You Were Wondering

Several football notes to come but we start today with news about something that has piqued a lot of interest. From a story in The Dartmouth where Big Green basketball players Romeo Myrthil and Cade Haskins have a piece offering up some of their reasons for pushing to unionize. They write in the story (LINK):

The age of amateurism and the brazen exploitation of athlete labor and intellectual property should be over.

And . . .

 (M)any of our players currently juggle part-time jobs alongside their academic and athletic commitments to help pay for their tuition and living expenses. While we currently receive many forms of non-traditional compensation, these don’t pay our bills, and so we are unionizing to be compensated like other student employees, with hourly wages similar to other student wages on campus or scholarships. 

And . . .

(S)everal of our players have suffered serious injuries during practices or games and needed to pay substantial amounts of money out of pocket to cover their health insurance deductibles. We believe Dartmouth should be held responsible for those costs and any long-term disabilities that may arise from our participation in Dartmouth sports. 

And this . . .

(W)e call on other athletes here at Dartmouth, across the Ivy League, and the country to follow this story and join us on the journey to improve the conditions for college athletes everywhere. We are available to any athlete interested in getting more information on how to form a union. If we succeed, college athletes will finally have the chance to have an equal voice regarding their working conditions.

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The local Valley News has a story about Saturday football night's game at New Hampshire HERE.

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The Manchester Union Leader game story is HERE.

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For a deep dive into Dartmouth's next opponent, check out the game story out of the Mountain Hawks loss Saturday to Cornell in The College Sports Journal HERE.

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Here are the Sagarin ratings after one week of Ivy League play. The number in (parentheses) is last week's rating:

164 Harvard (182)

165 Princeton (151)

168 Yale (138) 

180 Pennsylvania (185)

183 Dartmouth (173)

209 Columbia (192)

211 Brown (230)

136 New Hampshire (142)

231 Lehigh (235)

233 Colgate (234)

Green Alert Take: Sagarin numbers fluctuate dramatically in the early going and only normalize as the year goes on. 

The Ivy League went 5-3 on the opening weekend. Here's are the teams the Ivies defeated and the teams they lost to stand in Sagarin.

Ivy League Wins:
201 Bryant
229 St. Thomas
231 Lehigh
233 Colgate 
245 San Diego

Ivy League Losses:
135 Holy Cross
136 New Hampshire
207 Lafayette

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EXTRA POINT 
Each time I drive down to Hanover for practice or a game there's a river I cross. It's a tributary of the Connecticut call the Ompompanoosuc. Virtually every time I cross the bridge over the river I find myself singing the five syllables in the name of the river like this – Om-pom-pa-noos-uc – to the beat of the intro to Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever. Try it yourself and you'll hear why.

Like you my family probably thinks it is a little odd.  ;-)