And They're Off (The Ground)

Our coaches are on the road again this week looking for some talent! Who's next to come to #TheWoods⁉️ pic.twitter.com/oKxl4NcpqF

— Dartmouth Football (@DartFootball) May 23, 2022

Green Alert Take: Had to laugh a little bit about the Dartmouth corporate jet being "on the road." Clearly it's off the ground ;-)

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Speaking of "off the ground," someone flew a drone over Memorial Field and while this half minute video shows the proximity of the stadium to the campus, I kinda wish it had spent a little more time over the field:

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On another slow day for news I've pulled together a little Ivy League football history for your edification:

IVY LEAGUE UNBEATEN//UNTIED SINCE 1900

(Minimum eight games)

YEAR		COACH	RECORD	PF	PA	DELTA
1900	Yale	Malcolm McBride	12-0	336	10	326
1901	Harvard	William Reid	12-0	254	24	230
1903	Princeton	Doc Hillebrand	11-0	259	6	253
1904	Penn	Carl Williams	12-0	222	4	218
1905	Yale	Jack Owsley	10-0	226	4	222
1909	Yale	Howard Jones	10-0	209	0	209
1912	Harvard	Percy Haughton	9-0	176	22	154
1913	Harvard	Percy Haughton	9-0	225	21	204
1915	Cornell	Albert Sharpe	9-0	287	50	237
1921	Cornell	Gil Dobie	8-0	392	21	371
1922	Cornell	Gil Dobie	8-0	339	27	312
1923	Cornell	Gil Dobie	8-0	320	33	287
1923	Yale	Tad Jones	8-0	230	38	192
1925	Dartmouth	Jess Hawley	8-0	340	29	311
1933	Princeton	Fritz Crisler	9-0	217	8	209
1935	Princeton	Fritz Crisler	9-0	256	32	224
1939	Cornell	Carl Snavely	8-0	197	52	145
1950	Princeton	Charlie Caldwell	9-0	349	94	255
1951	Princeton	Charlie Caldwell	9-0	310	82	228
1960	Yale	Jordan Olivar	9-0	253	73	180
1962	Dartmouth	Bob Blackman	9-0	231	57	174
1964	Princeton	Dick Colman	9-0	216	53	163
1965	Dartmouth	Bob Blackman	9-0	271	71	200
1970	Dartmouth	Bob Blackman	9-0	311	42	269
1986	Penn	Ed Zubrow	10-0	274	108	166
1993	Penn	Al Bagnoli	10-0	308	131	177
1994	Penn	Al Bagnoli	9-0	233	68	165
1996	Dartmouth	John Lyons	10-0	275	104	171
2001	Harvard	Tim Murphy	9-0	293	184	109
2003	Penn	Al Bagnoli	10-0	346	164	182
2004	Harvard	Tim Murphy	10-0	339	134	205
2014	Harvard	Tim Murphy	10-0	327	123	204
2018	Princeton	Bob Surace	10-0	470	130	340

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Thanks to Mrs. BGA for sending along a link to a Business Insider story headlined, 19 valuable pieces of advice from the best graduation speeches of all time that includes these two outtakes from Dartmouth commencement speeches (LINK):

"Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer." — Shonda Rhimes '91, TV producer and screenwriter in 2014

"There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized." — Conan O'Brien, talk show host in 2011

Green Alert Take: Scrolling through the advice from the included graduation speeches I'd have to say I was more than a little underwhelmed.

Green Alert Take II: Like the Secretariat story I try to link to each year around the Kentucky Derby, I'll be posting the video of Conan O'Brien's graduation speech around this year's commencement. As is the case with the story about the Triple Crown winner, it's worth revisiting every year.

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EXTRA POINT 
The Great Electric Tractor Saga of 2022 is nearing an end.

Before I go on, I want to bring you back a few years to when my daily driver was a Mitsubishi Expo, sort of a clown car unique enough that the Little Leaguers I coached would race to get a seat in it when we had road games. They called it "the nursemobile."

As some of you will recall, I loved that car even if the front hood sometimes wouldn't latch after I checked the oil, which made one particular trip back from an Ivy League meeting in Connecticut quite an adventure as I imagined the hood flying up on I-91 at 65 mph. The sliding door regularly had the same problem and the windshield leaked enough that rain followed by freezing temperatures would result in a pad of ice on the floor on the passenger side.

We called the car "Vlad," because it was an old Expo. (Baseball fans will understand.) But I digress.

If I recall correctly Vlad had about 220,000 miles on it when I brought it to our mechanic for an issue I can't seem to recall (there were that many). A few days later I wandered back to see about the car and with a pretty good idea of what he was going to tell me, I said to the mechanic, "My dream was to drive the car until it died."

With a standup comic's impeccable timing he said, "You've succeeded."

Now back to the tractor.

I lugged the four 67.5-pound batteries it runs on into town yesterday, strolled into O'Reilly Auto Parts and asked if they could come outside and test them for me. (No way I was carrying those things inside.) Four times the fellow slapped the clamps on the battery. Four times he turned to me and showed me a readout that said, "You've succeeded." 

OK, that's a lie. It said, "Replace," but you get the idea.

Because I'm a glutton for punishment and the batteries are ridiculously expensive, I headed to the NAPA Auto Parts store and asked if they could test the batteries for me, just to be sure. This fellow did a deeper dive and read the actual numbers to me. When I asked what the numbers meant, he wasn't quite as succinct as the mechanic from years ago, but he found an equally effective way to get the message across. He said, "These batteries might be good enough to turn on a light."

And so, because growing grass waits for no one, last night I bit the bullet and ordered four new batteries along with a thing called a Powerpulse, that should help make sure they last a little longer than the last ones.

The batteries are supposed to be available for pickup between Thursday and May 31. Be sure to come back after that for the final installment of the Great Electric Tractor Saga of 2022.