Dartmouth was scheduled to kick off five days of "mat drills" yesterday and you are probably wondering what that means. From the BGA Daily archives:
"They are called mat drills because originally they were conducted on old wrestling mats in the weeks leading up to spring football. Lou Holtz and Bobby Bowden are considered the founding fathers of workouts like these that get players ready for action, and help in team-building."
With the Dartmouth football office relatively quiet on the graphics/media side while it looks to fill an opening, it's as good a time as any to dig into the archives for a look at the first day of mat drills from a few years ago to get a sense of the kind of thing that's happening in Hanover this week:
A reminder that spring football begins one week from today with the players on the field at 5 p.m. The 12 practices allowed by Ivy League rule will be conducted Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5, and Saturday mornings at 10. The week of April 18 will be quiet as the coaches hit the road recruiting before practice resumes and works toward the May 7 spring "game."
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Today's issue of The Dartmouth features an opinion piece headlined, The Right Play; Dartmouth should scale back athletic recruitment. (LINK)
The author of the piece argues that "Scaling back athletic recruitment for Dartmouth sports not offered at the vast majority of high schools would make the admissions process fairer." He writes that . .
". . .16 of Dartmouth’s 35 sports teams represent sports available at less than 20% of high schools nationwide: men’s and women’s lacrosse, women’s field hockey, men’s and women’s ice hockey, men’s and women’s skiing, women’s equestrian, men’s heavyweight and lightweight and women’s rowing, coed and women’s sailing, women’s rugby and men’s and women’s squash. Eight of these teams — rowing, sailing, rugby and squash — are offered by less than 1% of high schools nationwide.
"Recruiting for these sports is extraordinarily unfair to the overwhelming number of high schoolers who lack access to them."
More from the story:
". . . (R)ecruiting from such a narrow band of schools means that Dartmouth is forced to look to students who got their experience outside of high school — and outside of school-organized athletics, there is often a larger price tag attached. . . . If a prospective recruit’s parents can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars every year on equipment, league fees, camps, travel and more, the student will not even have the chance to play these sports, let alone be recruited."
And . . .
"Additionally, these sports are disproportionately white. . . "
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The NFL has released its annual helmet rankings. Although the rankings include a caveat (The results of this study should not be extrapolated beyond the NFL, including to collegiate, high school or youth football.) they are always studied with interest by those involved with football at the other levels. The chart below is introduced this way:
The helmet models are listed in order of their performance, with a shorter bar representing better performance. The rankings are based exclusively on the ability of the helmet to reduce head impact severity measures in laboratory testing. Performance variation related to helmet fit, retention, temperature-dependence, and long-term durability are not addressed in these rankings.
And . . .
The dark green group represents those that performed similar to the top-performing helmets from the 2022 poster, while the light green group performed better or similar to the lowest ranked dark green helmet from the 2021 poster. Helmets with poorer laboratory performance were placed in the yellow (not recommended) or red (prohibited) groups. Helmets in the yellow group may be worn only by players who wore them during the 2021 NFL season.
Find the full NFL report including this chart HERE or "Use this QR code to view the full list of prohibited helmets and an additional list of approved legacy helmets:"
Gotta say I'm glad Dartmouth's "spring" football practice begins next Tuesday instead of today. It was 8.5 degrees outside when I walked Griff the Wonder Dog this morning and for the second day in a row we had a healthy dusting of snow fall overnight. Enough already.
