I wasn't in the room when the Penn State Board of Trustees decided to fire Joe Paterno last night, but I doubt the scene Tuesday evening outside Paterno's house helped the coaching legend's cause.
The men's fencing team kicked off its season on Saturday at the Fall Invitational (The Big One) at Smith College, posting respectable performances in the epee, foil and saber events.
Things haven't changed for the football team. Energy has remained at a peak level, sparked at once by one final opportunity to remove the oval from the win column and optimistic promises of future seasons. Tufts is winless through seven games, but thoughts of games past seem to have been vaporized from the collective mindset. No, this is a team that, in spite of the hardships and the losses, is still approaching each day like a 0−0 squad.
The Green Bay Packers are the defending Super Bowl Champions and have picked up where they left off during last season's remarkable playoff run. As impressive as the Packers have been in their last 12 games, no one outside of Green Bay entirely saw this coming.
Coming into the NESCAC Tournament, the volleyball team felt confident about its chances after a 24−4 regular season that included nine wins in the conference — good enough for the No. 2 seed. But the Jumbos failed to meet expectations on Saturday, dropping a close four−set match to the Middlebury Panthers.
The men's cross country team earned second at the ECAC Championships on Saturday, placing its four runners in the top 20 — even without its top seven runners on the line. The finish was the best performance by the Jumbos since they took home the championship title in 2004.
The Texas Rangers almost did it. They almost inscribed their names into the annals of history. They almost celebrated with champagne showers, raucous revelry and a triumphant parade. They almost earned the right to be called "World Champions" for a full year. Yet, "almost" is never good enough.
With a win on Friday night over Bowdoin, the Tufts Rugby Football Club has earned a spot in the semifinals of the Div. III New England Rugby Football Union (NERFU) Championships for the third straight year.
While the Polar Bears were on fire, the Tufts volleyball team got left out in the cold.
Following a tough 30−0 loss to Amherst at home last week and a frustrating 0−6 start, the Jumbos are hoping that they can finally turn things around tomorrow when they face Colby on the Mules' home turf in Waterville, Maine.
A common complaint from athletes on some teams at Tufts is that crowds here are often lackluster.
New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick has received an inordinate amount of praise over the past decade for his draft strategy of uncovering gems in late rounds and finding value players in the early ones.
You can't deny that this fall was a giant step in the right direction for the Tufts men's soccer program.
The women's soccer season ended in heartbreak for the Jumbos, who on Saturday were eliminated by Wesleyan in penalty kicks in the NESCAC quarterfinals.
We have a tendency to spend too much time showing people at their worst and not enough time showing them at their best. Sure, athletes sometimes make it easy for us, by either shooting themselves, lying to Congress or cheating on their wife repeatedly. But regardless of what goes on behind the scenes in their lives, it is up to the media to choose what to focus on and the nation to choose how to digest such information.
The football team might still be winless, but encouragement for the future exists, especially with the effort the defense has put forth through Tufts' most brutal three-game stretch.
A third−place finish by junior Matt Rand at the NESCAC Cross Country Championships Saturday matched the best−ever result for a Tufts athlete at the race. Rand crossed the line of the 8,000−meter course at Amherst in 26:15 among a field of 129 runners, improving eight places from his 2010 11th place finish and earning his second consecutive All−NESCAC honor.
