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.
2) Young players weren’t the only ones who stepped up this fall. Dartmouth graduated all three starting linebackers last spring, and in what should be a surprise to no one who has been paying attention since he arrived in Hanover in 2010, defensive coordinator Don Dobes rebuilt his position group with seniors who proved themselves. Nico Schwikal had four tackles last year before finishing his final season with 66, second on the team. Teddy Gianaris had eight tackles a year ago and posted 55 this year, with team highs in sacks (five) and tackles for a loss (nine). And Zyion Freer-Brown, who had 18 tackles as a junior, exploded this fall with a team-high 79 stops, including five for a loss and two sacks.
4) Coach Sammy McCorkle warned during the week that Brown was a better team than people realized, and he was proved right. Quarterback James Murphy showed a rifle arm, as McCorkle had seen on film. The QB wasn’t afraid to throw 50/50 balls that his lanky receivers went up and got the way the coach said they would. Tailback Matt Childs was just as athletic as the Dartmouth coach expected. And an improved defense played inspired football. From a Big Green perspective, the game was a disappointment, of course. But after watching the way Brown played in upsetting a top-10 Rhode Island team earlier in the year and how it played Saturday, it wasn’t the kind of upset it might have seemed at first glance.
5) Although it was drizzling at kickoff Saturday, the forecast was for the rain to clear and the sun to come out as the day drew on, and that’s what happened. It’s a shame more than 1,463 people didn’t show up for a highly entertaining college football game. It used to be easy for Ivy League watchers to scoff at a league like the Northeast Conference for attendance numbers like that, but sadly, the Ivy is heading in the NEC's direction. As for the Ivy League promoting the schedule change that made Dartmouth and Brown a season-ending “regional rivalry,” it’s being proven otherwise. I'm hardly the only one who misses finishing up with a real rivalry game against Princeton.
6) Although it didn’t turn out the way Dartmouth hoped, it was exciting in a year when the Big Green was eliminated from the Ivy League race to have something to play for on the final Saturday of the season. And wasn’t it fun studying the bracketology and all the permutations in the final week of the season? A lot of Ivy League players missed out on that excitement before the poobahs finally came around. And for the record, judging by the attendance and excitement at Yale Bowl, it doesn’t seem as if playing another game or two took anything away from The Game as followers of those two school argued for years that it would.
And the final bonus of the year . . .
7) If you follow Dartmouth, it’s totally understandable that you are disappointed with how this season finished. But take a step back and think about this: You know your program is in a very, very good place when the team you cheer for finishes the year 7-3 and you are disappointed.