Bruce Wood has not missed a Dartmouth football practice in nine years. The founder of the Big Green Alert blog, Wood has covered Dartmouth’s gridiron gang online for nearly the last decade. And as Ivy League media day approaches, Wood remains in the bleachers, preparing his next post.
Wood started covering Big Green football in 1979, reporting for the Valley News as the team was coming off its 1978 Ivy League title. Though he briefly moved to Pennsylvania to become the sports editor of a small newspaper, the allure of the Upper Valley was too much for Wood and he returned in 1983 to become an assistant director of sports information for the College. He served in this role for five years before returning to the Valley News as the Dartmouth beat writer, a position he held for 17 years.
Over that span, he grew frustrated with the inefficiencies of the newspaper coverage of Dartmouth football at the time, he said.
“When I was at the newspaper, people used to have to buy subscriptions to the Valley News in order to read about the games,” Wood said. “It would take the newspapers three or four days to get to them, so the news was old. Now there’s this Internet stuff and I can deliver the news the same day of the game, the same day as practice and I decided to give it a shot.”
The website is divided into a free section, available to all readers, and a premium section available with a subscription. The premium blog has covered every Big Green game and practice over the last nine years with a full-length story. It also covers Dartmouth football news, like recent features on incoming running back Ryder Stone ’18 and a review of Ivy League players currently in the NFL.
Sportswriting was not Wood’s first love, he said, but after gaining experience, he grew to truly appreciate the field.
“My original intention was to be a Charles Kuralt type — I just wanted to write features about people doing interesting things, not hard news,” he said. “The traditional way of getting into features is to cover school boards and obituaries and I didn’t want to do that. I said to myself, maybe I’d write sports for a while, then slide over and write features.”
Six months in, however, he found he missed writing about sports.
One of the most important parts of Wood’s success at Big Green Alert has been his close relationship with football head coach Buddy Teevens. Teevens began his second tenure as head coach for the Big Green in 2005, the same year Wood started up his blog. In fact, Wood even consulted with Teevens’ wife before starting Big Green Alert, he said, and Teevens has talked with Wood every day after practice for the past nine years.
“Teevens had a similar idea and told me, ‘Let’s go for it,’” Wood said. “To his credit, he told me I could write anything I wanted and that he would never get on me. It helps that he trusts me.”
Parents are perhaps the main beneficiaries of Wood’s in-depth look at Dartmouth football. Since he covers every game and practice, parents can keep up with their sons even from a distance. Wood said he has heard of fans reading the Big Green Alert blog from as far as China’s Yellow Sea.
Players say they appreciate this connection, too.
“He really gives our families an in-depth description of our practices and lets them know which players are improving, which players are hurt and what every one’s stats are like,” defensive back K.J. Booze ’16 said.
Wood’s passion for Dartmouth football has been the driving force of his work at the Big Green Alert blog for the past decade, he said. But perhaps equally important are the relationships that he, a Dartmouth father, has built with Dartmouth athletes and their families. Though Wood’s daughter Kelly Wood ’14 ran at Dartmouth, Wood exclusively focuses on Dartmouth football, and because of this he can grow closer to the Big Green community than sportswriters who have their interests pulled in a number of different directions, he said.
Quarterback Alex Park ’14 first met Wood several days after transferring from the University of New Hampshire.
“He and I have developed a really nice relationship over the last couple of years,” Park said. “We have candid conversations all the time. He’s always there after games with the media for post-game interviews and sometimes after practice he’ll grab you. He has been and is a big part of the Big Green program.”
In the 35 years since he began covering Dartmouth football, Wood has covered an undefeated Big Green squad as well as a winless one, but what stays with him, more than any of the wins or losses, are the small moments from each season, he said.
“I think it was three years ago, the final football game of the season against Princeton with one of the Dartmouth lineman,” Wood said, when asked about his most memorable moment. “The stadium was pretty empty, but the bus hadn’t left yet. He took out his cleats, brought them out to the 50 yard line and left them there. Something pretty special about that.”
Kelly Wood is a former member of The Dartmouth staff.