Merrimack, of course, was a battlefield replacement for a game against Army that was agreed to in 2013, rescheduled several times and finally canceled last winter. Instead of playing the Cadets tomorrow the Big Green will be playing the Warriors. Sounds kind of similar but, uh, it's not quite the same thing. ;-)
Thanks to last night's 42-14 win over Temple surprising Army is off to its first 3-0 start in three decades. At the end of our interview last night, I asked McCorkle if he ever thinks about what might have been. Check out BGA OT tonight to learn what he had to say.
Nothing out of Merrimack yet and if they even post football game notes, I can't find them. You find Dartmouth's game notes HERE.
For whatever it's worth, the Wise Guys have installed Dartmouth as a 19½-point favorite.
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The local Valley News has a look back at Dartmouth's special teams success last week and a look ahead to Merrimack HERE.
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The Manchester Union Leader has a story headlined Londonderry has two of a kind in Binder, Couture that takes a look at the New Hampshire school's two DI-bound linemen. Headed Dartmouth's way is 6-foot-6, 290 Paul Binder while 6-5, 276 teammate Colin Couture will play for New Hampshire. Find the story HERE.
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Headline from a story out of Ohio: Year of the Quarterback: Stark County football star delivered Ivy League team's only 10-win season.
The quarterback in question who helped Dartmouth to a 10-0 season in 1996 was Jon Aljancic. Find the story HERE.
Two things.
First, seeing a scan of something I wrote about the '96 Dartmouth-Yale game embedded in the story was a reminder that while the old saying is that today's newspaper is tomorrow's fish wrap, it's not always the case. It's why I won't mail it in. I'm sure there are yellowing clips with my byline in a lot of scrapbooks.
And second, it's nice to go back and read something you wrote and think, "Hey, that was pretty good." That being the case, here's the lede to the story that I certainly don't remember writing:
HANOVER - OK, who's going to feel worse after watching the film of yesterday's game against Dartmouth: Yale junior Adam Hernandez or veteran coach Carm Cozza?
Hernandez, a hulking 6-foot-5, 280-pound defensive tackle, was absolutely pancaked by a block from Dartmouth quarterback Jon Aljancic on an end around early in the second period. With Hernandez chasing Eric Morton, the 6-1, 185-pound Aljancic exploded like a piston under the bigger man's chinstrap, lifting him off his feet and landing him flat on his sizable backside.
Adding insult to injury: the Dartmouth sidelines went crazy with high fives, Big Green coach John Lyons joked later he worried about incurring a celebration penalty himself, and Aljancic glowered over Hernandez' prone body like Muhammad Ali over Sonny Liston in the famous photo from their fight in Lewiston, Maine.
Luckily for Hernandez, his personal humiliation lasted only a few seconds.
For the retiring Cozza, who was honored in a pregame ceremony, his 32nd and final game against Dartmouth was like nothing so much as a three-hour root canal procedure with TV timeouts to prolong the agony.
Green Alert Take: Two more things. I'm going to grade myself down on that for not getting the score higher in the story.
And two, I actually had a root canal sometime after writing that and fortunately it wasn't anything like I expected. I told the dentist after the procedure I'd never use that analogy again and I haven't.
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EXTRA POINT
Stories, pictures and videos out of the final Oakland Athletics game at the Oakland Coliseum brought back poignant memories of a trip a good friend and I made north of the border for the final home game in Montreal Expos history. If you want to know what it looked like, this TV report after the Sept. 29, 2004 game does a pretty good job telling the story.
If you want to know what it felt like, listen to I will remember you, the haunting song by Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan that echoed through the stadium after the final out.
To this day, whenever I'm at a baseball game and the crowd rises to sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game, I sing, "Root, root, root for the Expos."
Vive les Expos!
