I don't have a cell phone but I'd have to say my email was "blowing up" yesterday after the Patriot League announcement regarding athletics this fall. Here are the bullet points from the Patriot League release that, significantly, notes "student-athletes will return to campus at the same time as other students."
• Patriot League competition will begin at the end of September, with the expectation that League play will be completed prior to Thanksgiving.
• Non-League competition will not begin prior to Friday, Sept. 4.
• Patriot League member institutions will confirm that non-League competitors are following comparable health and safety protocols in advance of any contest.
• No Patriot League teams will fly to competitions and, with rare exceptions, regular-season competition will exclude overnight travel.Find the full release HERE.
Regarding Patriot League football, there are repercussions for every school. Here are a few:
• Fordham is supposed to play host to Stony Brook on Aug. 29. Rams' football players won't arrive on campus until Aug. 18, meaning there wouldn't be nearly enough time to prepare even if the Patriot allowed non-league play before Sept. 4.
• Given that Lehigh undergraduates are scheduled to check in on Aug. 20, the Mountain Hawks will have at most two weeks of practice prior to Sept. 3, their opener at Villanova. Again, they couldn't play it even if the Sept. 4 start date wasn't introduced.
• Holy Cross was originally supposed to welcome students back on the final weekend of August and to start the football season Sept. 3 against Merrimack. Another game that will not be played.
• Colgate undergrads are slated to return Aug. 23 and the Raiders are supposed to play at Western Michigan Sept. 4. Given less than two weeks of practice and the distance between Hamilton, N.Y., and Kalamazoo, Mich., requiring a flight, that game will not be played barring a change.
• Bucknell has a Sept. 4 game at Army and while students are scheduled to return on Aug. 14, that would give the Bison just three weeks of preseason before playing up a level. That game is doubtful at best.
• Fordham is scheduled to play at Hawaii on Sept. 12. The no-fly rule means that game won't be played.
• Georgetown has a Nov 21 date at San Diego that will be called off for the same reason.
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While the Patriot League has tried to modify its fall athletic schedule, Bowdoin, a member of the academically-elite New England Small College Athletic Conference – frequently referred to as the "Little Ivies" – has taken a more draconian approach. The Division III school in Brunswick, Maine, has announced it has canceled all fall varsity sports as well as the fall-semester portion of its winter sports. Bowdoin's fall semester ends Dec. 21 and students don't return until Jan. 23.A year ago Bowdoin played 15 of its 25 men's hockey games prior to the start of classes for the spring semester and 17 of its 29 women's basketball prior to the start of the spring semester.
Green Alert Take: Listen carefully. That noise you hear? It's the other shoe getting ready to drop.
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EXTRA POINTOne of my great regrets is that my mother, born and raised in Copenhagen, did not teach us Danish growing up. Because of time spent around her Danish friends, I'm great at identifying Danes speaking English, but when my mother would be on the phone at Christmas talking about presents she was buying for one of us three kids, try as I might to figure out what would be under the tree, it was beyond hopeless.
I bring that up because over the weekend Mrs. BGA stumbled across a Danish cookbook we have and whipped up a batch of "rød grød med fløde." The name of that desert is a tongue-twister Danes love to spring on Americans and others. In fact, my mother told us that during WWII pronouncing it was a test the underground gave to suspected infiltrators because if you weren't/aren't native born your chances of saying it properly are slim.
To get an idea of how difficult Danish is, CLICK HERE and try to pronounce a few words. To hear the desert pronounced, CLICK HERE.
