Wednesday, June 09, 2021

This And That

In what night well be a precursor of this year's preseason polls and predictions, a HERO sports column headlined Predicting Every 2021 Conference Champion has Princeton finishing atop the Ivy League. From the column (LINK):

Dartmouth and Yale lose a number of their top players. Princeton needs to find a new starting quarterback, which the program hasn’t had an issue sending its past QBs to the next level. The Tigers do have their standout RB Collin Eaddy returning along with their two leaders in receiving yards Jacob Birmelin and Dylan Classi. Princeton gets its top three tacklers and four of its top five back as well, led by James Johnson.

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STATS, aka The Analyst, has a piece headlined, Set Your Calendar for These Must-See FCS Matchups. (LINK)

While no Ivy League games take top billing, the Ivies are included in the "Can't Overlook" section in four different weeks. The contests that get a mention:

Oct. 9. Yale at Dartmouth
Oct. 23 Harvard at Princeton
Nov. 13 Yale at Princeton
Nov. 20 Harvard at Yale

Green Alert Take: Gotta believe that Nov. 6 Princeton at Dartmouth game deserved a mention, right?

Oh, and games featuring Dartmouth opponents that made it into the Can't Overlook category are:

Oct. 2 James Madison at New Hampshire
Oct. 16 Central Connecticut at Sacred Heart
Oct. 23 Duquesne at Sacred Heart
Nov. 6 New Hampshire at Albany
Nov. 20 Maine at New Hampshire

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Speaking of Princeton, I can't think of any opposing player in the Ivy League who I enjoyed watching more than Keith Elias, the Tiger running back on the College Football Hall of Fame ballot. Watch this short highlight package and you'll see why:

Green Alert Take: I can recall Elias speaking with great respect about Dartmouth after the epic battles he had with the Big Green and Jay Fiedler. I can only imagine how great those Dartmouth offenses would have been if Elias had ended up in Hanover instead of Princeton. Like Fielder, Elias went on to play in the NFL. He spent five years in the league, splitting time between the Giants and the Colts.

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EXTRA POINT
Did you read about the New York Times accidentally publishing a story under the headline, Fields of Watermelons Found on Mars, Police Say? (LINK)

Somewhere an old roommate of mine must have been grimacing when he read about the mixup.

Our story begins when I was sports editor of a daily newspaper in central Pennsylvania. We were an afternoon paper Monday through Friday but published a morning edition on Saturday. Because we essentially put out two papers on Fridays a skeleton crew worked late into the night on the Saturday paper.

While I had to wear a tie in the office even at 5 a.m. on weekday mornings (I kept a hideous clip-on in my desk that I wore every day as a silent protest to the policy) the Friday night shift was very relaxed.

In fact, it was so relaxed that we even had occasional laughs, which is what got my roommate in trouble. As the night reporter on the Friday in question one of his responsibilities was to contact the hospitals for a list of newborns. He also pulled together a list of names on the other side of the spectrum. That was unofficially called the "Hatched & Dispatched" detail.

Now, as I said, Friday nights were relaxed and on this night my roommate tossed a few yuks into the H&D to brighten the night. I recall hearing him shout across to the editing desk after filing his story, "Did you get them all?"

The editor in question laughed and said yes.

As you probably guessed by now, the answer should have been no.

Which is why if you dig up a copy of that Saturday morning paper from years ago there will be a mention that octuplets were born at the local hospital.

And despite what the blurb says, I was not the father.

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