The Deregtory

Last week, I wrote that I had fig­ured out our early-game strug­gles and that I had a so­lu­tion. Not sur­pris­ingly I was wrong, and this week­end we had spot­ted Har­vard a 24-0 lead by the sec­ond quar­ter. We showed signs of life in the sec­ond half, but had al­ready fallen too far be­hind and lost 30-14. The good news is that Shawn Abuhoff ’12 scored his third touch­down of the sea­son (which is re­ally im­pres­sive con­sid­er­ing he plays de­fense) and Tim Mc­Manus ’11 had his best game of the year with 126 total yards rush­ing and re­ceiv­ing. The bad news is that we lost in front of the biggest crowd at Memo­r­ial Field in 12 years. I have ideas, but no ac­tual an­swers for why we didn’t play well against Har­vard. In that sense, it’s a lit­tle bit like every Econo­met­rics test I took last spring. But Econo­met­rics isn’t fun to talk about, and nei­ther is los­ing, so I think I am going to shift gears to non-foot­ball top­ics until we talk about the up­com­ing Cor­nell game later on.

For­tu­nately be­cause it was Home­com­ing week­end, there is a lot of other stuff to talk about. For in­stance, all of the se­niors on the team got to sit up in front of Dart­mouth Hall wear­ing those old-school “D” sweaters dur­ing the bon­fire cer­e­mony on Fri­day night. We wear the sweaters be­cause it is tra­di­tion, but they are def­i­nitely a lit­tle out­dated. I was dis­cussing that sub­ject with line­backer Alex Johns ’11 after the cer­e­mony and we re­al­ized that back when the sweaters were first worn, they were prob­a­bly pretty trendy. Over the years, they have be­come not trendy. It begs the ques­tion – by wear­ing the same sweaters, have we ac­tu­ally changed the “look” of the cer­e­mony? I don’t know, that is up there with “why are they called apart­ments if they are stuck to­gether?” and “what was the best thing be­fore sliced bread?” as ques­tions that I just can’t an­swer.

On Sat­ur­day, I got to carry the big “D” flag and lead the team out onto the field. It was a lot of fun, and more im­por­tantly it will prob­a­bly make for a great pro­file pic­ture on Face­book. My other game day re­spon­si­bil­ity was of the med­ical va­ri­ety. Our kicker, Foley Schmidt ’12, has the locker next to me. About 15 min­utes be­fore we took the field he turned to me and asked me to in­ject in­sulin into his butt. Nor­mally I would have been taken aback by such a re­quest, but I knew that Foley has se­vere di­a­betes and that he was being se­ri­ous. To be sure, I asked him “are you se­ri­ous?” and he re­sponded “yes.” Once I knew for sure that he was def­i­nitely being se­ri­ous, I stabbed him in the but­tocks with his in­sulin pen and ar­guably saved his life.

Un­for­tu­nately, there is one thing keep­ing this good story from be­com­ing a great story: I think Foley asked me to in­ject him be­cause he wanted me to write about it in this col­umn. For about a month now, Foley has been nag­ging me to give him a shoutout. Sun­day morn­ing, after the glow of being a hero had worn off, I was think­ing about the or­deal and I re­al­ized he could have just in­jected him­self – the land­ing spot was on the out­side of his butt, def­i­nitely within his reach. Fur­ther­more he is a lefty, mak­ing it that much eas­ier for him to in­ject his own left butt cheek (which was the cheek of choice). Lastly, I re­ceived a blitz (e-mail) from him yes­ter­day ask­ing me to “send him the link to The Dereg­tory,” which was out of the or­di­nary. At this point it is un­clear who was vic­to­ri­ous – Foley for ac­tu­ally get­ting me to write about him, or me for sniff­ing out his ill-con­ceived scheme. The only thing I do know is that fool me once, shame on…shame on you…fool me…you can’t get fooled again. (http://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=eKgPY1adc0A)

This week we are trav­el­ing to Cor­nell to take on the Big Red. We know that they are red­der and that we are greener, so I guess the only thing that re­mains to be seen is who is big­ger. Cor­nell has not been hav­ing a great sea­son, but they just beat Prince­ton this past week­end and they are usu­ally much more dan­ger­ous at home than on the road (the exact op­po­site of a drunk per­son). We have a re­al­is­tic chance to win our last three games of the sea­son, but need to bounce back from a poor show­ing against Har­vard – the Cor­nell game will go a long way in dic­tat­ing how the rest of the sea­son plays out. Thanks for those of you who made it to the Har­vard game, and sorry we didn’t give you more to be cheer about. I hope every­body en­joyed home­com­ing and happy No­vem­ber!