The Ivy League's decision to cancel the fall season continues to result in stories about Dartmouth athletes. The Press Sentinel out of Jesup, Ga., writes about rising Dartmouth senior linebacker Caleb Martin. While the story is behind the paywall, the gist of it is pretty clear in the headline and this caption: "Because the Ivy League has put the fall football season on hold, Martin’s plans are uncertain at this point." (LINK)
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Headline from ESPN:
Mack Brown, UNC staff to wear face shields, use sticks to socially distance during practices
Green Alert Take: Why not an electric cattle prod? Things are getting ridiculous.
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From the Albuquerque Journal (LINK):
Citing the rise of positive COVID-19 cases among young people in the state, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Tuesday sent a letter to the leadership of the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University strongly urging both to suspend contact sports this fall, including football and soccer.
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Headline in the Deseret News: College football independents, like BYU, are preparing to play only each other, if it comes to that, to save their seasons; Athletic directors of independents, excluding Notre Dame, recently got together via Zoom and discussed concepts for a possible round-robin. (LINK)
Green Alert Take: First sticks to ward off players and now a college football round-robin. Look, with Dartmouth sidelined I'd love to watch my Nittany Lions this fall but isn't it about time we ask, What's wrong with this picture?
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The fall high school sports season in California won't begin before December with the final football game being played no later than April 17 of 2021.
Axios writes that (LINK):
The fall high school sports season has also been called off in New Mexico, Washington, D.C., and Virginia (football only so far).
Eleven other states — Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia — have delayed the start of football, in most cases by a few weeks.
FootballScoop has a story under the headline, Texas to play high school football on a staggered schedule in 2020. Per that story (LINK):
The University Interscholastic League, the governing body of public high schools in Texas, announced Tuesday that the season will be delayed by a few weeks in the state’s four smallest classifications, and by more than a month in the two largest.
Conferences 4A through 1A may begin practice on Aug. 3 and games on Aug. 27 — keeping the existing schedule as previously written — while those in 5A and 6A must wait until Sept. 7 to begin practice and Sept. 24 to play games.
Georgia is delaying the start of its season by two weeks to Sept. 4. A measure to push the start of practice back to Aug. 10 failed in Florida where fall practices will begin this Monday per the Orlando Sentinel. (LINK)
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The NFL, meanwhile, has called off all preseason games. (LINK)
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While the NFL's Washington franchise wrestles with a new name (a loyal BGA subscriber offered up a good one – The Washington Citizens) the Canadian Football League team in Edmonton has taken a baby step toward replacing the Eskimos name it has used since 1949. Until a new name is chose, the franchise will be referred to as the Edmonton Football Team or the EE Football Team. (LINK)
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Former Dartmouth and Cincinnati linebacker great Reggie Williams '76, is taking understandable pride in how Disney's ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex is enabling the NBA to return to action. Williams served as the first executive director of the initiative from 1993 until it opened in 1997 and then was vice president of sports attractions for Disney. He told Business Journals (LINK):
“I feel like a proud parent. I am proud of the team that coalesced around the vision. It was a completely different business model from what previously existed at Disney. We launched a business purely on authenticity, not on make-believe characters.”
And . . .
“I had hosted every commissioner of every major sport and the Olympics at the Wide World of Sports during the building phase to introduce them to the facility. The vision was that I wanted the kids who competed at Disney to play on the same quality facilities as the very best athletes in the world. This is validation.”
This background from the story speaks to the value of Dartmouth connections:
The idea of the Disney complex began in 1991 when Williams was having lunch with Dartmouth classmate Michael Montgomery, who at the time was treasurer of Disney.
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Reggie Williams, by the way, has a new book coming out this fall titled, Resilient by Nature: Reflections from a Life of Winning On and Off the Football Field. (LINK)
The Amazon teaser for the book includes this:
In so many ways, Reggie Williams has had the type of life that people dream of: he starred as an athlete, excelled with an Ivy League education, built a sports empire as part of an iconic corporate brand, achieved global impact as a public servant, and won major honors for his community work. Along the way, Williams glowed on the biggest stages alongside celebrities, business leaders, and social icons.
Yet Williams’s life has also presented a nightmare—and a determined mission to score another victory—with the battle to save his right leg from amputation. The residual effects of a fourteen-year career as an NFL linebacker has challenged Williams—who has undergone twenty-eight surgeries for football injuries, including multiple knee replacement operations—to draw on the resilience that has been at the foundation of his rise from the beginning.
Here's the cover of the book as well as a blow-up of part of that cover:
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BGA's special correspondent shared a link to a video tour of Dartmouth's Baker Tower, which overlooks the green:
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EXTRA POINT
I love maps. Always have.
I spent hours and hours pouring over maps before the first of my two cross country bicycle rides both daydreaming and planning my route. I find myself wondering sometimes if GPS technology makes it so easy to find your way around that the time will come (and may already have) when kids won't know how to read a map (or learn to enjoy one).
That said, it's time for a confession. Our GPS malfunctioned when we went "boondock" camping in our VW camper Saturday. Shame on me, we didn't have a map with us – although I'm not sure a map would have helped because the spot where we were to camp didn't have an actual address. With the GPS we could have typed in the coordinates and been directed to the pullout we needed, no problem.
As I said, I love maps but I missed the GPS. I found myself asking Mrs. BGA while I was driving, What's the speed limit? (Not that our underpowered '84 was going to be going over the limit, but still . . .)
And that's not all. I missed knowing to the tenth of a mile how far it was to the next turn, and what our ETA was down to the minute. (Although it would be helpful if we could warn the GPS that we drive a 36-year-old antique.)
If the pandemic allows, we may be taking a long trip with the VW this fall, safely sleeping, eating and social distancing (no, not from each other, wise guy) in the camper. We absolutely, positively will have the GPS with us if we do. But rest assured, we'll have good 'ol paper maps along to give us the big picture.
Now if only I could learn how to fold them up properly!
