While the Ivy League tries to sort out what form spring practice will take when the pandemic allows there's actual football being played at the FCS level. This final play that gave second-ranked Weber State a 28-23 win over Northern Arizona Saturday will bring back good memories for Dartmouth football as well as serve as a reminder of what we've lost:
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Speaking of the pandemic, the Ivy League declaration that, "If public health conditions substantially improve and if permitted by an institution, local non-conference competition may be allowed to occur this spring," is working in one Ivy League baseball team's favor. That school is not Dartmouth.
The Penn baseball team hosted Villanova in a doubleheader Saturday and visited the Wildcats for a single game yesterday, dropping all three but at least pulling on uniforms. The Quakers have scheduled a four-game set with La Salle this weekend, have two more home games against Delaware, and then five more games slated against La Salle. (LINK)
The Dartmouth baseball team, meanwhile, is hamstrung by the fact that neither of the two closest potential Division I opponents – New Hampshire and Vermont – fields a baseball team. The "closest" Division I team would be UMass Amherst, 107 miles away, and UMass Lowell, 110 miles distant. Neither would seem to qualify as "local."
Also hampering the Big Green is the fact that only about half of the student body is on campus this spring. What that means for fielding a team and, most importantly, a pitching staff, remains to be seen.
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Back to football. Sunday’s Northeast Conference football game between 2021 Dartmouth opponent Sacred Heart and Wagner was postponed yesterday because of positive COVID-19 tests.
Positive COVID-19 results at Wagner meant it would be "unable to meet the NEC’s minimum roster requirements due to contact tracing."
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Following up on the earlier BGA chart on how Dartmouth fared against Harvard, Yale and Princeton over the past 20 years, here's a look at how the Big Green did against HYP in the first 20 years of formal Ivy League competition:
Year
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
vs HYP
1956
L 28-21
L 19-0
W 19-0
1-2
1957
W 26-0
T 14-14
L 34-14
1-1-1
1958
L 16-8
W 22-14
W 21-12
2-1
1959
W 9-0
W 12-8
W 12-7
3-0
1960
L 9-6
L 29-0
L 7-0
0-3
1961
L 21-15
W 24-8
W 24-6
2-1
1962
W 24-6
W 9-0
W 38-27
3-0
1963
L 17-13
L 10-6
W 22-21
1-2
1964
W 48-0
L 24-15
L 37-7*
1-2
1965
W 14-0
W 20-17
W 28-14
3-0
1966
L 19-14
W 28-13
W 31-13*
2-1
1967
W 23-21
L 56-15
W 17-14
2-1
1968
L 22-7
L 47-27
L 34-7*
0-3
1969
W 24-10
W 42-21
L 35-7
2-1
1970
W 37-14
W 10-0
W 38-0*
3-0
1971
W 16-13
W 17-14*
W 33-7
3-0
1972
T 21-21
L 45-14
W 35-14*
1-1-1
1973
W 24-18
W 24-13*
W 42-24
3-0
1974
L 17-15*
L 14-9
L 14-7*
0-3
1975
L 24-10
L 16-14
W 21-16
1-2
Totals
10-9-1
10-9-1
14-6-0
34-24-2
* Home game
Legendary Bob Blackman, of course, was the head coach in the first 15 years of formal Ivy play before being succeeded by Jake Crouthamel. Keep in mind, just one of the 20 Harvard games in formal Ivy competition and two of the Yale games were played in Hanover.
For comparison, Dartmouth went 22-38 against HYP between 2000 and 2019. (In case you are wondering, the 15-9 record over the past eight years works out to a .625 winning percentage, which compares favorably to the .583 Dartmouth compiled in the first 20 years of Ivy play.)
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EXTRA POINT As a high schooler I used a thin rubber strap with a buckle to hold my books together on the walk to and from school. In college and grad school I had a zippered case in which I would carry around notebooks and textbooks.
In the first half of my career as a journalist I generally made do with a skinny reporter's notebook, a micro-cassette recorder and a few pens, all of which fit in my pockets.
With the advent of laptops everything changed. Suddenly there were power cords, extension cords, floppy disks and then external drives, various phone connections, ethernet cords, USB dongles and more. Having to tote all of that around – in addition to a camera and extra batteries – changed the game so much that for Christmas one year the kids gave me a dark blue, padded, Jansport computer backpack.
When I wandered into the office here at the BGA World Headquarters this morning I noticed the backpack looking a little forlorn on a bookshelf. That backpack, which could have earned three or four Dartmouth degrees for all the time it has spent on campus since I got it, hasn't left this office in more than a year. Hard to believe but true.
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And for good measure . . . it's snowing as I write this.
