This And That

Dartmouth's sports information office strategic content and brand management office has posted a story headlined Meet Dartmouth Football’s Newest Staff Members: Grayson Kline and Erin Brennan. (LINK)

Kline, who earned the Penn State Developmental Squad Offensive Player of the Game honor early in his redshirt senior season as a reserve tight end with the Nittany Lions, is an offensive quality control assistant at Dartmouth.  

Brennan is Dartmouth football's new recruiting and operations coordinator. A former college soccer player who worked at the Manning Passing Academy, comes from Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, where she worked as assistant to the athletic director and girls soccer assistant coach.

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Craig Haley at The Analyst has a look at the Patriot League, which will be sending Fordham to Hanover for this season's Dartmouth opener. Here's how he sees the season playing out in what used to be referred to as the Ivy League's sister conference:

1. Lafayette
2. Fordham
3. Holy Cross
4. Colgate
5. Georgetown
6. Bucknell
7. Lehigh 

Green Alert Take: It has to absolutely sting in Bethlehem, Pa., to see Lafayette picked first and the Mountain Hawks at the bottom. But I digress . . .

Here's what Haley writes about Dartmouth's Week One opponent:

Fordham (6-5, 2-4) – All six of Fordham’s 2023 PL games were decided by eight or fewer points, so this season, the Rams need to reverse the close losses. Quarterback CJ Montes engineered an FBS win over Buffalo and threw with elite efficiency (3,000 passing yards, 64.1%, 26 touchdowns, one interception). Defenses have to remain honest against Montes given RB Julius Loughridge’s exploits (1,146 rushing yards) out of the backfield. The defense boasts an unmatched duo in the league with defensive end Matt Jaworski (13.5 tackles for loss, nine sacks), who was the PL preseason defensive player of the year, and linebacker James Conway (129 tackles, 386 in career). 

Haley has a section of the story headlined Five Players to Know and two were from Fordham. From the column:

CJ Montes, QB, Fordham (Walter Payton Award preseason nominee) – As a sophomore,Montes had the fourth-lowest interception percentage (0.3 – one pick in 376 attempts) in the last 25 FCS seasons among QBs to throw 150+ passes.

And . . .

James Conway, LB Fordham (Buck Buchanan Award preseason nominee) – Conway ranks 10th in PL history with 386 career tackles and is closing in on the all-time record (former Holy Cross linebacker Jacob Dobbs with 432).

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The Roar Lions Roar Columbia football blog has a posting about the challenge faced by Seitu Smith, the program's new offensive coordinator and quarterback coach. Smith is a familiar named around the Ivy League, including at Dartmouth. He's been part of no fewer than five of the eight Ivy League schools, playing at Harvard, serving as director of player personnel for the Big Green, then working as QB coach at Brown and most recently as assistant head coach at Yale.

Find the story about Seitu Smith HERE and his Columbia bio HERE.

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Reading in a HERO Sports story headlined FCS Teams Playing The Worst FBS Teams In 2024  that Lehigh is playing at Army on Aug. 30 has to stick in the craw of Dartmouth fans who aren't terribly excited about the Big Green playing on Sept. 28 at Merrimack. 

That's because the game at Merrimack, which only fielded its first football team in 1996 and played in Division II as late as 2018, was a late replacement for a contest Dartmouth was supposed to play against Army at historic Michie Stadium this fall.

The schedule change was the result of Army accepting an invitation to join the American Athletic Conference and having to make room this fall for AAC opponents. Instead of hosting Dartmouth on Sept. 28, the Cadets will play Temple at Lincoln Financial Field on the night of Thursday, Sept. 26.

And Dartmouth will play at Merrimack's 4,000-seat facility.

A little history lesson.

Dartmouth and Army agreed to a game in 2013 and in 2015 the news went public that the teams would play in 2017. (LINK)

That 2017 game was first pushed back to 2022, and then to 2024, only to have Army finally pull the plug.

Green Alert Take: For the record, the FCS Teams Playing The Worst FBS Teams In 2024 story has Army pegged at No. 103 in the country. That may be a difficult game for a game ranked at the bottom of the Patriot League but might just have been a competitive contest for one of the Ivy League elites.

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Given that high rent has forced some retailers out of Hanover, a story headlined Dartmouth Authentic Store to Open on Main Street is interesting. From the story (LINK):

The team store on Main Street, online, and game day offerings will provide a wide range of products, including exclusive Dartmouth Athletics clothing and merchandise — including Dartmouth's sideline apparel offered by Nike. The store, independently operated by Follett, will enhance the availability of Dartmouth Athletics merchandise, both in person and online. 

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US News & World Report has a piece headlined The 20 Best College Town Hotels and every Ivy League school has a hotel that made the cut. Here they are in the order they are presented in the story (LINK):

Hyatt Regency Princeton: Princeton, New Jersey
The Charles Hotel: Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Blake Hotel: New Haven, Connecticut
The Rittenhouse: Philadelphia
Renaissance Providence Downtown Hotel: Providence, Rhode Island
Aloft Harlem: New York City
The Statler Hotel at Cornell University: Ithaca, New York
Hanover Inn Dartmouth: Hanover, New Hampshire

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EXTRA POINT
A couple of our neighbors recently put up small signs promoting their chosen candidate for the presidential election. Sorry, but that's something I've never really understood.

Do people who put up those signs think the fact that they support a particular candidate is going to change my opinion?

Or do they think I don't know who is running?

Do they feel it is important that I know who they support?

Look, I get it when it's a local election and you may not even know who is running. But trust me, I'm well aware of who is at the top of the ballot in November.

As I said, I just don't get it.