ELynah Forum

So says The Athletic in the NY Times 9/29/26.
The Athletic:

"Generations of Yale alumni have revered the course's iconic bones, the often sub-optimal conditions excused as "shabby chic." But many of them finally grew tired of watching the place wither. A course that Masters winner and architect Ben Crenshaw once called a "national treasure" deserved more, so the alums raised more than $30 million for a restoration project, recently completed by Gil Hanse, one of the leading modern golf architects. His work on Yale was widely considered one of the most highly anticipated projects of the year in the golf industry.

"That is why, five months after the course's April reopening, many members of the Yale community are now looking at the grass conditions and the course's business plan, and are asking: What is going on?"

The Rochester New York sewer authority discharged fecal matter into Shining Lake Ontario like 1970 from a pipe not far enough offshore. It wafted up on the beaches. The city put up a plastic barrier at the Durand Eastman swimming beach. It did not keep out the fecal matter and then in short order the barrier fell apart. I believe the matter has been resolved in this century, with better pre-treatment.

So Ivy Madness moves to Allentown, Pa., for the 2028 basketball tournaments, men and women both. Dartmouth then Harvard are the longest distances, 5:45 and 340 miles for Dartmouth, 5:15 and 293 miles for Harvard, Penn and Princeton are just over an hour away. Cornell is in the middle: 2:45 and 160 miles.

Harvard students concerned about the long slog by car, good news: Your charter lets you off at Lehigh Valley Aviation Services and it's just 15 minutes in the Uber Elite to the PPL Center.

For the Ivies playing at away (regular season), the longest distance is Dartmouth - Penn, 6 hours and 360 driving miles.

Table below: Distances to PPL Center from the eight Ivy schools.

Um, the great wait isn't if you don't have to wait. Season tickets don't sell out. Okay, Cornell can introduce an artificial waiting period, maybe play some pep songs.

My first year at Cornell, the line was really big, and long. Oh, wait. The team had gone 29-0 the year before. That creates demand. I did the line for the heck of it, since I had a press pass that kind of guarantees center ice seating.

I  believe it was sophomore year that I was part of the contingent that managed the Barton Hall line. I think because of a Sun Sports Desk affiliation rather than my fraternity connection. There was more demand for tickets than tickets. This being two seasons removed from — checking — last national championship. And Cornell did go on to the NCAA championship game in Boston Garden that year. Spoiler alert: We lost to BU. And we went to the Frozen Four the next year as well. So that kept people filling Lynah via season tickets. That was a looooong time ago that every home game was full. We still have Harvard.

So some of it is rah-rah, some of it one hopes gets line-participants get better tickets.

Sounds more like swordsmen.

Very good story by the WSJ, in-depth reporting and, IMO, more biting than if the Times had done it. The Journal had that great quote, ~'Syracuse thinks they're an Ivy school, and they're not,' and is pretty damn good.

I subscribe to four newspapers, runs well over a thousand dollars, but then I spent my life in newspapers then magazines. Most big papers give you ten or a dozen freely readable links per month. Some time-out after a month but most of the people here are fast readers.

The schools the WSJ says are Syracuse cohorts (and doing better than the Orange landing students) -- BU, Northeastern, NYU -- are not super big sports fan schools.

More interesting is the WSJ's line about kids, sorry, entering students, thinking warm/south/maybe big sports/public. "public" being a proxy for more affordable.   

And for the freshman players ... waterboarding?

Cornell men's soccer second in pre-season poll. Princeton first. They meet Saturday Oct. 17, 4pm, at Princeton.

2026 Ivy League Men's Soccer Preseason Poll
Place    Team    Points (First Place Votes)
1.    Princeton    123 (14)
2.    Cornell      111 (2)
3.    Penn          94
4.    Harvard       79
5.    Brown         59
6.    Dartmouth     41
7.    Yale          39
8.    Columbia      30
Princeton is ranked #8 in the pre-season poll, which covers 25 teams. Cornell was Also Receiving Votes. 

Quote from: George64 on August 23, 2026, 08:42:36 AMDoug, Brock - not bad company!  But how would a 20-something know?

Claude would know all.

Quote from: marty on August 19, 2026, 05:43:22 AMHopefully this bodes well for an earlier hockey season start. I like to dream.

Hopefully this bodes well for a Cornell hockey season that lasts through the second weekend of April.

More than a dozen Penn State students and one student's lawyer/father were indicted for allegedly selling drugs in bigly amounts on campus in 2023 and 2024. The indictments were disclosed this week, Aug. 17, 2026.

QuoteABC 7 New York
Prosecutors allege that two fraternities - Sigma Chi, where [defendant and alleged ringleader Agostino] Abbatiello was a member, and Delta Upsilon - hosted parties involving drugs and hazed pledges with cocaine.

"Cutting and bagging cocaine was, for some pledges, an indoctrination into the Delta Upsilon and Sigma Chi fraternities," the attorney general said.

According to the criminal complaint, one defendant, Thomas Robinson, thought the arresting cops were actually non-cops playing a prank. Getting tasered helped clarify their status as law enforcement.

Penn State said, "We are horrified by these serious allegations ... criminal activity, including hazing such as this, has no place at our institution." One reading might be Penn State is as concerned by hazing as by drug dealing. Or vice-versa.

It appears law enforcement in and around Happy Valley was taken by the scale of the operation (deals reportedly of a kilo at a time), the amount of money involved, a handgun in possession of a defendant, and that one student's father allegedly was holding cash and product.

(One of the stories mentioned cocaine in quantities of "1000 grams," maybe there was no grams-to-kilos conversion table handy.)

ABC-7 New York

CBS News Pittsburgh

Wondering about Pannell's net worth, him being one of the greatest players in lacrosse.

That'd be an interesting People-type story: The Ten Most Affluent Lacrosse Players Ever, and why.

[edit add:] Apparently the Ten Most Affluent thing has been done, at least as Rev 1.0

When he broke the professional lacrosse total points record, Pannell had 346 goals (52% of his points), 314 assists. See these infographics for info on how pro lacrosse players make money and how much the top ten are worth. 

Enterprise Wired says players build net  worth from salaries in PLL or NLL (formery MLL), endorsement deals (shoes, lacrosse gear, energy drinks), ownership sakes and business ventures, and camps-clinics-digital content monetization. The top two are worth $8-$10 billion. Joe Tsai and Chase Coleman III are Yale alumns, Tsai was cofounder of Alibaba and controlling owner of the Brooklyn Nets, Coleman is in private equity. From thee it falls to a calculated $5-6 million for No. 3 Paul Rabil.

Pannell's net worth is reported, they say, at $200K-$600K "estimated" built around a PLL salary of $40K-plus, merch/speaking money. That puts him at No. 10.

If those numbers are accurate, you'd make more money as a defensive back in the SEC.

Quote from: stereax on August 16, 2026, 02:26:34 PMI mean it's a bullshit ranking by idiots. But it's nice to be respected in the bullshit rankings by idiots.

It's too early to get riled up about Harvard and BU. So we chide each other. My thoughts turn to Daniel Patrick Moynihan on "Defining Deviancy Down," as in what we find as weird, abnormal or criminal needs to be readjusted to account for more deviants and weirdos and now to the new world of odd posts online. Not among this august group, of course. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41212064

>>> Not a whole lot to be excited about here ... but I guess that's why they play the games on the court.

Between car crashes, altercations, the occasional shaved points, and domestic violence allegations, the courts play major roles. .

Cornell's 46 points is also 2 points above being projected in sole possession of next to last. It is also 36 years since our last (tied) Ivy League title.

2026 IVY LEAGUE PRESEASON POLL (First Place Votes)
1. Yale – 127 (15)
2. Harvard – 111 (1)
3. Dartmouth – 94
4. Penn – 75
5. Cornell – 46
5. Princeton – 46
7. Brown – 45
8. Columbia – 32