Parcells, Barlow And Barlow

TigerBlog spent the first half of his time in the newspaper business covering high school sports and the second half of his time there covering colleges.

Every now and then, there'd be something a little different, and TB did spend some time covering some of the local pro teams.

In his entire experience in athletics, nobody has ever intimidated him the way Bill Parcells did. Parcells, then the Giants coach, didn't even need to look at TB or anything like that. His presence was enough to do the trick in a manner that nobody else has ever matched.

TB remembers one day at a Parcell's interview session in the preseason in which the coach absolutely crushed a reporter for a question he didn't like. As it happened, TB was standing close to the front, though off to the side, and the whole time Parcells was taking apart the reporter, TB was thinking "who is he to do this? He's a football coach. Shouldn't somebody call him on this behavior?"

Suddenly, Parcells looked from one side to the other and made eye contact with TigerBlog, as if he knew what TB was thinking, and said: "Don't you agree with me?"

TB remembers muttering something similar to what Kramer did in the episode of Seinfeld when George's girlfriend comes out of the pool at the house in the Hamptons.

TigerBlog has been in press conferences with many similar coaches, yet nobody impacted him like Parcells did. TB never really understood exactly what separated Parcells from some of the others he seen - until he saw the NFL Films piece entitled "Bill Parcells, Reflections On A Life In Football."

After watching it, TigerBlog has a better understanding of why Parcells left him so intimidated all those years ago: It was because Parcells was a bully without meaning to be one.

The documentary shows any number of examples of when Parcells would rip into an assistant coach or a player in what seemed to be a highly personal manner, only to expect to be forgiven for doing so immediately. It was like he had no memory of it. And this was to people like Charlie Weiss and Romeo Crennell, whose names should be familiar to most football fans.

In fact, he comes across as a funny, engaging guy who never forgot his roots, who needs to be in control of every situation, who is extremely loyal to his guys, who understands how to motivate, who has, uh, a bit of an ego and who looks like he'd be fun to hang out with.

Adding it all up, Parcells is complex, somewhat larger than life and, to a young reporter, frightening.

The best part for TB was when the documentary clipped together a thread of Parcells during interview sessions. It put TB right back to his own experiences.

The Parcells documentary was produced by Chris Barlow, who certainly got access to a ton of people to talk about Parcells. Barlow was also part of the piece on the "America's Game" series that featured the Giants' upset win over the Patriots.

In addition to being a veteran at NFL Films, Chris Barlow is also the brother of Princeton soccer coach Jim Barlow.

While Chris was immersed in Bill Parcells, Jim was busy putting together his best season at Princeton.

The Tigers went 13-4-1 overall and became the first group in the history of the men's soccer program to go 7-0-0 in the league.

Princeton's 2010 men's soccer team started out 1-3-1 before winning 12 straight games, a school record. The season was filled with great games and great performances, especially considering how tough Ivy League men's soccer is.

And then it ended abruptly, with a loss at home to a tough UMBC team in the first round of the NCAA tournament. That loss came three days after the Tigers did not get a bye in the first round, something that would have made sense considering three of the remaining seven Ivy teams got at-large bids.

And, of course, those three teams all won their first games. And two of them won their second, earning spots in the Sweet 16 before they both lost on the road in California.

All of this begs the question of whether you would have rather been the Ivy League champion - with a perfect league record, no less - or not have won the league but reached the Sweet 16 of the tournament.

There's something to be said for both. And in the interest of complete honesty, perhaps if this were "BearBlog" or "DartBlog," then the answer would be different.

But there is something to be said for putting together a nearly three-month run to achieve something that nobody else in program history had ever done. That's not something that could be ruined by one 90-minute game.

For the other Ivies, the NCAA tournament was a way to salvage the season, and clearly they did, especially Brown and Dartmouth.

But TB will take what Princeton did, a tangible achievement that also included wins over all three of those schools.

Does it make the fact that Princeton was the first Ivy out of the tournament any easier to take? Probably not. And the Brown and Dartmouth players also have their own tangible accomplishment to point to, and it's an impressive one.

In TB's mind, it doesn't beat what Princeton did.