Once again, if enough questions come this way the Q&A will be part of the final practice report of the week.
The Big Green will return to the field tomorrow for the fifth of the 12 sessions the Ivy League allows in the spring. Yesterday's spring practice story on BGA Premium was about tailback Zack Bair.
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Safety Niko Mermigas had a strong Pro Day last week and has posted a video showing how he performed:
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Yesterday's BGA Daily featured a look at the 1986 Dartmouth football highlight video that included the school-record 98-yard touchdown pass from David Gabianelli to Craig Morton against Columbia.
Today we offer the highlight video for the 1988 team, the second season of Buddy Teevens' first stint as Big Green head coach. This video features not one but two 97-yard touchdown runs by fullback David Clark:
If you just want to skip ahead to the 97-yard runs, find the first against Harvard HERE and the second against Princeton HERE.
And if you don't believe how important downfield blocking by wide receivers is, check out the two blocks Craig Morton makes to free Clark against the Crimson, and then the all-out sprint across the field to clear the way for the big back against Princeton.
Clark, who majored in mathematics modified engineering at Dartmouth and earned his masters in educational leadership at Florida Atlantic, is now head of school at the Boca Raton campus of Pinecrest School in his native Florida. Morton, who majored in religion at Dartmouth, earned a master of divinity degree at Regent University and is pastor at a church in nearby West Lebanon.
Green Alert Take: Two things to notice. First, check out the crowd for the Harvard game. And second, yikes were shoulder pads big back then, even on running backs.
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While longtime Ivy League fans might prefer games against more competitive programs, the Pioneer Football League continues to show up on Ancient Eight schedules. Harvard has agreed to play a home-and-home series with the University of St. Thomas, which had a successful move up from Division III to the FCS last fall. The Crimson will host the Tommies in 2023 and head to Minnesota in 2029. (LINK)
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Remember that posting about former Dartmouth assistant Cortez Hankton being the highest-paid wide receiver coach in the nation at LSU? (LINK)
FootballScoop has followed with a listing of the top-paid linebacker coaches in the nation and former Cornell head coach Jim Knowles tops the list at a cool $1.9 million per year. (LINK)
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In local news, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, which is based at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, has rebranded its wide-ranging system simply as Dartmouth Health. (LINK)
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EXTRA POINT
It was in 2005 when I came up with the idea for Big Green Alert and, after getting the green light from coach Buddy Teevens (pun intended), I took a chance and pulled the plug on my newspaper career. If I'm going to be completely honest, BGA never took off the way I hoped and it has been a struggle. Hence the graphic of Griff the Wonder Dog over there on the right.
It was in 2005 when I came up with the idea for Big Green Alert and, after getting the green light from coach Buddy Teevens (pun intended), I took a chance and pulled the plug on my newspaper career. If I'm going to be completely honest, BGA never took off the way I hoped and it has been a struggle. Hence the graphic of Griff the Wonder Dog over there on the right.
But while BGA would never have made it this long if not for the patience and earning power of Mrs. BGA, it sure beats the alternative. Newspapers, as everyone knows, are unfortunately going the way of the passenger pigeon and my old newspaper is no different.
First they sold the fancy press everyone used to be so proud of and farmed out the printing part of the operation down to the Concord Monitor mothership. That made the news deadline absurdly early and chased readers to the internet to find out how the Red Sox game turned out. Then they stripped away jobs until the newsroom these days consists of little more than a skeleton staff.
Now the local news aggregator Daybreak reports the Valley News building has been sold. What has happened to the location where I cut my teeth as a cub reporter and eventually returned to finish my newspaper career puts the demise of newspapers in perspective. From Daybreak:
The 76,000-square-foot building and two acres on Interchange Drive in W. Leb were bought last month for $2.4 million by Lebanon-based LockNLube, which makes grease guns and couplers. The two companies will share the building.
Enough said.
