The Boomtown Rats

Some pretty good songs have been written with the word "Monday" in the title. You had "Manic Monday," by the Bangles. Actually written by Prince, the song was the first hit for the Bangles. Somewhere around 1986 or so. It's very, very classic 1980s.

It's okay. You can admit you like the Carpenters. Nobody's going to hold it against you. "Rainy Days and Mondays." Or both, as we have here at TigerBlog HQ today.

Then there's "Monday, Monday," by the Mommas and the Poppas. Maybe a little before TigerBlog's time, though TB did like listening to Saturday Night Oldies out of Binghamton on the ride back from Cornell.

And how could TigerBlog leave out "Come Monday," by Jimmy Buffett? "Come Monday, it'll be all right ..."

The song "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats, which featured the lyrics "tell me why, I don't like Mondays," was actually about a school shooting in San Diego, something largely unheard of back then. In fact, there were radio stations who wouldn't play the song because of the subject matter (a subject in the news again as today is the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shootings).

Still, for anyone around TigerBlog's age, that song takes you back to high school in the late 1970s and quite ironically to a time of innocence.

Anyway, now that we've established that today is in fact Monday, here are some links and thoughts for you to start your work week:

* our guy Manish Mehta, formerly an intern here in the Office of Athletic Communications and now a great feature writer for the Star-Ledger, had this piece on retiring volleyball coach Glenn Nelson. Manish was the volleyball contact when he was here, and he caught up with some of the great men's players from that time.

* the NCAA has a certification process that the University and Department of Athletics recently completed, and the result was obviously full certification. From the official University announcement: "The purpose of the NCAA certification program is to help ensure the integrity of member institutions' athletics operations. Princeton's process involved a yearlong, campus-wide effort that began in fall 2007 and included the preparation of a self-study covering governance and commitment to rules compliance, academic integrity, equity, and student-athlete well-being."

* if you missed it, the women's tennis team won the Ivy League championship with wins over Cornell and Columbia this weekend. The Tigers earned the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament; the draw will be announced next Tuesday, April 28. For the record, that's eight Ivy League championships this year for Princeton teams, as women's tennis joined: women's soccer, field hockey, women's cross country, men's cross country, men's squash, women's squash and men's swimming and diving.

* the new men's lacrosse rankings are out for both the media poll and coaches' poll, and Princeton has dropped to fifth and fourth. The Tigers have Dartmouth and Brown at home to end the regular season and can still get a share of the Ivy title (if Brown beats Cornell this week and Princeton wins out), but there is no mathematical possibility that Princeton can get the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Still, the Tigers and their strong RPI, strength of schedule and three Top 10 wins, are in good shape for the postseason.

* the women's lacrosse team showed you something by bouncing back from a tough defeat against Penn to travel to Hanover, N.H., three days later and beat a Dartmouth team that took Penn to overtime by 10 goals (14-4). Like the men, the women are in good shape for a high NCAA tournament seed.

* the baseball team enters the final weekend of Ivy League games in basically a best-of-five situation against Cornell for the Gehrig Division title. The teams, who are currently tied for first in the division, play four times (two Friday here, two Sunday in Ithaca). If they split those four, then a one-game playoff would be held to determine who advances to the Ivy League Championship Series. The site of that playoff game? Well, good question, since a split would leave the teams with the exact same record in the division and against the other division. The other wrinkle about a split is that Columbia, two games back, would make it a three-way tie Princeton and Cornell split, and Columbia takes all four games in their series with Penn.