Monday Morning Headlines- Football Edition

Back with another week of Harvard headlines as college football season gets ready to get under way. The past weekend wasn't busy for Harvard or the Ivy League, so not much to report.

1. Chris Pizzotti was again waived by the New York Jets, days after having re-signed with the team. Pizzotti played for three downs in the Jets preseason win against the New York Giants, throwing no passes. Pizzotti was waived by the Jets on August 15th but re-signed on the 21st. [NY Daily News]

2. Ryan Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, completed 8 of 11 passes for 65 yards during Buffalo's preseason loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. [The Sports Network]

3. Here's a season preview of the Holy Cross Crusaders, Harvard's first test in the 2009 campaign. [Worcester Telegram]

Around the Ivy League
WTA tennis star Caroline Wozniacki spoke to the Yale Bulldogs during their practice on Friday about being a professional athlete.

Football Headlines - August 28

This will be the last bit from me for the weekend as I settle back into college life, but assuming the tropical storm doesn't cause too much damage, I should be back Monday with more football headlines, and hopefully, a better looking graphic than I have now.

1. The Sports Network previews all of the upcoming changes in the Ivy League, from Robin Harris becoming the league's new executive director, to the fact that five teams will have new starting quarterbacks (only Yale, Columbia, and Dartmouth have starters returning). TSN predicts Penn to win the league on the strength of their defense with Harvard coming in second, and also discusses why they believe the time is now for the Ivy League to accept an auto-bid to the postseason. [The Sports Network]

2. TSN just released their preseason Division I-AA poll and Harvard is ranked 23rd, putting Harvard in the rankings for all three major Division I-AA polls. [Go Crimson]

3. Holy Cross, the season opening opponent for Harvard, also finds a spot in the TSN rankings, tying for 25th. The Crusaders are the only Crimson opponent listed in the top 25. [Go Holy Cross]

4. Ted Kennedy's football career for the Crimson was the number one item in Ivan Maisel's "Three Point Stance" on ESPN.com. [ESPN] NECN.com also has a brief video showing the jersey bearing the number 88 hanging in the Harvard lockers. [NECN].

5. Harvard grad and new Pac-10 commish Larry Scott sat down with SI.com last month to discuss his new role, including the fact that the last college football game he attended in person was a Harvard-Yale game six years ago. [Sports Illustrated]

Around the Ivy League
The Root magazine had a feature on new Yale coach Tom Williams, the Providence Journal says Junior Joe Springer has the inside track for the QB position at Brown, and Paul Oberjuerge mentions that Ivy League scores are featured with the Top 25 and the service academies in the International Herald Tribune's college football coverage.

Our Blog and NCAA Compliance

I mentioned during my first post that all of us blogging on this site are both Harvard students, and student journalists working for a licensed and independent (read, not Harvard owned or operated) radio station. Now sometimes this isn't made clear, because the name of the station is Harvard Radio Broadcasting, and it is run by Harvard students, but we are licensed to use the Harvard name from the University, and that is our sole connection.

The reason I'm mentioning this all again is because of this Washington Post article (h/t to the Cornell Basketball Blog) which discusses the challenges of NCAA compliance when it comes to fans with media credentials.

So I decided we needed to do some disclosure. We are, as Harvard students, of course fans of Harvard athletics. We are friends with Harvard athletes at school and we hope they have the biggest success possible. We want them to win Ivy League, ECAC, and national championships.

But we are also credentialed members of the media, giving us greater access than the normal fan when it comes to different sporting-related events. We take this as a serious responsibility, and as such, we just want to make it clear that we have not, do not, and will not engage in the types of activities described in the Post article.

Our goal is to be a comprehensive source for news for Harvard sports in particular, and the Ivy League, and ECAC hockey in general, which means reporting scores, publishing news on current players, and interview current players and staff. It may also mean us discussing recruits here on the blog (or it may not- for both NCAA and professional reasons, we have kept all discussion of potential recruits off of the airwaves and we may decide to make that a blog-wide policy as well). But we will never contact any Harvard recruits, or respond to such contact- that's a job for the Crimson athletic dept. and the respective coaches. Otherwise we break the first rule of journalism- we would be the story, we wouldn't be reporting it.

Keeping all that in mind, I just figured we might as well discuss this so we can firmly say that we are and have always been fully NCAA Compliant, and that we have never communicated with a potential Harvard athlete, nor do we see it as our job to persuade people to don the crimson, black, and white in their athletic careers.

8/27/09- Harvard Headlines, Football Edition

1. Harvard football was picked to finish first in the Ivy League this season, receiving 10 of 17 first place votes for 129 points. The number two spot went to Penn and the third spot to Brown. Both teams travel to historic Harvard stadium this year. Arch-rival Yale was predicted to come in fourth.[Versus Ivy Notebook]

2. National champion Andrew Hatch has returned to Harvard after two injuries at LSU saw his time at quarterback end. Hatch had originally left Harvard to go on his Mormon mission, but after being injured, the mission ended early, and he then headed to LSU, where he was a redshirted player on the 2007 National Championship team. While Harvard considers him a sophomore returning from a leave of absence (both due to his having left for his mission and because his LSU credits will not count toward his Harvard degree), the NCAA considers him a transfer, and because of the NCAA two-time transfer rules, he must sit out a year. He will be eligible to play in 2010. [NY Times]

3. Hatch also ended up in the daily headlines of Doc Saturday over on the Yahoo sports blogs, where he was called “everyone’s favorite Ivy League-turned-SEC starter”. [Doc Saturday]

4. Former Harvard wide receiver Edward “Ted” Kennedy ’54 (’56), known for his long career in the U.S. Senate, passed away late Tuesday night. As a senior, Kennedy caught six passes for 80 yards, two of which were touchdowns, including the sole Harvard touchdown in the 1955 edition of “The Game.” Harvard honored the late Senator by flying the flag at half mast at Harvard Stadium, while a jersey bearing Kennedy’s number 88 hung by itself in the Crimson locker room. Coach Tim Murphy also gathered the players to speak about Kennedy before observing a moment of silence. [Go Crimson]

5. Chris Pizzotti ‘09 has returned to the Jets after being resigned by them earlier in the week. Pizzotti was cut after the first preseason loss which saw Eric Ainge get the majority of the snaps, but Coach Rex Ryan felt bad about not giving Pizzotti a shot. Not having played in the game against Baltimore, one would expect him to get his chance at Giants Stadium this weekend, when the Jets take on crosstown rivals, the New York Giants. [NJ Star Ledger]

6. Harvard graduate Matt Birk ’98 has signed a three year contract with the Baltimore Ravens, in the hopes of getting a Super Bowl ring. The Ravens Ben Grub said “When I heard we were getting him, I knew he’d fill Jason’s shoes… He’s the leader of our line, whether he thinks it or not.” There’s also some discussion of Harvard smarts versus football smarts from Baltimore coach John Harbaugh. [Baltimore Sun]

Around the Ivy League
Yale has partnered with the YES network to televise three football games this year, while Penn has partnered with Comcast Sportsnet, RCN, and MASN to televise four games. The Yale Bowl got revamped and turned into the world's largest tennis court, and Columbia's team served as extras in a GQ photoshoot with Erin Andrews.