The weather cooperated for Dartmouth graduation while NFL quarterback Russell Wilson honored his father Harry '77 during his commencement address yesterday on the Green. Listen to Wilson below or find a transcript HERE.
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I’ve seen literally hundred of Ivy League football games – but not a single one sitting in the stands with the fans.
You? You’ve probably either been to Ivy League games or will go to Ivy League games but I’d venture to say most of you have never set foot inside a press box or seen a game from up there.
I’m camping at a lake in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom this week and, through the wonders of automated posting while I’m off grid, will give you a brief look this week behind the curtain at what I’ve found covering games at each of Dartmouth’s 2022 road opponents – Sacred Heart, Yale, Columbia, Princeton and Cornell.
Today a visit to Sacred Heart.
While it’s a decent if tiny stadium, I’m no fan of Sacred Heart’s Campus Field and I believe I have good reason.
The last time Dartmouth played in Fairfield I arrived to discover there was no room for me in their absurdly small press box. Instead, I was left to set up outside the box in the open air landing that those entitled to be inside stand on while the door to the box is opened.
Honestly, I felt like it was Thanksgiving and I was a grown-up sentenced to a little chair at the children’s table.
Threatening skies left me concerned that the detailed, color-coded stats I keep during the game would bleed off the paper I kept them on. I sat there wondering if the computer bag in which I keep my trusty MacBook Air was waterproof.
And it got worse. While every press box in the Ivy League has cold drinks for the ink-stained wretches of the Fourth Estate (and broadcast teams), not so at Sacred Heart the last time we visited. The Dartmouth radio crew actually had to hustle down to a refreshment booth at the half to buy waters to soothe overworked vocal cords.
Dominos pizza like they serve the press at Holy Cross or huge and tasty chocolate chip cookies like they have at Brown? If they had anything in the press box it didn’t make it out to the children’s table.
When I first covered Dartmouth football there was no interview room after games and I was left to track players down as they were getting dressed – or undressed – in the locker room. Needless to say, that was more than a bit awkward and certainly problematic for female writers.
Although I prefer to get my own quotes in one-on-one situations, I actually miss the interview rooms at schools like Sacred Heart that don’t have them. Tracking down the SHU coach after making sure I didn’t miss Buddy Teevens and his players was impossible, so my story was definitely lacking the home team perspective.
But hey, parking was nearby, it didn’t take long to get on the road after grabbing a few quotes and there’s actually a Sonic Drive-In on the way back, so there's that.
On a scale of 1-to-10 I’ll give Sacred Heart a 2.0 because at least it didn’t rain.
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EXTRA POINT
On Saturday afternoon Mrs. BGA and I visited Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in nearby Woodstock, Vt.. We're huge fans of the kind of big parks where That Certain Dartmouth '14 has worked like Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and the Everglades, so we weren't sure quite what to expect.
We were pleasantly surprised. It turns out that Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller was the first and is still the only national park to focus on "conservation history and the nature of land stewardship" in America. It's well worth the half hour drive from campus and a great place to hike after watching the introductory film and visiting the "mansion."
The first owner of the property and one of the namesakes of the park was George Perkins Marsh, a member of the Dartmouth Class of 1820. You can read a little more about him HERE.
Marsh, it turns out, was ahead of his time. By almost 200 years. From the National Park Service (italics are mine):
In 1864, George Perkins Marsh published the book that was to earn him the title of "Prophet of Conservation." In "Man and Nature, or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action," Marsh put forward the idea that human activity could, and did, significantly alter the appearance and productivity of the landscape, and even the climate of our planet.
