A loyal BGA Daily reader sent along photos of a pencil celebrating Dartmouth's first Ivy League championship in 1958. His friend came across the pencils in an old box of his father's.
Rookie Niko Lalos, who made his NFL debut on Sunday, returned to the practice squad on Monday. It won’t be a surprise to see him elevated again or signed outright to the 53-man roster.
The New York Giants have announced the protections of three practice squad players ahead of their Week 13 game against the Seattle Seahawks, including new fan favorite, defensive lineman Niko Lalos.
"Protections" of practice squad players? What exactly does that mean? From a story headlined, NFL practice squad rules: Everything to know for 2020 (LINK):
Protecting players
Teams can still sign players from other practice squads and put them on their 53-man roster, but each week, teams can protect up to four players from being signed by other teams. So if a team has a proven veteran on its practice squad, it can protect him from being signed by a team that would like to sign him.
And in case you were wondering, regular practice squad players are paid $8,400 per week and "veteran" practice players earn $12,000.
As for what the game-day promotion meant for Lalos, CLICK HERE and maybe you can hazard a guess.
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Dartmouth is slated to play at New Hampshire on Oct. 16 next season. What UNH will look like is a good question as the Union Leader explains in a story about how the pandemic will affect the team's roster. The Wildcats have eight seniors expected to play in their spring season and any or all of them could return next fall. From the story (LINK):
“Everything is on hold,” UNH coach Sean McDonnell said. “Everybody is getting an extra year of eligibility, so we have eight seniors right now and we had used their scholarships in certain ways to take care of them and we thought we were just taking care of them for the fall semester. The big problem in terms of recruiting is since we have the spring semester and next fall semester they still have to go into our ‘count’ as they say — our count of 63 (scholarships). We’re very limited.”
And . . .
Even if some or all of the current UNH seniors decide to leave school after the spring season — and notify McDonnell of their plans to do so well in advance — the pool of recruits will have been picked over thoroughly by that point. The top recruits will likely have already made their decision. It won’t be easy filing those available scholarship spots with the type of player UNH would typically recruit.
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From Dr. Anthony Fauci regarding when sports venues might have full crowds again (LINK):
“We're gonna be vaccinating the highest-priority people [from] the end of December through January, February, March,” Fauci said. “By the time you get to the general public, the people who'll be going to the basketball games, who don't have any underlying conditions, that's gonna be starting the end of April, May, June. So it probably will be well into the end of the summer before you can really feel comfortable [with full sports stadiums] – if a lot of people get vaccinated. I don't think we're going to be that normal in July. I think it probably would be by the end of the summer.”
When asked about full NFL stadiums in September, Fauci said: “Oh, that's possible. I think that's possible.”
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Meanwhile, the craziness continues. The Stanford football team will be bivouacked in Seattle and Corvallis, Ore., for upcoming games at Washington and Oregon State, the latter contest originally slated for Palo Alto.
And poor San Jose State. Instead of hosting Hawaii Saturday the COVID rules in Santa Clara County are forcing the Spartans to instead travel to Hawaii.
Green Alert Take: OK, it's not exactly a vacation. But it IS Hawaii ;-)
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EXTRA POINT
It was 60 degrees here in northern New England yesterday, Dec. 1, and I was wearing shorts when I made my daily hike up the mountain. If this keeps up they'll be able to update my favorite Christmas commercial by filming it in these parts.
Editor's Note: It's a more normal 33 degrees as I write this ;-)
