The Dartmouth recruiting class has grown by one with the addition of Ahmir Braxton, a 6-foot, 175-pound corner from Vista Ridge High School in Peyton, Colo. This is from his Twitter, which also reports offers from Cornell and San Diego:
100% COMMITTED 💚🖤@DartFootball @warriorqbcoach @cblackshear @Coach_McCorkle pic.twitter.com/0aixfLs8lZ
— Ahmir Braxton (@AhmirBraxton) January 9, 2021
Find Braxton's highlight video HERE.
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HERO Sports has an early top-10 for the spring FCS season. Here's a line from the Villanova capsule (LINK):
Nova lost a couple of All-Americans as transfers for the 2020 season. OL Paul Grattan went to UCLA and WR Changa Hodge played at Virginia Tech.
The bit about how Hodge played (past tense) at Virginia Tech last fall got me thinking about unintended consequences. The NCAA allowed the former Villanova standout to take the field last fall without sitting out under this strange season's one-time exemption rule. At it turned out, after catching 65 passes for 1,118 yards and 13 touchdowns for 'Nova in 2019 he was on the receiving end of a disappointing three catches for 25 yards last fall for VaTech.
Here's my question: What's to stop Hodge from transferring back to Villanova for the spring semester and playing a second season this year? The NCAA rule allows FBS players who transfer down to play without sitting out, and it has ruled that regardless of how many games you appeared in last fall you are entitled to another season of eligibility because of the havoc caused by the pandemic.
Green Alert Take: It's not going to happen but the guess here is Hodge probably could transfer back to Villanova, get the degree he originally signed up for (unless he was a grad transfer) and perhaps finish out his playing career where it started. That would be wild!
Green Alert Take II: In addition to being the Dartmouth beat writer at my old newspaper I used to cover our local DIII basketball team. I remember a player who represented one school early in the season and in the second semester was playing against his old school. Could a mid-year transfer happen at the DI level? Perhaps as a result of the law of unintended consequences ;-)
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If you were going to choose film of an older Ivy League game to post on YouTube, would it be the 0-0 tie between Dartmouth and Brown in 1959? Turns out that's a game someone picked. This just went up and while it's unpolished and a little tough to see it's worth a look:
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EXTRA POINT
This may seem a strange thought coming from someone whose livelihood is enabled by (or until this year was enabled by) the internet, but here goes.
Call me a Luddite if you will, but I'm finding myself having an internal debate about whether on balance the internet is a good thing or a bad thing. I've wondered about that off and on as the 'net has become so integral to our lives and what we saw last week has me once again tallying up the pluses and the minuses. In the final analysis, there's probably more good than bad, but I can make a pretty strong case the other way, particularly when you factor in so-called "social media."
