard - St. Louis Rams (1st Season)

Caraun Reid, Princeton - Detroit Lions (2nd Season)

JC Tretter, Cornell - Green Bay Packers (3rd Season)

Tyler Varga, Yale - Indianapolis Colts (1st Season)

Bryan Walters, Cornell - Jacksonville Jaguars (3rd Season)

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Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens was quoted in a WBUR radio story ostensibly about how coaching salaries at liberal arts colleges are lower than at big-time athletic schools. The story meanders away from its main theme but does include this interesting quote from Teevens:

“Quite frankly, I will see more of my students than any faculty member will on campus during the next four years. A young guy, if he’s a football player, we will see him almost every day for the four-year period.”

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A story in Chicago-area's The Daily North Shore about New Trier defensive end/tight end Andrew Hauser (a Brown recruit) includes a quote and mention of teammate Matt Kaskey, an incoming offensive lineman at Dartmouth who will renew acquaintances with his high school teammate the next four years.

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Also out of Illinois, the Northwest Herald has a story under the headline, High school football: Recruiting process spills over into social media that quotes Clint Cosgrove, who was on the Dartmouth staff in 2010 and '11. The story says he now "is paid by more than 160 colleges to scout players."

From the story:

Clint Cosgrove, a former college coach and now the director of Midwest scouting for National Preps, said a social media presence is a must for high school football players with aspirations to play at the next level.

“If the kid’s a relatively unknown and he puts out there, ‘Hey, I went to this school’s camp today, they offered me,’ ” Cosgrove said, “Well, all of a sudden, other coaches who didn’t know about him, they’re going see that and start looking into him, maybe watching his film, calling his coach. It is definitely a way to gain momentum and steam.”

And this:

“The kids, a lot of them in recruitment, they want love, they want attention, and that’s one of the ways they’re getting it, is from these fans,” Cosgrove said. “There’s good and bad that goes with it, because you get attention and you get support that they might not always otherwise have, but they also have to deal with some pretty grown-up issues because of it.”

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Lehigh Football Nation lands a knockout blow on the chin of those who think the Harvard-Yale game would lose its luster if the Ivy League went on to the FCS playoffs. In a lengthy piece about having something to play for – a championship, a game against an FBS team or a playoff bid – LFN writes:

The Ivy League's senseless ban on postseason participation for its football teams - and only its football teams - also hurts the FCS playoffs.

Teams like Harvard and Yale like to cling to the fiction that, somehow, playoff participation will detract from their end-of-the-season rivalry game, when the most-played college football Rivalry between Lehigh and Lafayette has provided them with more than two decades' worth of proof that this isn't the case.

The Ivy League doesn't seriously want to give their team a shot at anything but an Ivy League title, which not only marginalizes their own schools' football programs but also makes the Ivy League an island unto itself, giving the rest of FCS no reason to become invested in the success of their football programs.

College football thrives on these opportunities, or "shots".  If the Ivy League would simply get their heads out of the ground, they'd realize this and allow their teams to compete in the FCS playoffs and create some must-see TV, for example, Harvard playing North Dakota State.

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Speaking of the Ivy League and the football postseason, new Princeton Athletic Director Mollie Marcoux was asked in the Princeton Alumni Weekly:

Football is the only sport in which Ivy teams cannot play in the NCAA playoffs. Would you like to see the league lift the postseason ban?

Her answer:

Ultimately, yes, I’d like to see the kids be able to have a postseason competition. They work so hard during the season that it would be great to have that next opportunity. There are certainly challenges with it — we want to balance the time commitment and the strain on the body. But to me, instinctually, it would be nice to have that next opportunity.

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The New York Times has a story about the move away from to-the-ground tackling in training camp under the headline: Giants Can’t Give Big Hits for Now, and That Hurts, Some Players Say

Green Alert Take: The reduction of double-sessions and the change in tackling practices isn't just happening in Hanover . . .

Thanks for the link.

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