Try The Back Door

Like a lot of you, probably, I dropped my ESPN+ subscription when Ivy League football was canceled for the fall, and patted myself on the back when the Ivies called off basketball and ice hockey as well.

That being the case, I was disappointed when I learned that the lead-off event in what Dartmouth is calling the Winter Big Green Classic was the 2019 Dartmouth-Princeton football game – and that it was being streamed only on ESPN+.

Ah, but as it turns out there's a back door to watching the Big Green and Tigers square off in Yankee Stadium. No promises for how long it will be up, but you can watch the game on YouTube right HERE for free. (And if you are even a little bit savvy you can use any of a number of free apps to download and save the game to your hard drive ;-)

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Ever since our local NBC affiliate in White River Junction was cannibalized by WPTZ up in Burlington there's been almost no Dartmouth mentions on the station. Lots and lots of University of Vermont, Plattsburgh State, Middlebury and Norwich but the Big Green has been largely ignored. Perhaps because the station also serves the New York side of Lake Champlain, it does a fair amount of New York Giants coverage, and that may be one of the reasons why anchor Ken Drake tracked down Dartmouth alum and Giant Niko Lalos '20. Watch his interview below or HERE if that doesn't work for  you.

The local Valley News has a story about Lalos HERE and New York Newsday has another HERE under the headline Jabaal and The Kids are on edge for Giants' biggest game that includes this:

Niko Lalos, who’d just finished his first NFL training camp, was on the Giants’ practice squad at the time, trying to find a position group that was thin enough to afford him some reps, bouncing between the outside linebackers and defensive linemen and even the tight ends and fullbacks.

And .  .  . 

It wasn’t until Fackrell suffered a calf injury in the second half, though, that Lalos actually got onto the field with the defense.

"The one thing I can promise you is that if you tell him he’s going to be in on a package, he’s going to be out there," (outside linebackers coach Bret Bielema ) said. "He’ll be out there quicker than you get the call in."

Two snaps later, he was diving for the interception.

"It’s actually here in my room right now," Lalos said later in the week of the football from his first big NFL play. "I wasn’t going to let go of that thing for dear life."

Because he wanted a souvenir?

"More so because I’ve seen Coach Judge talk about ball security so much that I didn’t want to be ‘that guy,’ " he said. "If someone had poked the ball out after I had made the catch, I don’t think I would have been able to sleep at night."

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Craig Haley of STATSPERFORM writes about “one-game wonders” in the NFL. Football’s version of Moonlight Graham. (LINK)

Green Alert Take: I read the story down wondering if the name Niko Lalos was going to show up. Spoiler alert: It didn’t.

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Trey Lance, the former North Dakota State quarterback who could be a first-round pick in the next NFL Draft, mulled "offers" from Cornell and Columbia before choosing to play for the Bison. There have probably been a lot of "what if" daydreaming in New York State ever since.

Lance's younger brother Bryce, a record-setting wide receiver, just announced his intention to follow Trey's footsteps to Fargo. This time there may be some "what ifs" coming from Hanover because the Big Green was one of his suitors after he caught 30 balls for 631 yards and eight touchdowns in his final high school season. (LINK)

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EXTRA POINT
AccuWeather is predicting between six and 10 inches of snow here starting in late morning and continuing into the night. I've got to wrap this up and get outside to put a few more things away and pound our "snow stick" into the frozen tundra so we can know exactly how wrong AccuWeather got it. 

For what it's worth, Wunderground says 1-3 inches. My money is on the 1-3 because AccuWeather almost always gets our hopes up for a big one and then lets us down.

Accuweather snow chart for our area