Lyons took us into the intermission, during which we all got an exciting “rules presentation” from Ivy League football head of officiating Jim Maconaghy. Among the major rule changes, officials will now call out the player’s number along with the infraction when announcing penalties, allowing NCAA referees to confirm what instant replay, telestrators and overzealous play-by-play announcers have been pointing out for years.
Harvard coach Tim Murphy led off the second half of the team presentations with a discussion of the key players on his offensive unit.
“[Ryan Fitzpatrick] is a special kid,” Murphy said. “He has toughness, skill [and] leadership. He’s a little bit like Michael Vick.”
On the surface this appeared to be a great compliment. Then I thought, if Ryan is like Michael Vick, does that mean that his brother Shaun—a senior tight end at Highland High School in Arizona—is destined to be like Marcus Vick? But this probably wasn’t what he meant.
Meanwhile, Penn coach Al Bagnoli was expressing his consternation at being picked number one in the preseason Ivy media poll. While Bagnoli has every right to be pleased, he really shouldn’t be shocked. Although the Quakers lost each of their five all-Ivy offensive linemen, their quarterback and Ivy Player of the Year Mike Mitchell and their top defensive player Steve Lhotak, the scary thing is that they still might be the best team in the league.
Princeton’s Roger Hughes and Yale’s Jack Siedlecki rounded out the powwow. Hughes addressed the loss of his top receiver B.J. Szymanski, who accepted a $700,000 signing bonus to join the Cincinnati Reds organization. He then threw in some classically Princetonian quip about that amount of money not fitting in a financial aid package that garnered a few laughs but didn’t move me enough to write down.
And with that the press conference portion of the Ivy media day was complete.
As I left the clubhouse and walked to the car, I thumbed through my notebook. I realized that I had spent two hours listening to the Ivy coaches discuss each of their teams, and I had learned almost nothing.
Just like every summer camp I ever attended.
—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu.