Tuesday, May 26, 2026

Your Mileage May Vary

The Samuel Akem Show, a YouTube podcast hosted by a former Montana All-America wide receiver out of Oklahoma, offers a few thoughts on the 2026 Ivy League strength of schedule. It lists Dartmouth as having the second-toughest schedule in the league behind Cornell's slate, and just ahead of Columbia's. Find the program HERE.

The gist of the podcast is the assertion that in general, the best teams in the Ivy League – apart from Dartmouth this year – have the weakest schedules. And that for the top teams their toughest competition actually is within the league.

We'll get to a little of what the podcast has to say about that in a bit, but first an absolutely huge caveat. This is a direct transcript of part of the conversation that puts the opinions in the podcast in context:

Don't kill me for this. I think Harvard's in Connecticut. I don't even know where a lot of these Ivy League schools are at. I can't even. I think Columbia's in New York. I think I know Columbia's in New York. Brown, don't know. Penn, Pennsylvania, duh. Princeton, I couldn't tell you. I have no idea.

Either way, Dartmouth's going to be a tough game in conference.

Green Alert Take: Well, OK then.

Keeping in mind the hosts' lack of familiarity with the Ivy League, this is more from the podcast about Dartmouth's 2026 schedule:

Dartmouth has the second, if I'm not mistaken, they have the second-toughest strength of schedule in the conference. And a lot of that is dictated by their non-conference schedule. Lehigh, who was 12-1 last year, their only loss coming in the first round, or the second round of the playoffs, because they got that first round by.

Monmouth, who wasn't a playoff team last year, but was 9-3. Monmouth lost quite a bit of talent in the transfer portal. We'll see what they look like.

They got a new head coach as well. So we'll see what Monmouth looks like. But certainly a tough game on Dartmouth's schedule.

Then they got Yale and they got Harvard. And obviously, they're going to play Penn as well. So Dartmouth has no easy schedule at all.

It's going to be tough for them to make the playoffs. And you got to understand with the Ivy Leagues as well this year is they're probably not going to get two teams in the playoffs again.

More from the program:

If I had to guess right now who gets out of the Ivy League, I would say Yale. And my second place team out of the Ivy League would definitely be, it would be between Dartmouth and Harvard.

But I think Yale is the favorite to get out of that Ivy League. If I had to pick a team now, understand Yale lost a lot of talent too. Nico Brown transferred out.

Josh Pitsenberger is now in the NFL. They do have Dante Reno, but they lost their head coach. What kind of continuity does that do for them?

They got a good safety on the defensive side of things. I don't know what their offensive line is looking like, but their offensive line was pretty dang good last year. We will see.

Yale is no slouch at all. They took the national champions, gave them all they could handle. It was a tough football game.

They were battling for four quarters. And I don't know if everybody thought that Yale would challenge Montana State the way they did, but they certainly did. Now they've got the respect.

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In addition to curious podcasts, the dog days of college football coverage include things like the standard uniform "countdown" featuring the "best player" wearing the number representing the days until the first FCS games. Over the holiday weekend, the FCS hit the 96-day mark, and the player repping that number happened to be an Ivy Leaguer:

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Princeton won the 2026 men's lacrosse national championship yesterday with a 16-9 victory over Notre Dame. Read Told friend TigerBlog's column HERE.

(The national championship was the second in as many years for the Ivy League. Cornell won it all in 2025.)

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EXTRA POINT
Mrs. BGA and I hiked our nearby trail yesterday with our good buddy. Here's Griff the Wonder Dog at the top of the mountain on an absolutely beautiful afternoon:

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