The TigerBlog Era

TigerBlog took four classes as a first-semester Penn freshman: a political science class that was largely about the history of the Supreme Court, Economics 1A, German 1 and Math 140 (calculus - TB was always a big fan of derivatives).

The political science class, taught by a man who spoke in complete monotones, was in the University Museum at Penn, which is across the street from Franklin Field towards where the Civic Center used to be. In other words, TB's first class faced into where he hoped he'd be graduating on time. German and Econ were both in Williams Hall, next to College Hall, where the statue of Ben Franklin is right in the heart of campus. Calculus was in the David Rittenhouse Lab, which faces the Palestra, the tennis courts and Franklin Field.

Nearly four years later, TB took his last college final in the David Rittenhouse Lab. He remembers walking out of the building on a warm May day and thinking to himself that, as long as he had passed the test (he did), he was a college grad.

In between, he took some pretty interesting classes on his way to a degree in American History. He took two on the American South of the 1800s that were taught by Drew Gilpen Faust, now the president of Harvard. He took a great astronomy course just because it was fun, and one on the history of the 1960s for the same reason.

One of his favorite classes was Jeffersonian and Jacksonian America, taught off campus at the American Philosophical Society building, at Fourth and Market. Sometimes, TB would make the 30-block walk from West Philadelphia with the rest of the people in the class. He also took some American labor history classes, one of which included seeing the movie "The Molly Maguires," which as it happened was on TV last night.

There were also some snoozers, like that political science class, an econ, and a few others. And there were some weird ones, like a philosophy class taught by a young man whose personality ran to the, uh, morbid and who stood in front of the small classroom and chainsmoked the whole time.

TB thought back to his college career this morning, when it dawned on him that it was the first day of classes here at Princeton.

And it also made him think of the word of the day: Era. As in, the days in between the David Rittenhouse Lab can be called "The TigerBlog Still Rooted For Penn Era."

TigerBlog got an email yesterday from a loyal reader who raised some good questions about the concept of eras as they relate to Princeton Athletics. They also raised some good questions about whether or not TB could use those questions here.

As part of his rehab from his knee surgery of last year, TigerBlog spent much of the winter riding the exercise bike on D level with John McPhee, the author and Academic-Athletic Fellow for the men's lacrosse team.

For 30-45 minutes three times per week, Mr. McPhee would tell his stories, one more fascinating than the last. TB wanted to write about them (especially the time McPhee met Dwight Eisenhower when Ike was president of Columbia), but he chose not to use any of them, because they weren't meant to be what used to be called "on the record."

As for Loyal Reader's email, TB has decided to use some of it:
"More specifically, the notion of a 'Surace Era' was nagging at me. He is supposed to be a very solid guy and we all have high hopes for the football program in the years to come, but in some distant, nostalgic land long ago, I recall that a program's identity seemed to be derived first from the school, second the sport (Princeton Basketball) and third the exceptional teams and players (The Hess-Hubbard-Massey lacrosse teams). I get the Bradley era, the Elias or Garrett brother years or the Kazmaier teams, etc., but when did we (not Princeton specifically) start referring to periods identified by coaches. Certainly there have been many exceptional coaches at Princeton who achieved a high level of visibility and prominence and the 'identities' of Pete Carill and Bill Tierney both make complete sense, especially *after* their many years of sustained success and excellence and I'm sure that in the future, great current coaches like Rob Orr, Bob Callahan and Julie Shackford will deserve some enhanced identity when the teams they coached are described in the future. So, question one goes to identity and prominence of coaches."

Actually, thinking about it, most of the eras are "post" eras, as in someone prominent left. In the case of Loyal Reader's email, he referred to the Surace Era, since Bob Surace is now the head football coach and is about to coach his first game. The story on goprincetontigers.com has this headline: Finally, Football; Princeton Opens Surace Era, 2010 Season At Lehigh.

For the most part, though, the use of the term "era" to relate a period of Princeton athletic history to a specific player or coach is rare, and it's usually something reserved for headlines or for people who like to speak in superlatives.

For the most part, it's used to define periods for purposes of time rather than achievement.

TigerBlog assumes the question really is this: Can Princeton Athletics produce someone who is larger than Princeton itself, to the point where they have their own "era?"

The answer is yes, but it too is rare and in the end, the program is always what's biggest. And that's one of the great things about Princeton Athletics.

Looking back in history, Princeton has its athletic icons - Hobey Baker, Dick Kazmaier, Bill Bradley, Pete Carril and Tierney leap to mind for TB. Speaking from a contemporary perspective, the only ones who have had somewhat mythical individual accomplishments are Elias and Hess-Hubbard-Massey, with apologies to all of the great players who did great things here.

When TB thinks back to those great athletes and their achievements - even teams like the 1998 men's basketball team - he thinks first of the bigger picture of Princeton, not of the individuals involved.

That's what it means to be part of programs that have such great traditions and history to them.

So yes, the word "era" can get thrown around a bit from time to time, and yes, there have been some people who left legacies that exceed the name Princeton alone.

But it is extremely, extremely rare.