I know it’s been a while, but here’s a Random Ivy notes:

1) Sure it’s been beaten to death many times before, but here’s another column decrying the Ivy League’s ban on football postseason play. I’ve already stated I’m pro-football playoffs, and won’t rehash the arguments. But this column, written by someone from Delaware of all places, emphatically believes it’s “the dumbest, most unfair rule in sports” that the Ivy champion can’t play in the FCS playoffs. (Some background: when he’s talking about Delaware playing Delaware State, he’s referring to the Blue Hen’s refusal to play their in-state rivals.)

2) As a hard-hitting linebacker (and center) for Penn and the Eagles, Chuck Bednarik probably would’ve liked the Penn-Yale game Saturday that ended 9-0. He actually was present at Franklin Field, signing copies of an oral history about him. Although we were told not to talk to him, Soft Pretzel Logic got a short video interview with the Philadelphia legend.

3) The Cornell Basketball Blog has an index of season previews, and not surprisingly the Big Red are the consensus preseason No. 1 Ivy team. Penn’s preseason ranking is extremely more volatile, ranging from second to seventh.

OK, so maybe I’m recycling headlines. But as part of its College Football Preview supplement, The New York Times profiled Penn quarterback Keiffer Garton, calling him “one of the rare dual-threat starting quarterbacks in a league in which pocket passers are about as standard as ivy-covered walls.”

Weak simile aside, Garton’s story is pretty familiar to anybody who followed the Quakers closely last season: He began the year as an afterthought, the No. 3 QB; was thrust into the spotlight when starter Rob Irvin and ostensible No. 2 Kyle Olson both got hurt; and in his first start, led the Red and Blue to a dramatic 14-9 win over Princeton. He used his legs — 54 attempts, 316 net yards (5.9 per carry), three rushing touchdowns — and right arm (41-for-68, 388 yards, 1 touchdown and five interceptions) effectively enough to be annointed starter heading in to the 2009 campaign.

To anybody who has ever met Garton, the Times‘ reference to his “clear blue eyes” is spot on. And the last few paragraphs reveal a little more of the rising junior’s personality; apparently, he nearly committed to Air Force and is at time envious of his close friends playing at the University of Colorado and Pac-10 schools.

In a brief sidebar which, best I can tell, is not available online, the Times says the Ivy League race is “wide open,” predicting that the Penn’s trip to Harvard on Nov. 14 “could go a long way to determining this year’s Ivy champion.” Also a nice dig at the Big Green: “[A]t Dartmouth, it will take very little to view this year as a step forward. The Big Green was 0-10 in 2008.”

Meanwhile, in other Ivy QB news, Chris Pizzotti — the elite Harvard signalcaller who graduated from this spring — saw his first NFL preseason action last night. The boxscore does not show it, because he did not throw a pass, but Pizzotti played one series (a three-and-out) for the Jets against the Giants at the Meadowlands. The Jets had signed Pizzotti as an undrafted free agent, cut him on Aug. 15 and re-signed him on Aug. 21 after first-year coach Rex Ryan felt he did not give the 23-year-old a sufficient opportunity to claim the third-string job. Still, Pizzotti is a very long shot to make the team out of  camp.

After my football recap, here’s my roundup of Penn Hoops news:

1) Over the last few weeks, it looks like Penn’s schedule is finally firming up. In fact, it appears that all but one game has been set. Unfortunately for the Quakers, getting that last game might be a little troublesome. According to the team’s twitter account, they can’t find anyone to play at the Palestra on December first. So if any ADs from Mid-Atlantic Mid-Majors read this blog, I’m sure Glen Miller would be happy to hear from you about that date. (On an aside, here’s an article about some of the challenges of creating a Division I basketball schedule.)

2) Mid Major Madness is ranking every team in Division I, and Penn came in at 262 out of 344. The description of the team talks about the high hopes of last year, but says the Quakers went 10-18 since they weren’t “able to handle the pressure” and “due to their poor performance at home in conference play” (can’t argue with that). As for this upcoming year, they make the bold prediction that Harrison Gaines’ transfer will affect the team’s chances to rebound.

Previously, Dartmouth at No. 329, Brown at No. 307, and Columbia at No. 291 were ranked. That means Penn is behind Cornell, Princeton, Harvard and Yale (my guess for who they’ll rank as the top four Ivy teams).

3) Sports Illustrated notes that several elite basketball recruits are considering Harvard due to its expanded financial aid package and Tommy Amaker’s recruiting techniques. But that might come back to haunt Amaker. The former Michigan coach, according to the Cornell Basketball Blog, has recruited many players by promising playing time. As you can imagine, this is quite an attractive pitch. Yet it might just be false promises since the Crimson now have a surplus of players (possibly as high as 14–all juniors or younger–in 2010).

So far Amaker’s stay in the Ivy League hasn’t been great, as Harvard came in tied for sixth in the league last year (with Penn) and in a three-way tie for last in 2008. We’ll see going forward whether or not Amaker finally breaches the top half of the league (I guess Mid Major Madness thinks that’ll happen this year).

4) Looking at the Big 5 wire, Villanova senior Reggie Redding will be suspended for the fall semester after police found marijuana in his car. While that might not affect the Wildcats’ chance of returning to the Final Four, it does mean he won’t be able to suit up against Penn in December. Then again, he only scored two points on 1-for-6 shooting in last year’s Big 5 game.

5) In other City news, the three enshrinees in this year’s Big 5 Hall of Fame class are some of the biggest coaching names in the history of the unofficial conference: Chaney, Massimino, and “Speedy.” Or for full disclosure: Temple’s John Chaney, Villanova’s Rollie Massimino, and La Salle’s William “Speedy” Morris. The three have a combined 58 years coaching in the Big 5, as well as over a combined 15 Big 5 titles.

I’ve been on vacation for the last couple of weeks, so I’m sorry there haven’t been too many updates on The Buzz. So here’s a post recapping some of the big football news of the last two weeks. I’m also going to post some basketball updates later.

The Ivy League announced its preseason media football poll, and Harvard is the clear favorite, receiving 10 out of 17 first-place votes. However, right behind them was Penn, receiving four, count ‘em four, first-place votes. Brown came in third and received the remaining three first-place votes.

Though Penn does return a talented team, for them to match their preseason expectation, let alone win the league, they’ll have to win on the road, as they travel to Providence and Boston (not to mention Hanover). In fact, the team will travel 1, 908 miles just for those three games alone (that’s farther than Philadelphia to Denver). You can read some thoughts of Penn coach Al Bagnoli and Harvard coach Tim Murphy about the traveling over at Soft Pretzel Logic.

Some other highlights from Ivy media day include audio with the coaches, the list of games Sirius radio will cover (Penn gets three), and the master list of individual and team preseason honors.

Lastly, you might recall there was a fire at 40th and Spruce two weeks ago. Turns out that Penn football players, including preseason All-American CB Chris Wynn, lost their apartment in the blaze (no one was injured). However, they’re already on the road to recovering.

Got to start off the new month with a new “notes.” Here we go:

1) Today marks the start of a new era in Ivy athletics, as Robin Harris officially takes over as Ivy League Executive Director. She’ll replace Jeff Orleans, who had led the league for 25 years as the first official director in league history.

(As a heads up, expect a column about the challenges Harris will face in the next issue of the Summer Pennsylvanian, which comes out a week from tomorrow.)

2) Which would you rather do: play professional sports or go to Harvard? Well Louis Leblanc might get to do both. Despite being drafted in the first round of the NHL draft by his hometown Montreal Canadiens, he’s decided to attend Harvard in the fall and play for the Crimson hockey team.

3) Here’s a rundown of the Ivy League M. Hoops scene from Fox Sports’ Jeff Goodman, although the Penn stuff  — games at Duke, Penn State and Villanova and home games against Temple, St. Joe’s, La Salle and Drexel, as well as Harrison Gaines transferring to UC-Riverside –  is old news (HT CBB).

Sorry I didn’t post this yesterday, but I was reading Monday’s Washington Post and came across this column by John Feinstein. He discussed two recent examples illustrating “why college athletics are such a mess.”

The less important item to Buzz readers was about the John Calipari-Derrick Rose scandal. But the item he first discusses at length is a response to the Wall Street Journal article about the fall of Ivy sports.

Feinstein criticizes Ivy League administrators for their snobby attitude, such as quotes like “It’s another week of being out of class. In our league, that matters” by Columbia’s athletic director. (Coincidentally, commentator Ernie also called out Murphy’s time away from classes excuse in response to my original post.)

The article gets a little sanctimonious in calling out pretentiousness, and of course the author of The Last Amateurs had to throw in a reference to the Patriot League. But it’s still a good read on the League.

As for my opinion, as I think I’ve said on the blog before, I’m pro-football playoffs, anti-basketball tournament and have mixed feelings about the lack of scholarships. But it definitely can be ridiculous at times how League administrators, especially the Presidents, have a holier than thou approach to sports. On the other hand — and sorry if you’ve heard me say this before — but I strongly believe the Ivy League is the only league in America that doesn’t try to maximize profitibility.

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last week.  With finals going on, both Penn athletes and we Buzz writers had too much on our plates to focus on Penn Athletics. Hence both the lack of interesting sporting events and posts.

So to get back into things, I thought I’d post a few links to recaps of how the Ivy League has done so far this year so that everyone can catch up.

Dave Zeitlin, Rushing the Court’s resident Ivy League expert, weighs in on how the league is doing so far.  His biggest point on Penn is the creation of Fire Glen Miller (more on that later).  As for the rest of the league, he mentions two players Penn fans might want to keep an eye on:  Princeton freshman Doug Davis and Brown junior Matt Mullery.  Davis has earned two Ivy League Rookie of the Week awards, including after his 27 point performance against Manhattan two weekends ago. Mullery, meanwhile, has earned Player of the Week honors once and leads the league in field goal percentage.

Also, of note, he calls Harvard and Brown “Cornell’s biggest challenger for the Ivy title,” although he says don’t count out Penn or Princeton yet.  If you go by records so far that comment definitely makes sense, since when Zeitlin wrote that the Big Red, Bears and Crimson all were tied for the best record in the league at 4-5.  (However since then both the Crimson have gone 1-0, the Big Red 1-1 and the Bears 0-1.)

This segues into the next item.  So far this year, the Ivy League hasn’t performed well out of conference.  The combined record of all Ivy League teams after tonight’s Cornell loss at St. Joe’s (in the Palestra) is 25-60.  According to collegerpi.com the league’s RPI is 30th in the nation.  Out of 31 conferences.  Ken Pomeroy is a little nicer, ranking the Ancient Eight 25th out of 31. (For a more detailed look at the league’s non-conference RPI over the years, see the chart after the jump.)

Fire Glen Miller has its own recap of how the league has done so far, breaking down each individual team’s RPI and SOS.  The stats are pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t rehash them here.  However, I will say that the Quakers’ SOS is 59.  Clearly playing two nationally ranked teams (North Carolina and Villanova) as well as 10-2 Penn State and 8-3 Navy have worsened Penn’s record, but the Quakers have been battle tested.  In fact, Cornell (71) and Penn are the only Ivy League teams with a SOS better than 193.

Now a note about FGM.  I’ve linked to their stuff a few times this month.  Some of you might prefer that I don’t, especially those who defend Glen Miller.  Personally, if I haven’t made this clear yet, I am pro-Glen Miller.  I think the Quakers are 1-6 because they’ve played some tough competition and their shots just haven’t fallen at times.  While I’m sure part of their record can be attributable to Miller, in no way does that mean he should be fired immediately.

However, I still understand why people feel “rowdy,” as Zeitlin says. Hence I understand the motivation behind FGM. So I have no qualms about linking to their stuff, since as I said last time, they’re improving.  (No, it’s not because they quote me in their banner). But the interesting thing to see is how will others react as the news of this site spreads.  Zeitlin, a Penn alum, probably gets more clicks than this site does, and it’s only a matter of time until this thing circulates to some of the higher ups in the department, maybe even Miller himself or athletic director Steve Bilsky.  If they find out about this site, how will they react?  Feel free to leave your imagined ideas of their reaction below in the comment section.

(more…)

In case you were worried that Penn Athletics was only focusing on marketing the men’s basketball team, the women’s basketball team is also receiving the wisdom of Nelligan Sports Marketing.

Against Drexel Dec. 19, the team will attempt to set an all-time attendance record for a home game as part of the yearly “Pack the House” Challenge. Part of the campaign also includes getting school groups to come to the Palestra — a necessity, since the game is during winter break.

Of all the women’s basketball games I’ve been to, the most spectators I’ve ever seen is about 200. So there’s certainly a lot of seats to be filled in the Palestra. Also it’s interesting that both the women’s and men’s games against Drexel this year are part of NCAA-wide gimmicks. The men’s team will play at Drexel for the first time ever, and it’ll be at 10 a.m. as part of ESPN’s 14-hour hoops marathon.

Here are two other Random Ivy notes:

1) Ivysport.com, which for the most part is a site that sells Ivy League apparel, has an “infopedia” on the Ivy League. Most of you probably already know the vast majority of what’s on this site, but in case you ever want to find out which Ivy League school doesn’t have a Latin motto (Cornell), or you want to see a good timeline of Ivy League history, this is the site for you.

2) Pumped up for college basketball after The Line?  Well here’s a reason to like every single basketball team in America.  Penn’s reason:

Glenn Miller has himself a deep rotation. Darren Smith and Tommy McMahon missed last season. Zach Rosen leads the recruiting class that’s pretty awesome. Harrison Gaines has an awesome rich man name. And the Quakers have four returning starters. Flat out.

• We start off with a preview of tomorrow’s matchup with Lafayette out in bumfu- excuse me, Easton, Pa. Sports Editor David Gurian-Peck also profiles Neil Goldsmith of Lafayette, who has a brother on the Quakers. And here’s a brief rundown of the weekend around the conference.
• The Harvard Crimson previews the weekend, too, and previews their game against Brown. The Herald chimes in, too.
• The only other Ivy-Ivy game this week is Yale-Cornell. The Yale Daily News previews it here and here, the Cornell Daily Sun here and the Ithaca Journal here and here.
• For a quick basketball note, Yale had a commitment reported today.
• Penn and Harvard have a big match in women’s soccer this weekend. Here is the Crimson’s preview and here is the DP’s.