BGA Overtime is the successor to BGA Premium, a site that covered Dartmouth football with daily stories starting in 2005. The OT is written and edited by Bruce Wood, a former beat writer who has covered Dartmouth sports since the early 1980s. It is not affiliated with Dartmouth College and is supported by your generous donations..
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| Offensive line coach Keith Clark watches a drill closely. |
HANOVER – There were a good number of high school juniors on unofficial visits gathered around the midfield huddle at the end of practice Thursday listening to the parting message Sammy McCorkle had for his players after the second of 12 spring sessions.
You didn’t need to be that close to hear what the head coach had to say.
HANOVER – Sammy McCorkle has no doubt been asked what kind of impact the many changes in the Dartmouth coaching staff will have on the Big Green this year.
What he may not have been asked – at least until Wednesday morning's delayed start of spring practice – is how bringing in no fewer than five new position coaches along with two new quality control coaches, impacts him.
HANOVER – Hard as it is for me to believe it, this was the 20th season of Big Green Alert. I never imagined it would last this long.
First and foremost of the people I need to thank is Sammy McCorkle. It would have been easy as a first-year head coach a couple of seasons back for him to say he wouldn’t be comfortable having someone show up at every single practice continuously jotting things down in a notebook. But he took my presence in stride and has been incredibly generous with his time since Day One, always jogging over after practice to answer whatever inane questions I might have.
HANOVER – Here’s your “Season-Ending Six,” with a bonus tossed in for good measure.
1) A study of the 2013 college football season determined that teams that won the turnover battle won the game 73 percent of the time. Brown came into Saturday’s contest having won all four games in which it had fewer turnovers, and having lost all four games in which it had more. (In one game, the turnovers were even.) Nothing changed against Dartmouth. Brown won the turnover battle by turning the Big Green over four times and the ball over twice, and won the game.
HANOVER – Several dozen or more football teams gathered in their football complexes Sunday to watch the FCS playoffs selection show. Dartmouth had a regular team meeting planned, but the Big Green could be excused if tuning in to ESPNU to see which teams made the cut, and who they would be playing was not on the agenda.
Thanks to Saturday’s win over Harvard, Yale knew it was in the field, and learned it would be playing at 15-seed Youngstown State, with the winner going on to face second-seeded Montana State. Harvard, widely expected to be a top-eight seed before being battered by the Bulldogs, was one of the “last four” in the field as an at-large entry, and will play at 12-seed Villanova Saturday, with the winner advancing to a matchup with fifth-seed Lehigh.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – It’s precious little consolation for the Dartmouth football team on a day that didn’t finish the way the Big Green hoped, but as it turned out, a win wouldn’t have brought a bid to the FCS playoffs anyway.
Minutes after an interception in the corner of the end zone with 1:53 remaining and a Brown first down put the finishing touches on the Bears’ surprising 35-28 win over Dartmouth Yale put the finishing touches on the Big Green’s season. The Bulldogs not only grabbed a piece of the Ivy League title from Harvard with a 45-28 beat down but also claimed the conference’s automatic berth in the playoffs. That, in turn, means the previously undefeated Crimson now has the inside track for an at-large bid if the Ancient Eight is to get one.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Dartmouth coach Sammy McCorkle promises his team will be 100 percent focused on the field during Saturday’s game at Brown.
It will probably be different for friends, family and alums in the stands.
Cell phones in the visiting bleachers at Brown Stadium figure to be lighting up throughout the afternoon delivering out-of-town scores because, for the third year in a row, the Harvard-Yale game will have an impact on the Dartmouth season. For the first time, however, not with regard to the Ivy League title.
HANOVER – It’s the final week of the season and coming off a 4-2 performance it’s time for a big finish.
The good news is I’m pretty confident in five of my six picks.
The better news? I’m least confident in the one pick that you will most want me to have wrong.