This is post 7,140 since BGA Daily went on the Blogger platform. Exactly how many posts there have been since BGA started in 2005 I can't be sure. That's because the first three years of postings weren't on Blogger and they vanished when I changed web hosts.
Fortunately I recently stumbled across a few of the early posts thanks to . . .
The Wayback Machine explains itself this way:
We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today we have 25+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we work with 750+ library and other partners through our Archive-It program to identify important web pages.
Per its website, the Wayback Machine has preserved more than 581 billion web pages including this one from 2007:
DEC. 12 11:45 a.m. There's nothing official out of Dartmouth but the Marin Independent Journal says highly regarded Bay Area quarterback Max Heiges is heading to Hanover. From the "cache" of a Nov. 22 story in the paper: "What's next: Heiges will attend Division I-AA Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H., and play quarterback for former Stanford coach Buddy Teevens. 'I told coach (Teevens) to schedule a game against Davis so we can come back here and play.' " ... Heiges is 6-foot-2, 204 and has been reported to run 4.5 in the 40. Here's a profile of Heiges, who was said to be on Vanderbilt's radar. Without a subscription information on this site is limited, but there's a picture and confirmation that Vandy expressed interest in Heiges.
8:30 a.m. The Journal News in Westchester County writes of former Dartmouth quarterback Jay Fiedler: "The Jets announced that Jay Fiedler underwent season-ending arthroscopic surgery on Friday. The 33-year-old quarterback suffered a dislocated right shoulder and a torn labrum in Week 3 at Jacksonville. The recovery time will reportedly be 4-6 months, but the Jets aren't expected to bring him back." ...
8:15 a.m. Add record-setting quarterback Alex Jenny of Wayland, Mass., to the list of Dartmouth recruits. Jenny had 4,679 passing yards and 47 passing touchdowns at Wayland, where he captained the team for two years. He was 124-for-207 (59.9 percent) for 2,165 yards and 24 touchdowns last fall. Jenny's list of honors includes being named the Crown Trophy/Daily News Football MVP, Dual County League Offensive MVP and twice being named a Dual County League All-Star. In one of his finest games, he completed 26-of-35 passes for 351 yards and five touchdowns in a 35-14 win over Newton South. The 5-foot-11, 170-pound Jenny also was listed as a defensive back on the Wayland roster. A couple of stories about the latest recruit can be found here, and here. Jenny, as the stories note, is no stranger to Dartmouth or Buddy Teevens. The Big Green coach was his father's college roommate. ... Columbia's hiring of UConn Assistant Norries Wilson brought stories in the New Haven Register, and Hartford Courant, as well as the Columbia Spectator. The Spectator also has a rambling column about the decision.
Are you looking for information from a website that has been taken down or is giving you a 404? You may be able to find it the way I did, by typing the old URL in the Wayback Machine HERE.
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Speaking of Wayback, Roar Lions 2021, the informative Columbia football site written and curated by Jake Novak, has sprung back to life with a look at the Lions' recruiting class. Jake finishes his return-to-action entry with a look at "the effects of this unprecedented canceled year due to the COVID-19-related lockdowns," which includes this (boldface is mine) LINK:
So which coaches in the Ivies are the best suited to weather this very unusual and disorienting storm?
Columbia has to feel good that the Ivies' best coach over the last 30 years is on their sideline in Al Bagnoli. No, Bagnoli's talents couldn't overcome the issues the Lions had in 2019 with injuries and inexperience at QB. But given this blank slate of a season to come, his abilities serve as one certainty to build on. As high as the hurdles are for every team this year, they are nothing like the adversity Bagnoli faced when he came to Columbia in 2015. As accomplished as people like Bob Surace at Princeton and Tim Murphy at Harvard may be, I'd argue that only Buddy Teevens at Dartmouth has been through anything like that kind of adversity and been able to overcome it.
This doesn't mean Columbia should be favored to win the Ivy title. But Bagnoli's name on the office door is one of the most valuable commodities in this league right now.
Green Alert Take: Welcome back, Jake. It's been pretty lonely out here in the ether for the past 18 months ;-)
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EXTRA POINT
I may have ruined a good thing.
As regular visitors to this site know, I've tried to make it a habit during COVID of hiking on our local trails each day. It's been good for me mentally and physically, with a lot of my old clothes fitting better than they have for years and the mountain trail feeling as if it has flattened out.
Anyway, for the past several weeks I've been hitting the trail just after 6 a.m., when Mrs. BGA heads off to work at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Because I know how long it usually takes me to finish off BGA Daily, I need to be back at the keyboard no later than 7:15 a.m., and that means I can't dawdle.
To that end I've started running bits of the trail. It seems as if each successive day I've run a little more and now I'm even starting to pay attention to how long it takes me to finish. That was never the goal of these "forays into the forest."
Today, because I was on the trail by 5:45, I made a point to walk the entire thing, albeit at a pretty good pace. When I finished, I felt like a slug and that's too bad.
To quote Mark Twain, it was "a good walk spoiled."
