Making Noise

Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens is a huge believer in Big Green athletes supporting other teams so the football team's turnout for yesterday's volleyball game at Leede Arena and the noise the team generated shouldn't be a surprise ;-)

Dartmouth posted a 3-1 win (25-20, 23-25, 25-16, 25-22) over New Hampshire with the football players cheering them on.

#

On this somber 20th anniversary of 911 I commend to you a moving story by Jerry Price (TigerBlog) about former Princeton lacrosse player John "Stinky" Schroeder, who lost his life in the Twin Towers. It's not Dartmouth and it's not football but it's well worth a read. Find it HERE. 

#

With the Offshore Wise Guys deciding legalized gambling makes the odds against their being successful this year in the United States long I haven't yet found a site that offers point spreads on FCS games. That being the case, the best I can offer is the Sagarin spreads, which are based almost entirely on algorithms and are notoriously undependable this early in the season. But they are the best I've got so here goes:

Dartmouth Week One opponent Valparaiso visits the Fargodome this afternoon to play North Dakota State. Valpo lost last week to Indiana Wesleyan, an NAIA school, while NDSU began the hunt for its 17th national championship with a win over Albany. A little trivia for you: North Dakota State didn't play its first Division I game until 2004 and the opponent was Valparaiso. In a harbinger of what was to come, the Bison won their inaugural game at the new level, 52-0. This time around Sagarin has them as a 46-point favorite.

Week Two opponent Sacred Heart travels to Rhode Island where Sagarin has them a 13-point road favorite over Bryant.

Projected to be the closest game among Dartmouth opponents is the New Hampshire-Towson matchup. Sagarin has the Wildcats a half-point favorite at home. Dartmouth visits New Hampshire on Oct. 16.

#

The Big Green won't be heading down to Harvard until Oct. 30 and a lot could change before then but as of now the Harvard website offers this information to fans:

For outdoor contests, fully vaccinated attendees will not need to mask or physical distance, but unvaccinated attendees should wear masks and physical distance.

Dartmouth's mask policy, updated Sept. 3, can be found HERE.

#

While Dartmouth football still has a week to go until it opens the season you can catch some Big Green action at 1 p.m. today when the men's "Rugby Football Club" plays host to Holy Cross. Watch a livestream of the action HERE.

#

EXTRA POINT
Each spring I pull 11 long windows out of the sun room in our Vermont hillside house and replace them with screens. Yesterday I pulled the screens out and replaced them with the windows I lugged up from the basement.

The first two years we lived here I waited until later in the fall to make the change, clinging to summer and thinking there would still be occasional warm days when it would be enjoyable to sit out in the screened room. There were. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we could use the unheated room more in the fall – and keep the French doors opening into the room open longer – if the windows were in and the sun had more of a chance to warm the room up.

I was just down there and on a morning when the temperature was 44 degrees during my hike the sun has started to do its thing warming the dark gray stone floor. I'm happy to report the sun room is a lot more pleasant than it would be if a breeze were blowing through the screens.