Poisoned Dartmouth

I've been taking a lot of flack lately from people who say that I predict Ivy League football games about as well as Fathers Six screens its customers.

Well, here's a prediction that I'll stake my Steve Kaseta-autographed Astro 8 notebook on: Harvard will beat Dartmouth in football this Saturday. Not edge, not nip, not even sleeze by. We're talking at least a 10-point margin over the boys in the flannel shirts.

It's simple. Dartmouth is one very, very insecure institution. Eight years ago the government told the school it couldn't call its team the Indians anymore. The bigwigs in Hanover were forced to change the nickname. First it was the Big Green. Gross. With a name like that it sounds like the team's three big stars would be Mold, Mildew and Mucus.

Last year Dartmouth changed its nickname to the Woodsmen. Now that's just plain degrading. It's like your team is playing against the cast from a Walt Disney movie. Word has it the grid squad is putting decals of Paul Bunyan on the side of their helmets for Saturday's game.

Time out for a little nose-thumbing. In addition to the nickname sham, Dartmouth for years has been nothing short of paranoid that the school is not considered one of the "Big 3" of the Ivy League. They've done everything up there: added a soft ice cream machine, went sort of coed, even as far as moving the cows that supply the school's dairy products out of the basketball arena.

Nothing has worked. Let's face it, the only thing that could move Dartmouth into the ranks of the "Big 3" would be if they moved the entire campus to a slightly more urban setting. I hear Hanover is so small that when the town recently honored Dartmouth running back Curt Oberg with a 21-gun salute, each citizen had to hold seven guns.

But all Farmer Brown jokes aside, the Woodsmen (ugh) are 4-0 this year and have their best squad since the era of Bob Blackman, Murray Bowden, Jim Chasey, and Brendon O'Neill at the turn of the decade. In 1970 Dartmouth finished its season undefeated and ranked 15th in the nation, the last Ivy squad to do so.

Since that time, however, players and fans alike up in Hanover have been drowning their sorrows in Budweiser and getting over psyched for proving themselves against Harvard. In the last three Harvard-Dartmouth tilts the Crimson has emerged victorious. It shouldn't be any different this year when Harvard comes out to play football and the Big Green (oops) come down for another swipe at dignity.

Taking a break from the rigors of Ivy League football, I journeyed last weekend to Andover Academy to watch half of Harvard's alma mater play against Choate.

Despite having to sit with Mike Savit's brother for the entire game, it was a pleasant change to watch two squads play four quarters of football without a motion penalty being called.

Ex-Harvard gridder Lou Bernieri was there too, only he was watching from the sidelines. Last year's starting middle guard is an assistant coach at Andover this fall, as well as teaching English on the side. When asked what aspect of Harvard he's brought to the prep school scene, Lou replied "All I know is that I've been teaching for a month now and I haven't given out anything below a B-minus."

WMEX sportscaster Steve Fredericks has always done a super job covering Harvard hockey in the winter, but if he wants to keep up the good work announcing football games this fall, someone should tell him that the Harvard fullback's name is SCOTT Coolidge. Seems that Steve was calling him "Ray" throughout the Cornell game.

Crimson sports page readers might have overlooked the story in Tuesday's paper about the women's tennis team. The squad's first place finish in the Greater Boston Championships should be proof enough that the freshman-dominated group will be awesome in both the fall and spring.