A League Of Their Own

 

With the Ivy League season about to kick off, Craig Haley at The Analyst has a piece that begins this way (LINK):

The Ivy League is the only conference in Division I college football – either FCS or FBS – to have more than one active head coach of at least 20 years in the league.

When the league that’s affectionately called the Ancient Eight kicks off its 2022 season this week, it will boast three such coaches – Columbia’s Al Bagnoli, who’s in his 30th season, including the first 23 at Penn; Harvard’s Tim Murphy, 28th; and Dartmouth’s Buddy Teevens, 22nd.

Green Alert Take: I remember an Ivy League coach who thought NESCAC coaches might have the best job in college football, spending their summers at the Jersey Shore or on a lake somewhere. I wonder if there are FBS coaches – at least outside of the Power 5 – who might see this and feel the same away about the Ivy League.

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All of the Ivy League betting lines are in now. They look like this, from biggest underdog to biggest favorite:

Brown is a 31/2 point favorite at home over Bryant

Cornell is a 13-point underdog at VMI

Yale is a six-point underdog at Holy Cross

Penn is a 4 1/2 point favorite at home over Colgate 

Columbia is a 21-point favorite at Marist

Harvard is a 26 1/2 point favorite at home against Merrimack

Dartmouth is a 32 1/2 pint favorite at home against Valparaiso

Princeton is a 34 1/2 point favorite at Stetson

In games featuring Dartmouth's nonconference opponents:

Sacred Heart is a 10 1/2 point favorite at Morgan State

New Hampshire is a 14 1/2 point favorite at home against North Carolina Central

Green Alert Take: I laugh when I write "underdog," remembering my mother, born and raised in Denmark, calling the other team in such a matchup the "overdog." 

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From the Pitt News (LINK):

If (Kedon) Slovis and (Nick) Patti’s injuries keep them out of the game against the Broncos, head coach Pat Narduzzi will likely go with senior Derek Kyler. The senior transferred to Pitt this summer after spending the prior three years at Dartmouth. Kyler was very accurate and limited his mistakes, completing almost 70% of his passes and tossing 42 touchdowns and just six interceptions.

But this was all against primarily FCS teams. Nobody knows what’ll happen when Kyler steps under center against an FBS team — we may find out soon enough.

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A familiar face in a new position from UConn's Wallpaper Wednesday Twitter:

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A story in HERO Sports points out that two of the top-10 FCS teams have transfer quarterbacks in their seventh year of college football (although they obviously haven't played seven years). How can that happen?

No. 3 Montana's quarterback was at Georgia Tech from 2016-19, with two starts in 2019. He had one start at San Diego State in 2020 and nine last year with the Aztecs last year before heading to Montana for 2022.

The story explains that the Montana quarterback . . .

“. . . redshirted in 2016 at Georgia Tech and was granted an extra year of eligibility in 2018 due to an injury, plus the COVID year in 2020.” 

Is it possible the NCAA is going to pull the reins in at least a little bit on transfer craziness? Perhaps. From an ESPN story (LINK):

The NCAA has instructed college football programs to remove the names of any student-athletes who entered the transfer portal since the new portal windows went into effect on Aug. 31.

But the piece also includes this:

An NCAA spokesperson clarified that student-athletes are required to enter the portal during the transfer windows, but are not required to actually transfer during that window. Once they are permissibly entered into the portal, they can start talking to coaches at other schools and then transfer at any time. 

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EXTRA POINT 
Agatha Christie was born in the United Kingdom on this day in 1890. Kind of hard to believe that as much as I love to read – and enjoy mysteries – I've never read even a single book by the best-selling novelist of all time with more than two billion books translated into more than 100 languages.

Maybe I'll head over to Project Guttenberg and download The Murder on the Links for free.