Braden Fiske (Western Michigan); Andre Carter (WMU); Truman Jones (Harvard); Shane Cokes (Dartmouth); Darrell Jackson (Miami Hurricanes).
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Pro Football Network is announcing its all-conference teams and while it should be no surprise that Notre Dame and BYU dominate the All-Independent first team, former Dartmouth linebacker Jalen Mackie, who led UMass in tackles by a wide margin, was named to the first team. (LINK)
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So why do players like Mackie leave a successful program to play for a struggling program at a higher level of football? In addition to testing themselves, it is to get notice. That certainly worked for JD DiRenzo, an offensive lineman Dartmouth played against when he was at Sacred Heart a year ago. From a story in the Atlantic City Press (LINK):
J.D. DiRenzo joined the Rutgers University football team as a graduate student this year with the hopes of elevating his NFL draft potential.
His performance this season helped his chances, and the Scarlet Knights rewarded the 2017 St. Joseph High School graduate’s efforts Sunday.
The 6-foot-6, 315-pound offensive lineman from Hammonton was named Rutgers’ Offensive MVP for this season.
Green Alert Take: It may be damning with faint praise to be the offensive MVP for a team that averaged 11.7 points in B1G play with just 10 touchdowns in nine games, but Rutgers has more players in the NFL than Sacred Heart.
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The University of Pennsylvania website has an appreciation of Jerry Berndt, the former Quakers head coach who served as a Dartmouth assistant from 1971-78. Find the story HERE. Berndt died over the weekend at age 84.
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Even though I still cover Dartmouth football, moving across the river from New Hampshire to Vermont and finally updating my address, I lost my Heisman vote. Each state has a certain number of voters and apparently it's not about who you cover but about where you sleep. That's fine. I was a Heisman voter for more than 25 years and had a pretty good run.
Without a vote this year I'm free to tell you how my vote would have gone if I hadn't been disenfranchised, so here it is:
1. Max Dugan, TCU quarterback
2. Caleb Williams, USC quarterback
3. Bryce Young, Alabama quarterback
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EXTRA POINT
Real estate agents are some of the most creative writers I know. The description of our house before we bought it included mention of a "small orchard" and a wine cellar. Yeah, sure. We have three apple trees crowded together and I suspect one isn't going to be with us much longer. As for the wine cellar, it's a wooden rack in a utility room. That's it. To call it a wine cellar is so laughable that we looked far and wide (unsuccessfully) to try to find a bottle of Boone's Farm to toss onto the rack as a way of letting friends in on the joke when we showed them around after we moved in.
That said, the real estate writer kind of got it right with this part of the description:
"With full sun filling the house all day, you can sit on the covered front porch and enjoy the sunrise and in the evenings hang out with friends on the enclosed three-season porch and watch the sun set."
I thought about that a couple of nights ago when I watched the sun set over the mountain I hike each day. The writer actually got things backward. We can watch the sun rise on the three-season porch and watch it set on the covered porch, but you get the idea.
You've seen lots of sunrise pictures in this space. Here's a sunset view up our driveway the west:
