Given that YouTube can now autogenerate transcripts, here's a lightly edited version of the site's transcript of The Dartmouth Way:
Head coach Buddy Teevens: The coaches thought I'd lost my mind (when) I opted not to tackle in our practices. You have two guys running into each other, backed up by two other guys running into each other, for no real purpose.
Assistant head coach Sammy McCorkle: This is a huge change. We don't miss tackles like we just six or seven years ago. I think our players are bought in completely.
Linebacker Will McNamara: It's just awesome to see when you have a ton of guys still playing together in Week 9 and Week 10.
Defensive lineman AJ Zuttah: Having tackling dummies as opposed to going live every day in practice is something that's going to be a transition at every level.
Teevens: We practice tackling more. We just don't tackle each other.
McCorkle: It makes you have to break down the whole process of tackling in segments. That's what I think we really focus on. We've generated more tackling drills for our circuits, and focus on each phase of a natural tackle. In my opinion it's made us fundamentally sound across the board as a team.
Teevens: Before we went to a non-tackling protocol we probably had 15, 18, 20 concussions and now we're down to one or two.
Defensive coordinator Don Dobes: I think that's a pretty impressive stat and I think there's no question that it has a lot to do with our philosophy on how we tackle, and how we keep an eye on how many hits our guys are getting each week.
Teevens: The big thing is to put guys in a position that they would use on game day and replicate it in practice.
Dobes: How do you tackle without tackling each other? That's where the landing pad, the different variety of dummies and pop-up dummies became very important to us.
McCorkle: You've got to make it a safer sport. That's our whole philosophy of not tackling guys to the ground. We’ll go in that direction.
Teevens: They will be doctors, lawyers, engineers, investment bankers and they'll be sharper down the road because they won't have accumulated the hits that they might in a program that doesn't do what we do.
McCorkle: You can do the numbers, and the studies show a lot of injuries occur in practice because you've increased the amount of times that's going to occur.
Zuttah: I definitely feel that I've been healthier throughout this entire season than I had in the past two years at least. Being able to tone things back a little bit. Using tackling dummy instead of hitting somebody that's hitting you has made an impact on me.
McCorkle: It's the greatest sport on the planet. We need to continue to keep it that way and for us to do that we've got to be smart.
Teevens: Unless we change the way we coach the game we won't have a game to coach.
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No word yet on Dartmouth or other Ivy League athletes making deals but check out an Associated Press story headined Colleges scramble to ensure NIL deals are safe, compliant that suggests what deals a player who went on to great prominence as a pro might have done at a small, academic school HERE.
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A story headlined Meet The 12 Starters On The U.S. Men’s Olympic Rugby Sevens Team includes a look at Dartmouth alum Madison Hughes, who would have been a pretty fair wide receiver, corner or return specialist if he'd played a different sport in Hanover. (LINK)
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EXTRA POINT
We've had two stretches of 90-degree weather and precious little rain this year. That's great for vacations at the lake.
So what are the chances that we awoke this morning on our third lake visit of the spring/summer and for the third time the temperature isn't supposed to get out of the low 60s, the sky is threatening, and the forecast is for showers?
Oh well. I suppose it's kind of like that old saying, "A bad day of golf beats a good day of work." A bad weekend at a lake is better than a good day at work.
