It won't be the last . . . or at least shouldn't be:
Thankful to have received an offer from Western Kentucky University! pic.twitter.com/RojpPXXKtU
— Drew Estrada (@drewestrada) October 30, 2020
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Remember that posting several weeks ago about the story in The Atlantic headlined, The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League-Obsessed Parents that featured the photo of all the lacrosse players on Dartmouth's Scully-Fahey Field (LINK)? It turns out some bits of the story were enhanced, just like the Photoshopped picture that accompanied it.
The Atlantic has a lengthy mea culpa regarding both its decision to give the writer the assignment and the inaccuracies it failed to catch despite heavy fact checking. Writer Ruth Shalit Barrett, a 1992 Princeton graduate who has a checkered journalistic past, not only got a few things wrong, but per The Atlantic was complicit in leading a source to lie. If you are at all curious about how responsible media reacts when it knows mistakes have been made in this era of reputed "fake news" (an expression it makes me hugely uncomfortable writing) by all means CLICK HERE to read how The Atlantic responded to the inaccuracies it published.
Green Alert Take: I feel bad for the fact checkers who worked over the original story in The Atlantic before it was published. I can tell you, after writing the Ivy League chapter and an essay for the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia: The Complete History of the Game, that fact checking is a critical, if thankless job. I remember finding myself annoyed when I thought I was finally done with my part of the book and call after call came from the fact checkers making sure this or that was correct, and quizzing me on my sources. In time, though, when the work was behind me and the book was on the shelves, I was very, very appreciative of those same fact checkers who had pestered me so. I certainly hadn't made things up for dramatic reasons, or because I was too lazy to find the truth, but it was a tremendous relief to know if I made a mistake someone was there to correct it. (And that's why, with no editor for BGA Daily, I appreciate the crowd-sourced fact checking that helps me clean up my mistakes here.)
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Poke around Wikipedia for a bit and you never know what you are going to find.
Someone has posted week-by-week college football polls going all the way back to 1936.
If you are a Dartmouth fan you probably have heard that the undefeated 1970 Big Green finished 14th in the final AP major college poll, one spot ahead of USC, four places ahead of Penn State and six slots up from Oklahoma and Ole Miss. But did you know what week Dartmouth first broke into the poll and at what number?
CLICK HERE and you can see Dartmouth made its poll debut on Nov. 2 in Week 8 of the season, checking in at No. 18 after improving to 6-0. In successive weeks the Big Green climbed to 15, dropped to 16, rose to 14, dropped to 15 and then settled in at 14 for the final two weeks of the year.
Last year's 9-1 team didn't break into the STATS poll of FCS teams until it improved to 4-0 in Week 7, debuting at No. 21. It rose as high as 11th by improving to 8-0 in Week 11 before finished at No. 22. (LINK) The same Wikipedia page also has the Coaches Poll, with Dartmouth debuting at 21 in Week 6 and rising as high as 8 before finishing at 21.
Check out the previous Ivy League championship Dartmouth team's route to a No. 23 ranking in 2015 HERE.
Oh, and that first poll Wikipedia posted from 1936? Dartmouth (7-1-1) finished 13th.
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EXTRA POINT
Following up on yesterday's posting about "falling back" to standard time, as hard as it can be for us when we wake up on Sunday morning to know what time it really is, it's even more difficult for our pets.
Griff the Wonder Dog eats his dinner every day at 5:30 and his built-in clock is usually good to within five minutes. By 5:25 most days he's found me and is looking up at me with those big brown eyes hoping I'm about to make my move to the kitchen.
So it was no surprise that at 4:25 yesterday, while I was watching an NFL game, Griff sauntered up to me and stood there. Waiting.
It was hard to make him wait but I finally fed him at 4:40. Tonight I'll make it about 10 minutes later and by week's end we'll be back to 5:30 as we reset his body clock.
He'll get there – eventually – but until then he's going to be a little unhappy with me.
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And finally, another thank you to those who have clicked on that green button over there to the right. It is a reminder each time that you appreciate these morning postings . . . and it helps put a little more kibble in the pooch's bowl ;-)
