Utah's Park Record has a Signing Day story about three athletes headed to college sports, including Dartmouth-bound kicker/punter Tanner Pidwell. The Utah all-state second-team punter told the paper (LINK)
“I have a strong interest in academics and wanted to go to a strong school. Football gave me a clear path to a great school that I am super excited to attend.”
More from the story:
Pidwell added that he wanted to see the field early in his college career. He has seen players before choose a bigger school only to sit on the bench for much of their careers.
“I am likely to be the starter for three-plus years,” he added. “So that also helped me make the decision.”
And . . .
The kicker hopes to grab his Ivy League undergraduate degree in four years and play a fifth season of college football at a bigger program, where he’d do graduate school.
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On the subject of the current recruiting classes, HERO Sports compiled the top-10 FCS classes per the 247Sports Composite Rating (LINK). Take these with more than a grain of salt:
1 Idaho
2 Northern Arizona
3 Sacramento State
4 Cal Poly
5 UC Davis
6 North Dakota State
7 Harvard
8 Eastern Washington
9 Montana State
10 Portland State
Here's why that list is pretty much meaningless. For some reason, although Harvard has already formally announced 21 incoming members of this recruiting class (LINK), 247Sports includes only 12 of those recruits in its ranking.
The 247Sports Ivy League recruiting ranking (below) is even more suspect. It includes just 10 of the 28 players BGA has identified as headed to Dartmouth and just five recruits for Penn and Yale. Here's the 247Sports Ivy League recruiting ranking:
No. | 5★ | 4★ | 3★ | Avg. | Pts | |
Harvard | 12 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 84.69 | 106.82 |
Columbia | 9 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 83.25 | 51.95 |
Brown | 6 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 83.33 | 39.60 |
Princeton | 11 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 82.00 | 35.70 |
Pennsylvania | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 83.50 | 26.94 |
Cornell | 8 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 82.00 | 23.93 |
Dartmouth | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 84.00 | 14.00 |
Yale | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 83.00 | 13.00 |
For the record, here are the only Dartmouth players 247Sports identified:
LB George Duggins
LB Jarritt Bolz
OL Brody McLeod
DE August Dupree
LB Parker Maiers
DL Gavin King
WR Blake Betette
OL Mikey McMahon
LB/DB Emory Jones
S James Rush
Duggins is Dartmouth's only listed three-star recruit in the 247Sports rankings.
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Wish you could finally get to a Super Bowl? Three men have never missed one per a story under the headline, They will have been to all 60 Super Bowls. This year is possibly their last. Find the story HERE.
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EXTRA POINTI've been working on a project that has me digging through my files, and in doing so I came across something timely. Here are tickets from when I covered the opening ceremony of the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics as a wet-behind-the-ears reporter:
Two things. First, $39.20 for the opening ceremonies and $22.40 to watch the luge? Not bad.
