Garages At Night

Does the name Mark Felt ring a bell to anyone?

Surely someone must recognize the name of one of the most famous characters of the 20th century, no?

His name isn't familiar? Well maybe his pseudonym is: Deep Throat. Does that make it clearer?

Felt was the No. 2 man at the FBI back in 1972, when five men broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee, which were housed in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., near where the Kennedy Center is. The break-in, of course, started a series of events that ultimately led the resignation of President Nixon two years later, marking the only time in American history that a President has resigned the office.

If you believe "All The President's Men," then the only reason that the scandal grew and made its way to the White House was because of the work of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who pursued the story when no one else thought there was anything there.

Taken a step further, the key person for Woodward and Bernstein was a shadowy, anonymous figure whom Woodward would meet at night in a parking garage. Rather than identify him by name, the two simply called him "Deep Throat," which had a, uh, pop-culture significance at the time.

Deep Throat, played perfectly by Hal Holbrook in the movie, gave the two reporters vital information about all of the highest level officials in Nixon's White House, information that literally brought down "All the President's Men."

For decades after the scandal, Felt chose to remain anonymous, until he was well into his 80s and nearly dead, two years ago.

And that's who Mark Felt was. Political operative, law enforcement official, legendary figure in American history - and precursor to much of the way information about Ivy League sports, and the world in general, is disseminated today.

Sure, through history there have been writers who were anonymous or unknown. "Beowulf," which was written sometime around the ninth century, is widely considered the oldest piece of English-language literature; its author has never been known.

As an aside, TigerBlog considers it unreadable garbage, rather than a beautiful epic.

For the most part, of course, authors of all stripes - books, magazines, poems, newspapers, anything - have always put their name right out there for all the world to see.

Today, though, it's all different.

Sure, most "published" writers are still identifiable, but TigerBlog believes that the amount of information out there that is read by a mainstream audience and is written by someone who hasn't identified his or herself by a name has gone from about, oh, 0.1 percent to about, oh, 50 percent in the last 10 years.

This is hardly news. TigerBlog used to have a real byline in a newspaper. Now he's just TigerBlog, which isn't his actual given name. Multiply that by a few hundred million, and you have what is called the blogosphere.

What are the best ways to get information about Ivy League sports?

Well, of course there are the eight school sites and the league site itself. But much of this falls under the heading of "spin" and lacks an edge that so many readers like.

So where to turn for that? Newspapers? Yes, there is information out there, and Princeton is lucky to have its loyal souls like Bill Alden at Town Topics and Joe O'Gorman at the Trentonian.

And there are some blogs that are devoted to covering Ivy League schools, mostly football, including the Big Green Alert Blog about Dartmouth and the Roar Lions Roar blog for Columbia.

How about the Ivy League sports board? TigerBlog has no way to know the number of hits that site gets, but he'd bet it's a lot.

And that site is filled with people who use names that aren't really names, names like "Foehi" and "Holtsledge" and "Asia Sunset" and "Sprint 66" and Princeton's very own version of Deep Throat - someone who calls himself (or herself) "Reality."

They've become to regular readers highly identifiable for their loyalties, peeves, enemies and everything else. In many ways, their names are to Ivy League sports these days what Harvey Yavener or any number of old-time reporters were back when they were in the prime.

These people - and many more - post comments regularly, with information, commentary, predictions, recruiting updates, anything.

Oh, and you want another way that the world has changed?

Princeton's Steve Cody broke his leg Saturday against Lehigh and will miss the rest of the season. Back in the day, this news would have gotten out through a newspaper.

In 2010? Steve Cody's dad posted it on the Ivy League message board.

That's how the world works these days. Bypass the middle man and go directly to the reader, and everyone can be a writer. Or anyone, since you don't really know if you're sitting next to Asia Sunset at the Penn game.

The amount of information continues to skyrocket, brought to you by a slew of Deep Throats, not in a garage at night but right there on your computer - or your phone.