One significant correction on this Fox Business interview with Buddy Teevens: Dartmouth practice is absolutely not "no contact." It's no tackling. As a result of the live tackling ban there have been fewer injuries but make no mistake about it. There's plenty of contact during practice.
2019 Ivy League Coach of the Year @BTeevens joined @FoxBusiness today to talk safety & more! #TheWoods pic.twitter.com/l4VFdGTl53
— Dartmouth Football (@DartFootball) August 7, 2020
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Princeton announced yesterday it is going entirely online this fall. (LINK)
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The NCAA made it official yesterday that there will be no FCS national championship playoffs this fall. (LINK)
It's hardly a coincidence that Colonial Athletic Association powerhouse James Madison, which played in last year's national championship game, announced it is abandoning the idea of playing independently this fall essentially in concert with news of the FCS playoffs being called off. JMU had advanced the idea of going its own way this season after the CAA called off fall championship competition.
The Missouri Valley Conference, home of FCS juggernaut North Dakota State, now says it will play a full, eight-game conference slate in the spring but its teams will be allowed to play independently in the fall. (LINK)
As expected, the Pioneer Football League has announced it will not play football this fall. That means Marist, the final opponent on Dartmouth's original 2020 schedule, has now seen its season canceled. From a story on the Journal News website (LINK):
Earlier this summer, Marist dropped non-league games against Georgetown, Cornell and Dartmouth. The remainder of the season was cancelled Friday when the Pioneer Football League Presidents Council announced its decision to put everything on hold.
(It's semantics, of course, but Marist didn't drop Dartmouth, Cornell and Georgetown. The games were canceled not by Marist but when the Ivy League and Patriot League called off their seasons.)
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Elite Sports New York joins other websites that have absolutely no independent information in making a prediction about who will make the final New York Giants roster. Not surprisingly, ESNY has Dartmouth defensive end Niko Lalos on the outside looking in. (LINK)
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EXTRA POINT
Just about every year since we had our wedding reception on a boat in Boston Harbor (first song the band played: Gilligan's Island ;-) we have celebrated our anniversary on or near the water. We've enjoyed dinner cruises on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee and Lake Sunapee, and eaten at a restaurant overlooking Vermont's Lake Champlain. We dined one year alongside the famous floating bridge in Brookfield, Vt., (LINK) and another at water's edge at Lake Memphremagog, which straddles the Canadian border.
Last year we had our anniversary dinner at Lake Willoughby, which one site describes as "a breathtaking natural wonder that must be seen to be believed." (LINK)
Out of an abundance of caution we never even tried to find a restaurant on the water this year. We did try to line up a waterfont campground, but it seems those places were booked up long ago.
The day is young and we are flexible, but this time around we might just break out the grill and head to a nearby lake or river and have our own quiet celebration. That's OK. We're safe and healthy and we have each other, and that's all that really matters.