Last week, we were joined by Middlebury College President Ron Liebowitz for a halftime interview. President Liebowitz is a serious sports fan and a knowledgable supporter of Middlebury athletics (enough so to read our blogs… see here, here). We were honored to have him join us in the broadcast booth during a busy weekend, and we hope you enjoy his insights.

This post was written by Adam Lamont, a sophomore at Bowdoin. Lamont is a former member of the Bowdoin football team.

The mantra of the NFL is that on Any Given Sunday an underdog is capable of rising up and taking down a powerhouse. The NESCAC does not have the same parity as the NFL, but football can be a funny game where one or two bounces can alter the course of a game. Wesleyan’s close win last week shows they are not the unbeatable juggernaut that ran through the first half of their schedule. They are a very good, disciplined team with few weaknesses that managed to escape a late surge by Amherst in the fourth quarter. This is a potential let-down week where coming off of the high of the Amherst win, the team might have a bad week of practice before taking a long road trip. A subpar performance by Wesleyan will lead to trouble against a frisky Bowdoin group. This Bowdoin team has shown it can hang with anyone for stretches and has been improving on offense. Despite the devastating loss of middle linebacker and captain Griffin Cardew, the two other senior linebackers, Joey Cleary and Brian Glazewski, will rally a defense that looked shaken after Cardew left in the middle of the Trinity game.

The best thing an underdog can have going into a game is a whole lot of pride. Though the team has struggled in recent years, there is still a lot of pride on that Bowdoin sideline. Pride underscores the idea that an underdog believes not only that they can win, but that they will. Head Coach Dave Caputi stresses to his team before every game that football demands the best out of each individual. Not putting forth that effort is an insult to the game, your teammates, but mostly yourself. The most common expression he uses especially before playing a team like Wesleyan is to do your job and trust your teammates. Big plays by Wesleyan will kill any chance of an upset. This Bowdoin team is not meant to outscore teams, but they can keep games close and control possession. All that an underdog wants is the ability to be close in the fourth quarter where one big play has a magnified impact.

Editors’ Note: We are excited to announce that a group of writers from around the NESCAC, led by Joe MacDonald (Middlebury) and Adam Lamont (Bowdoin), will be contributing to the blog for the remainder of the football season and hopefully beyond. This post was written by Lamont, a former member of the Bowdoin football team. The plan is to give readers an internal perspective of other programs in the conference, while maintaining our in-depth coverage of Middlebury football and basketball. We hope you enjoy and, as always, thank you for your continued readership and support.

Opening Statement: Bowdoin started the game with the offense working better than at any other time in the last two years. The key was big plays with the opening touchdown only a minute and a half into the game coming off a play action pass to Dan Barone for a 48-yard score. The play far surpassed the previous long for a touchdown for Bowdoin this year, but only a few minutes later senior back Zach Donnarumma broke free for a 51 yard touchdown. Bowdoin then extended the lead to 21-0 on a 2-yard pass to Mike English with 5:36 left in the second.

No Knockout: At that point it looked like the Polar Bears were en route to a convincing and easy win. Things didn’t go quite as planned as Hamilton answered quickly to close to within two touchdowns. The rest of the day the Bowdoin offense struggled to create any big plays and Hamilton crawled its way back into the game with two long touchdown drives in the second half. An early Hamilton missed field goal, however, played a huge role down the stretch as—trailing by six—the Continentals needed a touchdown to win the game at the end instead of a field goal to tie. The Polar Bears’ inability to put the game away shows once again that, while this Bowdoin team is capable of playing very well for stretches, it has trouble sustaining that level of play for an entire game.