In the first segment, we preview the Ivy League race, and discuss just why the casual fan of the sport should care about the Ivy league, particularly when the champion is not allowed to compete in the FCS playoff.
If that doesn't work for you click HERE.
The podcast intro also includes this:
The consensus for 2020 puts Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth at the top of the race for the league championship, but what other teams might surprise and make a move toward the top three this season?Green Alert Take: Consensus? Says who?
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With talk starting up again about the Ivy League possibly playing a spring football season here are several thoughts to consider shared by someone who would know:• Assuming games start the first weekend of April, preseason would have to take place in March, during Dartmouth's winter quarter. That would mean Big Green players would have to be enrolled in both the winter and spring quarters. Freshmen and juniors are already supposed to be enrolled in the fall. And remember, Dartmouth is trying to cut in half the number of students on campus at any one time.
• With an early April start to the season it would end in mid-May, likely meaning all schools except for Dartmouth would be wrapping up the season during exams or reading period, something the Ivy League frowns upon.
• To avoid a potential conflict with exams the season might have to start even earlier, thereby pushing preseason into February. (Good thing Dartmouth's indoor practice facility – AKA The Woodshed – will be ready.
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The Ivy League’s July 8 announcement on the fate of fall sports gets a mention in an ESPN story in which Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour called a spring football season "a last resort." (LINK)Penn State, by the way, reports that it tested 102 athletes who had returned to campus and all 102 came back negative. But stay tuned . . .
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From Football Scoop: "Claremont Mudd Scripps (D-III – CA) has announced they will not permit football, basketball, soccer, volleyball and water polo to compete this Fall. In making the announcement they added, “Spring competition opportunities for high-risk Fall sports (football, volleyball, soccer and water polo) will be evaluated in late Fall."Green Alert Take: If the Ivy League moves football to the spring will it also move sports other schools consider "high-risk," like soccer and volleyball?
Mount Holyoke College also announced yesterday it will not be conducting fall sports seasons.
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In contrast, the Division III Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association announced it will have fall sports, although largely just within the conference.
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OK, this is really a sign of the apocalypse.Yahoo Sports has a story under the headline, Would it be possible, or make sense, to intentionally create team-wide herd immunity? (LINK)
From the story:
. . . (W)hile coaches clearly want players to be healthy, now and throughout the season, some have mentioned to Yahoo Sports that teams with large early summer outbreaks could be at a competitive advantage come September.
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Inside Higher Ed reports on what it terms, "Dartmouth's Deferral Flip-Flop" regarding what members of the admitted Class of 2024 choose to do this fall. (LINK)The Dartmouth covers the story under the headline, College updates policy to allow Class of 2024 to postpone enrollment one year. (LINK)
Green Alert Take: Can you say can of worms? It's not going to happen, but imagine most of the incoming class, looking for a true college experience, chooses to defer for a year. How would you like to be a rising high school senior applying to Dartmouth next winter only to learn that instead of 1,100 openings in the next freshman class there are 57 spots available? Not gonna happen, but it could.
Green Alert Take II: A request for postponement must be sent to the admissions office by July 10, two days after the Ivy League makes its announcement about fall sports. I'm not recommending this but if I'm a football player and deferring would give me a chance to 1) play four full seasons (with nonconference opponents) instead of a strange, seven-game season, and 2) spend a year getting bigger, stronger and faster, I'm going to seriously consider taking a gap year.
Green Alert Take III: Again, it's not going to happen, but imagine if the majority of this year's incoming football players were to choose to take the year off and arrive in August of 2021. That could mean, let's say, 25 of this year's players arriving in 2021 along with the regular recruiting class of 30 or so freshmen. How does that fit with the Ivy League's rolling average of 30 football recruits a year?
Green Alert Take IV: Good luck to the Dartmouth, the Ivy League, Ivy League athletics and the NCAA figuring things like this out. I'm getting a headache just thinking about all of the possible ramifications.
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EXTRA POINTThe Inside Higher Ed website's use of the term flip-flop (above) brought a smile.
From the first warm-ish days of spring until late fall my footwear of choice is flip-flops. I can go days, make that weeks, with nothing else on my feet. I don't think in 15 years of BGA I ever wore anything else on my feet covering Dartmouth football preseason. And hanging from the mirror of our '84 VW camper is a small, blue air freshener, long-since able to freshen anything, but it's still hanging there because it just looks right.
What I didn't know until hearing it on public radio last fall was that in the 1950s in Southern California flip-flops were – and sometimes still are – called Go-Aheads "because they'd fall off your feet if you tried to walk backward."
Go-Aheads. I like it!
