Academic Achievements: WGNO Scholar-Athlete of the Week. Athletic Achievements: Four-year letterman and starter; team captain; district offensive co-mvp; all-metro; all-state; team MVP; Newman career leader with 194 receptions, 3,151 yards and 50 touchdowns; also an all-district punter; four-year starter in larcosse; all-state and team captain in lacrosse. Extracurricular Activities: Executive Committee; Senior Class Vice President; Homecoming King. Name of College Attending (as of Feb. 15): Will play football at Dartmouth.Green Alert Take: I spent most of yesterday working on bios for the incoming freshman class and, as luck would have it, Jarmone Sutherland was the first of the final three I am intending to finish this morning. The Crescent City posting could not have come at a better time ;-)
Green Alert Take II: At the end of each bio I include a comment from Coach Buddy Teevens. Here's part of what he gave me on Jarmone:
He’s very, very athletic, a tough guy who can catch the ball over the middle and is very acrobatic with the ball in flight. He does a real good job after the catch as well. He can do the speed sweep and a lot of different things for us. He’s a little like Drew Estrada but he might be a little faster and that’s a big statement. He can weave and get himself open and is kind of like Jonny Barrett in the air. He has a real solid skillset.
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Speaking of Ivy League wide receivers, Harvard's Cody Chrest is going the grad transfer route to Sam Houston State. The Houstonian caught 45 passes for 706 yards last year, leading the Crimson in both categories.Green Alert Take: Looking at Chrest's bio he played in two games as a freshman, did not get on the field as a sophomore and played in just one game in 2018. There's no information on whether he lost one of those seasons to injury and could have potentially returned for a medical redshirt season. That said, by NCAA (not Ivy League) redshirt rules he was eligible for another season at conferences not named the Ivy League or Patriot League because he didn't surpass the four-game threshold. He's just the latest of what figures to be a growing number of Ivy League grads coming to realize there's a benefit to not getting extensive playing time as a freshman or sophomore. Barring a change in NCAA rules don't be at all surprised if there is a wave of players taking this route in the coming years.
Green Alert Take II: It's the final game of the season and Player X has hobbled off the Field. Player Y, who plays the same position, has appeared in four games. The coach grabs Player Y and directs him toward the field. Player Y, who knows the redshirt rule, begs off to protect his grad transfer. Will it happen? Probably not. Could it happen? Absolutely.
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You wouldn't think the 247Sports Bucknuts site would have you gnashing your teeth but the video clips under the headline, Watch: Ryan Day leads New Hampshire to rivalry win vs. Dartmouth is agonizing. (LINK)The year was 2001 and the current Ohio State coach's desperation pass with three seconds left lifted UNH to a 42-38 win over a Dartmouth team that finished 1-8.
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The Dartmouth has a column under the headline, Thinking About Sports: Your Sports Endowment at Work? (LINK) It finishes this way:With all the money that isn’t being spent on game day expenses right now, I wonder if some short-term redistribution may be in order until sports resume. After all, there’s a lot of money in what I call “Dartmouth’s sports endowment.”
Of course, I have no insider knowledge of the athletics budget, and there may be a perfectly legitimate reason why something like that couldn’t happen. Nor am I suggesting that there’s something inherently wrong with the fact that a lot of money is normally spent on sports. I’m a Dartmouth sports fan, and that’s just the way it is.
But right now, there are roughly 130 rowers not rowing. And Dartmouth is not spending roughly $170,000 on baseball, and $350,000 on lacrosse, and so on.
Maybe the College has already thought of this, and if there’s unspent money right now, it’s going where it is needed. I would hope so. Desperate times call for desperate measures.Green Alert Take: While well-intended, the columnist probably would have benefited by talking with Athletic Director Harry Sheehy before writing this piece. I'm pretty sure I know where he got his numbers. I clearly remember when I was the Dartmouth beat writer putting another set in front of a college dean one time and asking about huge discrepancies between budgets at the different Ivy League schools. He calmly explained to me how different bookkeeping is at the various schools and memorably said, "It's not an apples to oranges comparison. It's apples to hubcaps." I rather suspect that with a few phone calls this column would have been dramatically different.
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On the Dartmouth News site there is a posting under the headline, Mandatory COVID-19 Screening Begins for Employees on Campus. (LINK) From the story:Starting Monday, all faculty and staff planning to be on campus will need to answer five questions and confirm that they don't have a fever before they can begin work. This can be done from home, logging into a new Dartmouth website using the employee's College NetID. Those employees without a thermometer at home, or who don't have home internet access, should report to one of two sites that will be set up to check temperatures and record answers to the questions.Notable from the story:
Approximately 125 employees have been on campus working in health services, tending to buildings and grounds, and preparing meals for a small number of students who have been unable to return home. In addition, some faculty members have been on campus to use their offices to teach remotely.
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The Stadium site has a story under the headline, Will College Football Return if Students Can’t Return to Campus? Conference Commissioners Weigh In. (LINK)From the story:
A Power Five athletic director, who was granted anonymity, is adamant that a football season could be played without the general student body on campus.
“Why can’t you play football on campuses that are closed?” the athletic director asked. “If classes are being offered online, there is no restriction on where you complete the course work. You would need an easily-administered COVID-19 test that is available to every athletic department. Test the student-athletes, coaches, trainers and support personnel to make sure that your cohort is free of virus. Quarantine the cohort for practice, online classes, food service and leisure time activities. This would be a very safe environment.
“Many of our athletes were taking a significant portion of their credit hours online long before the virus showed up. The only difference would be an empty campus, theoretically an even safer environment.”Green Alert Take: Enjoyable as they are to watch, it's becoming harder and harder to justify the relationship between big-time athletics and college. This doesn't help.
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The O-Zone site has a story under the headline, No Fans For Ducks Game? Oregon Gov Nixes Large Crowds For Sporting Events Through September. From the story (LINK):Ohio State is set to play at Oregon this season on September 12 and it is looking like there will be massive reduction of fans in attendance when — or if — the two teams kickoff in Autzen Stadium.
On Thursday, Oregon governor Kate Brown announced that the ban on crowds will last at least through September.
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EXTRA POINTDuring my lunch hour yesterday I finished reading a legal thriller and at some point today I'll dig into the Vermont state library's online catalogue and download a new book to my Kindle. (Gotta always have a book.)
I always find it interesting sorting through novels by my favorite authors and reading that the book was "written with" so-and-so. When I see that, I usually take a pass and look for something else. It just rubs me the wrong way that the publisher and well-known author are capitalizing on his or her name.
I have a novelist friend who told me about writing a sample chapter for one of my favorite authors, who was looking for someone to do his heavy lifting as his career wound down. The famous author would plot out much of the story and then hand it off to be finished. Then his name would be blasted all over the cover of the book with my friend's name in tiny letters.
I remember joking with the librarian in our little library in Etna that Robert Ludlum, whose Bourne books I enjoyed, might have written more books after he died than when he was living. Thinking about that, I counted them this morning. His name has been splashed in big letters across 21 books since he passed away.
I haven't read one of them.
