Dartmouth will be back at practice this afternoon and BGA Overtime will have coverage tonight
HERE.
But while I have you, a short story.
I was asked the other day by someone around the program about how BGA got its start. The back story is I had become increasingly disillusioned with the newspaper and was considering giving up daily journalism in favor of freelancing. This was 2005, and when I bounced the idea off a high school friend who was an author and successful freelancer, he warned that the hardest part of the job, at least when you are getting started, is simply finding the work.
Thinking about that, I hit on the idea of starting a subscription site covering Dartmouth football online. I'd been the beat reporter for all Big Green sports for 15 years or so and knew my way around the program. I figured if I could make a go of it, I could lock in almost four months of guaranteed work each year. With Mrs. BGA's blessing, I decided to try.
Believe it or not, I first tried the idea on Kirsten Teevens at a spring Dartmouth practice on Blackman Field, and she encouraged me to pitch it to Coach Teevens. We'd known each other since his first tenure in Hanover, so he trusted me and gave me an enthusiastic "Green" light. A former Dartmouth captain who had started several very successful businesses not only offered helpful pointers, but came up with the name, Big Green Alert.
I've been at it ever since, both on the (formerly) paid site and here, where this is the 9,058th post. (There were at least 365 more on another platform before I converted to Blogger, but who's counting? ;-)
BGA never quite took off the way I hoped, and freelancing opportunities (particularly those I used to get from the college) have pretty much dried up, but loyal and generous subscribers have enabled me to keep this thing going for 22 years. When I thought I was going to finally hang it up a couple of years ago, I took down the paywall, but you wouldn't let me walk away. So a huge thank you for that, as one more year of Big Green Alert picks up speed.
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I read this yesterday regarding the Michigan-Western Michigan debacle:
The NCAA said on Tuesday night that the association does not have a protocol for overturning the outcome of a game, and that the FBS Oversight Committee doesn't have that authority, either. Once the referee declares the game is ended, NCAA rules state, the score is final.
OK, so the NCAA is throwing up its hands. How special would it be if Michigan stepped up on its own and turned the game into the 21st century version of the famed Fifth Down Game? (If you don't know the story, click HERE to learn more.)
Green Alert Take: Yeah, in this big-money era of football it's not going to happen. But wouldn't it be something if it did?
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Dartmouth's social media has highlights from the second and final scrimmage of the preseason:
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Jake Novak, who has converted his daily blog into an audio format, has made his Ivy League prediction. Here's how he sees the year playing out:
Dartmouth
Yale
Harvard
Brown
Cornell
Columbia
Princeton
Penn
You can listen to Jake's reasoning – with a lot of his thoughts about Dartmouth – HERE.
Green Alert Take: I haven't posted my prediction yet, but here's a hint of what's to come. Jake and I disagree dramatically about Princeton. ;-)
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The New York Post has a story headlined The 10 most influential women in NFL for 2026 season and one of them happens to be a former Dartmouth hockey player (and the daughter of a former Big Green quarterback). Find the story HERE.
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The FCS Coaches woke up and released their weekly poll a day later than STATS, but it was worth the wait for Dartmouth, which received four votes.
| FCS Coaches | W-L* | Pts | Prev* |
1 | Montana St. (25) | 2-0 | 648 | 1 |
2 | Montana | 2-0 | 591 | 3 |
3 | South Dakota St. (1) | 1-1 | 582 | 2 |
4 | Illinois St. | 2-0 | 575 | 4 |
5 | Tarleton St. | 2-0 | 551 | 5 |
6 | UC Davis | 2-0 | 519 | 6 |
7 | North Dakota | 2-0 | 448 | 9 |
8 | Lehigh | 2-0 | 425 | 10 |
9 | Stephen F. Austin | 2-0 | 417 | 11 |
10 | Youngstown St. | 1-1 | 372 | 7 |
11 | Tennessee Tech | 2-0 | 357 | 13 |
12 | South Dakota | 2-0 | 352 | 12 |
13 | Rhode Island | 1-1 | 333 | 8 |
14 | Mercer | 2-0 | 316 | 15 |
15 | Austin Peay | 1-1 | 237 | 14 |
16 | William & Mary | 2-0 | 216 | 19 |
17 | Lamar | 1-1 | 195 | 16 |
18 | Villanova | 1-1 | 163 | 17 |
19 | Yale | 0-0 | 142 | 18 |
20 | South Carolina St. | 2-0 | 132 | 22 |
21 | Richmond | 2-0 | 130 | 23 |
22 | West Florida | 2-0 | 102 | NR |
23 | Northern Arizona | 1-1 | 101 | 20 |
24 | Idaho St. | 2-0 | 75 | NR |
25 | Abilene Christian | 0-2 | 71 | 21 |
| Dropped Out: Central Arkansas (24), Southern Illinois (25) |
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| Others Receiving Votes: Wofford, 53; Cal Poly, 44; Southern Illinois, 41; Prairie View A&M, 32; Elon, 31; Colgate, 25; Campbell, 23; UT-Rio Grande Valley, 15; Alabama St., 13; Jackson St., 13; Robert Morris, 13; UIW, 13; Harvard, 12; Furman, 10; Southern Utah, 10; UT Martin, 10; Southeast Missouri St., 8; Central Arkansas, 6; Chattanooga, 6; Portland St., 5; Western Carolina, 5; DART-MOUTH, 4; Monmouth, 4; East Tennessee St., 1; Eastern Washington, 1; San Diego, 1; The Citadel, 1. |
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And finally, a very loyal reader (whose own daily blog I sorely miss) shared a link to a story about Division III Mount Union having its 85-game regular season winning streak snapped with a 24-23 loss to Wheaton. (
LINK)
Scoring a touchdown with 22 seconds left, Mount Union was on the verge of forcing overtime only to have the extra point blocked.
This from the story puts the streak in perspective:
Before Saturday, the last time Mount Union lost a non-playoff game was on Nov. 12, 2016, when John Carroll scored a 31-28 win. Most of the members of that Mount Union team are now in their 30s.
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EXTRA POINT
It worked! Roba the robotic vacuum cleaner is back at work!
As noted here yesterday, the vac was acting crazy, moving in tight circles, cutting out on its own and disobeying its remote control. My plan was to try to pull the battery to try a hard reset and see if that would fix things.
I removed a bunch of screws (more than I needed, it would turn out), and figured out how to get at the battery compartment. I then carefully pried the battery out and managed to disconnect it without accidentally breaking any of the thin wires soldered to the control board. I let the battery sit for 30 seconds or so, then reconnected it and reassembled the whole thing. (In the interest of full disclosure, I lost two teeny-weeny screws and had to replace them with a couple of salvaged from something else I never got properly back together.)
Once the thing was reassembled I hit the power button and voilà, it started up. Then the real test. I put it on the floor and . . . no more crazy circles. Off it went doing its thing.
Before heading to bed last night I reset the timer for remote cleaning for 4 this morning. When I got up, Roba had finished its work and was back charging up for its next shift in the wee hours tomorrow.
