Friday, June 03, 2022

It Won't Be (That) Long Now

 Kudos to Craig Haley at The Analyst for digging this up, and look who they used in the photo. (Hint – the Dartmouth ballcarrier is big No. 17 ;-)

Green Alert Take: Pretty much since the start of Big Green Alert prior to the 2005 season I've kicked off the annual 100-plus consecutive days of BGA Premium stories with my in-depth opponent preview series. That meant one story a day for 10 days leading up to the first day of practice, first reviewing the prospects for Dartmouth's three nonconference opponents and then the Ivy League schools in alphabetical order.

Given that not all Ivy League schools had updated their rosters when I was working on last year's previews in some cases it was impossible to know which players were taking advantage of their COVID-enabled "super senior" seasons and which were calling it a career. How troubling was that? Imagine being out-of-town media last summer and trying to write a detailed Dartmouth preview without knowing if, for example, quarterback Derek Kyler, safety Niko Mermigas or lineman Jake Guidone was coming back.

The Ivy League is holding its "media day" on Aug. 15 this year. The hope is the conference mucky mucks will make sure schools have their rosters updated by that date and that the coaches will actually talk about their personnel during the media day call, something they've not been asked to do much of since the conference went from an in-person event to a conference call and I stopped bugging them in person.

With fingers crossed that some useful information actually comes out on "media day" this year, I've reluctantly made the executive decision this year to push back the start of the preview series. That being the case, the previews will kick off Aug. 12 with New Hampshire, Aug. 13 with Sacred Heart and Aug. 14 with Valparaiso. Brown will be the first Ivy League preview after the Aug. 15 media day, followed in order by Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and finally Yale on Aug. 21. It will mean doubling up stories some days, but so be it.

12:30 p.m. update: Just learned Dartmouth's first practice is Aug. 21. Working backwards, that means I should be able to keep to my old schedule and just have one double-story day in the preseason. So the BGA Premium schedule looks like this:

PREVIEWS
Aug. 12 - New Hampshire
Aug. 13 – Sacred Heart
Aug. 14 – Valparaiso
Aug. 15 – Brown
Aug. 16 – Columbia
Aug. 17 – Cornell
Aug. 18 – Harvard
Aug. 19 – Penn
Aug. 20 – Princeton
Aug. 21 – Yale

And . . .
Aug. 21 – First practice report

Green Alert Take II: A reminder that while a few eager beavers have jumped the gun, signup for BGA Premium begins officially on Friday, July 1. That said, if you are looking for a graduation gift for that Class of '22 grad, you are welcome to sign up between now and the June 12 ceremony ;-)

#


I haven't seen this first-hand but it's been reported that Lindys venerable preseason football magazine, has the Ivy League predicted this way:

Princeton
Yale
Dartmouth
Columbia
Harvard
Penn
Brown
Cornell


Green Alert Take: I've got a few small quibbles with that ranking but if you asked me which team was most egregiously misplaced, I'd say Harvard. I'd expect the Crimson will be the Ivy League favorite for a lot of people.

No Ivy League team or Dartmouth opponent is in the Lindys top-25 although old friend and foe Holy Cross comes in at No. 16:

1 North Dakota State
2 South Dakota State
3 Sam Houston State
4 Montana State
5 Montana
6 Missouri State
7 Kennesaw State
8 Southern Illinois
9 Villanova
10 East Tennessee State
11 Eastern Washington
12 Jackson State
13 S.F. Austin
14 Sacramento State
15 Holy Cross
16 Incarnate Word
17 Southeast Louisiana
18 Florida A&M
19 Richmond
20 Weber State
21 Jacksonville State
22 UT Martin
23 Mercer
24 Delaware
25 Chattanooga
#
Giants.com has a story headlined, Rookie Daniel Bellinger, Niko Lalos highlight OTA No. 9. From the story (LINK):

Linebacker Niko Lalos could be slotted into both "touchdown" and "takeaway" categories today. With the offense backed against the goal line, he batted down a pass and intercepted it in the end zone for a touchdown – all in one motion. Lalos, who was undrafted out of Dartmouth in 2020, has two takeaways (one interception and one fumble recovery) in just six career games.

Lalos '20 spent all of last year on the Giants' practice squad after making a half dozen appearances with the big team as a rookie. 

#

In today's episode of Buddy Teevens' Mentees and the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Steelers Depot site writes (LINK):

The Pittsburgh Steelers are adding to their scouting staff, reportedly hiring Mark Sadowski to an "executive role," according to this tweet from Inside The League's Neil Stratton, who tweeted the news a short time ago.

And . . . 

(Sadowski) has close ties to (new Pittsburgh GM Omar) Khan. Both went to Tulane and worked with then-head coach Buddy Teevens.

Earlier editions of Teevens "mentees" stories concerned Khan, Dan Rooney '12 and Cole Marcoux '14. 

#

EXTRA POINT
Did my first mowing of our extensive lawn with the now-healthy electric tractor yesterday. Fortunately I had cut it several times already this spring with my walk-behind mower so while I had let it get a little ragged in the last week knowing the tractor return was imminent, it wasn't too bad.

Now it's on to our field, where I hadn't taken the walk-behind and some of the growth is two-plus feet high. I spent some time weedwacking down there this morning before my hike and ran the tractor for about 45 minutes when I got back. Early sunrise this time of the year helps me get a lot done before sitting down to pull together this page . . .  although it does make for a wicked-early wakeup call ;-)

The hope is I can get the field cut down in a week and then stay on top of it so that I need to cut it just once every 10 days or so. Ah, the joys of having six open acres of land!

Posted by at