Currently on the ESPN website:
A few excerpts from the story:
"Buddy was a force -- a force for the good of football and for communities," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. "He made football better, at Dartmouth for sure, but also at every place he was, he made it better."
Matthew Shearin, the Rams' manager of football administration who played at Dartmouth from 2015 to 2018, said it was one of the first things Teevens told him when they met. The coach told Shearin that his goal was "to take the head out of the game.""(He said,) 'We understand, look, you come to Dartmouth ... Do guys have a chance of playing in the NFL? Sure,'" Shearin said. "But for the most part, you're going to be CEOs and CFOs and VPs, etc., lawyers and doctors. So, at the end of the day, your body, particularly your brain, is the most important part.'"
And . . .
"I must admit, I wasn't certain it was the best way to prepare athletes for game day," Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. "There's a lot of ways to skin a cat, but Buddy proved the naysayers wrong and helped to make college football a safer sport. There's no question about that."
And . . .
"You don't testify before Congress on hitting injuries if you're not trying to protect people," Rams vice president of football and business administration Tony Pastoors, who also played for Teevens at Dartmouth, said. "Our game has taken a lot of that to heart. And so it is about protecting players. It's about trying to prolong the game, keep it for today, tomorrow and the next generation. So I think so much of his fingerprints are on it."
And . . .
"He took a lot of pride in seeing kids from the Manning Academy succeed," Pastoors said. "And very, very, very few of them went to Dartmouth. So it was seeing them succeed at Clemson or Notre Dame or Texas A&M or Oklahoma or wherever they went.
"He took great pride in seeing them go on to succeed at the college level, and then even plenty of them at the pro level. I think it was one of those things that was his way of helping them along the way."
Read the full story HERE.
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EXTRA POINT
In advance of cold temperatures predicted last night, a report from one of the TV stations in Burlington, Vt., said there hasn't yet been a temperature reading below zero in the city this winter. If that holds, it will be the first time in recorded history they've gone through a winter without hitting negative numbers. (We've been well below zero here on our hillside a few times.)
I spotted a solitary robin in one of the ornamental trees in our side yard yesterday and while I know some of these harbingers of spring stay over in the winter I couldn't help but think it looked a little forlorn. I wonder if our feathered friend was wondering about his life choices when it got down to 0.2 degrees here last night?
