Thursday, April 18, 2024

Spring Ahead

A look at Dartmouth spring football at the midway point of the 12 sessions will be posted tonight on the new barebones site BGA – The Sequel HERE. 4 p.m. editor's note: The story has been posted.

In addition to providing thoughts about players who have opened eyes during the first six practices,  how the spring has gone as a whole and the naming of Wendy Laurent as associate head coach, the Sequel will explain what the players are doing this week, why they aren't practicing, and a lot more including a very special trip by head coach Sammy McCorkle. Oh, and if you missed the spring practice preview, that already has been reposted on the site here (LINK).

A reminder that the new BGA site, which is available to everyone, will have Dartmouth game coverage of a sort this fall, as noted in this space yesterday.

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Speaking of what the players are doing this week, Spencer Brown, Dartmouth's highly regarded strength and conditioning coach addressed exactly that in a video posted on Big Green social media:

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It's just a "brief," but Dartmouth's new offensive quality control assistant Grayson Kline got a mention in Penn State's Daily Collegian. (LINK) What the Collegian should have included in the story, of course, is former Nittany Lion offensive lineman Wendy Laurent being named the Big Green's associate head coach earlier this spring.

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While Dartmouth has had a good number of former football players enter the portal as grad transfers, to date virtually all have left only after picking up their degrees, something first Buddy Teevens and now Sammy McCorkle encourage. Princeton lost a promising running back after a strong freshman season in 2022 and now a Yale undergrad has entered the portal, but to this point most of the football players who transfer out of the Ivies are doing so only after graduation, not before.

It's starting to look as if that may be changing on the basketball side. The Harvard Crimson has a story about guard Malik Mack, who this winter was named the Ivy League rookie of the week eight consecutive times, walking away from a Harvard degree to play at Georgetown. From the story (LINK):

"Mack and his family have previously spoken about weighing the benefits of a Harvard degree against the financial pressures of not having an athletic scholarship or the potential to make money through an NIL collective . . ."

Yale sophomore Danny Wolf, a 7-foot center/forward who some analysts list among the top dozen players in the portal, could be moving on as well. And while he has said he intends to return to school, Princeton sophomore guard Xaivian Lee has declared for the NBA Draft. (LINK)

Green Alert Take: Could it happen in football? Perhaps, but it says here it is a lot harder to project how a top Ivy football player will translate to the FBS than it is a basketball player to a big-time program.

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Remember that post about small college towns described this way (LINK)?

These 10 small college towns — selected by an expert panel and voted as the best by readers — have fun, youthful vibes, unexpected dining and shopping options, and plenty of cultural offerings. Throw in a beautiful campus and some regional surprises and you have a recipe for a great vacation.

Here's the final ranking:

1. Oxford, Miss.
2. Oxford, Ohio
3. Frostburg, Md.
4. Granville, Ohio
5. Athens Ohio
6. Annapolis, Md.
7. HANOVER
8. Williamsburg, Va.
9. Charlottesville, Va.
10. Saratoga Springs

Boston.com has a story about Hanover making the cut HERE.

Green Alert Take: I'll say it again. There's no way that list could leave out Princeton, Ithaca and State College, Pa., and I'd be tempted to include Burlington, Vt.

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EXTRA POINT
My car is a hatchback, which is a good thing . . . until the hatch doesn't close properly, which is a bad thing. I wrote about the car's hatchback issue in this space last week after the dealer hooked up an electronic thingie to send the mileage to Detroit and unfortunately inform us we were several hundred miles past the warranty period for fixing the latch for free.

Today the car goes in a second time to have the exact problem diagnosed with another electronic thingie, and we've been told it very well may have to go in a third time to have the electronics that control the latch mechanism replaced.

Three trips to the dealer and who knows how many hundreds of dollars? For a latch.

I can't help but think about trunk issues before cars got so fancy. I'm pretty sure I could have pulled in unannounced to the neighborhood garage we always used in Lebanon, the mechanic would have put aside what he was working on to come outside with a pair of pliers, a screw driver and some lubricant, and in five minutes he'd have the thing working perfectly. Better yet, when I'd ask him how much we owed him, his answer would be, "Have a good day."

And yes, I walked to school every day, uphill both ways. ;-)

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