By Bruce Wood
www.biggreenalert.com
Aug. 12, 2008
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – There was nothing terribly surprising about the 2008
Ivy League media poll, except for one notable voting irregularity that
Brown coach Phil Estes got a chuckle out of.
You just knew, after playing for the title last year, that Harvard and
Yale were going to be 1-2 in some order. And that a resurgent Brown
team would be high in the mix.
You knew, given the numbers on paper and the struggles they've had in
recent years, that Dartmouth and Columbia would be somewhere in the
nether region of the poll.
And you knew that everyone else would be jumbled up in the middle.
Which is exactly how it worked out:
2008 Ivy League Media Poll
1. (T) Harvard (8) — 124
1. (T) Yale (8) — 124
3. Brown — 99
4. Penn (1) — 85
5. Princeton — 58
6. Cornell — 54
7. Dartmouth — 47
8. Columbia — 21
"No surprise," said Penn's Al Bagnoli, the dean of Ivy League coaches.
"To me the defending champ should always be the guy. And Yale had a
fabulous season until the last game. So that's no surprise. Brown's got
a million skills back, so I think for once (the media) may have gotten
it right."
Although Bagnoli was laughing when he said it, his feeling about the
poll is hardly unique among his peers. "None of us put a tremendous
amount of credence in it," he said, "but at least on the surface you
can see what it worked out the way it did. Once you get past Brown you
can throw the rest of us into the hopper and see how it shakes out."
Brown's Estes echoed those sentiments.
"Harvard went 7-0, they should be No. 1," he said. "Yale went 6-1 with
one loss to Harvard and they should be No. 2. The rest of the league?
Throw up a hat and wherever they land. That's the way I think it is."
Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens hadn't seen the poll when first asked
about it, but after being informed that his team was picked seventh, he
was hardly shocked.
"It's no surprise," he said. "We turned over a lot of people, graduated
a good number. We have a lot of young faces.
"It's fine. I say it every year but the only poll that matters is the
one at the end. So we'll plug it up on the bulletin board and our guys
will get a charge out of it. It will certainly be on their minds as we
prepare."
Harvard coach Tim Murphy wasn't surprised at the poll, either. Not by
his team being picked at the top along with Yale, at least.
"I think it was probably appropriate that it was a tie," he said.
"Being perfectly honest, as a coach you might be happier to be third or
fourth, but this is not uncharted territory for us, so we'll manage it.
It puts a little bigger bulls-eye on our chest, but if you are the
defending champ the bulls-eye is already there so we'll manage it."
What did surprise Murphy was
discovering the Dartmouth had been picked where it was.
"That was too low," he said, unsolicited. "They are going to be much
better than that. They are going to surprise a lot of people."
Princeton coach Roger Hughes sounded as if he would have had the same
top three teams – in some order.
"I understand" how the voting went, he said. "If you look at Yale and
Harvard, they return the most people from very good teams. Yale
arguably has the best player in the league in (tailback) Mike McLeod.
The way (quarterback Chris) Pizzotti played for Harvard last year, he's
probably the best quarterback in the league.
"Harvard has five fifth-year seniors returning and when you look at
this league the team that starts the most seniors ends up winning the
league. Brown is a logical pick where they are simply because they
return most of their offense and their quarterback, (Michael)
Dougherty, really developed into a very good player as the season went
along. I think those teams are at the top, and hopefully some of us can
knock them out."
Then Hughes added the kicker. "If I remember 2006 right, we weren't
ranked very high then, either," he said with a smile, remembering his
first Ivy League championship team.
Yale coach Jack Siedlecki shrugged his shoulders at the poll results.
"The polls are the polls," he said. "Almost everyone has picked
Harvard. The magazines and stuff. I think the big reason is they have
the quarterback back, as well as a big (number) of kids.
"We have a lot of guys back. We have the player of the year back. So
obviously we are picked real high."
For Cornell's Jim Knowles, the annual poll was simply more of the same.
"It's what you would expect," he said with a smile. "Harvard and Yale.
That's the way it's been since I've been here. Brown got in there one
year. Princeton got in. I would have expected Princeton to be ranked
higher.
"Harvard and Yale. It seems like every year they are returning their
whole team. Some year they have to be not
returning everybody, right? Didn't Harvard return their whole defense
last year?"
While Columbia was chosen the clear cellar-dweller, coach Norries
Wilson had no axe to grind with the media.
"It's a fair poll," he said. "What can I say? We didn't win a league
game. I can't cry about the poll. It's about as honest a poll as you
are ever going to see.
"The only way for us to get off the bottom of that poll is, we've gotta
win games. That's the only way to do it. How can I say, 'Listen, we
should be picked better than that,' when we don't have anything
credible for people to go off of?"
Then again, putting any weight in the poll is a mistake the way Brown's
Estes sees it.
"There's a lot of controversy because I heard there's only 16 voters
but there are 17 first-place votes," Estes said with a grin. "You
should be finding out where that vote came from. That's a big
controversy. So this poll doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned."
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