TigerBlog is pretty sure that the Office of the Ombudsman at the University of Pennsylvania was once located in or near Houston Hall, which was also the home of the student center.
The lower level of Houston Hall had a food court, a place to get your hair cut, a game room, that sort of stuff. TB is pretty sure that when he would walk to the center that he would pass the sign of for the ombudsman.
Of course, TB at the time had no idea what an ombudsman did, though he did find the word itself to be intriguing. Over time, he's come to realize that an ombudsman is essentially a conflict manager, someone who is there to provide an outlet for those who are involved in a conflict and hopefully help both sides work through it.
Here at Princeton, the ombudsman is the very impressive D.A. Graham, who is in his third year at the University. Graham's resume includes tours in Iraq as a military chaplain, as well as the 2001 Military Chaplain’s Association Chaplain of the Year Award for service with the U.S. Marine Corps. He formerly worked at San Diego State.
Graham, who is also an Academic Athletic Fellow for the football team, batted lead-off yesterday at the Department of Athletics midyear retreat. Graham showed his many sides in his three-hour presentation, showing himself to be at various times a professor, a philosopher, a realist, a pragmatist, a dreamer and Chris Rock.
In the end, Graham's presentation led TB to ask himself some genuine questions on the subject, which TB would suggest was the point.
In the beginning, though, Graham began with an exercise that left TB without an answer, at least at first.
Graham asked all those in the room to introduce themselves and use an adjective to describe themselves. The caveat was that the adjective had to start with the same letter as the person's first name.
He then went around the table clockwise and happened to start with TB, who passed until it went all the way around and came back to him.
Graham's exercise started the day.
Director of Athletics Gary Walters had one to end the day, and that was to ask each person around the time to say what they would change about Princeton Athletics if they could change one thing. This time, he went the other way around the table, giving TB plenty of time to come up with his answers.
In fact, TB had six answers, at least to himself. When it came to be his turn, he offered four of those six to the group.
The two he didn't mention were:
* find a place to build a 5,000-seat, basketball-only facility that also had offices and meeting spaces and luxury boxes and the like. All of the seats would be orange or black, and they would go all the way around the court in one bowl. Jadwin would then become an indoor track/squash/fencing/field house/training area/indoor practice facility paradise
* have a few scrolling message boards around campus that would announce upcoming events, recent results, have a few ads and maybe some video
The four he did bring up were:
* get a TV booth for the press box at Class of 1952 Stadium and Roberts Stadium. The press box at '52 wasn't built with television in mind, and when TV does a game from there (or Roberts), it takes over the entire operation, leaving hardly any room for radio, stats and media.
* TigerBlog would get $5 every time someone asked him or someone from his office to put something on the webpage that was already there. This one is somewhat self-explanatory, but it happens all the time.
* Figure out a way to make the concourse at Princeton Stadium more engaging to fans during football games. TB loves the concourse at Lehigh's Goodman Stadium and the way it keeps fans connected to the game while offering all kinds of food and other options that enhance what we always refer to as fan experience.
And then, lastly:
* allow the Ivy League football champion to play in the NCAA playoffs. TigerBlog's main interest in this would be to study the effect such a move would have on Ivy League attendance for football and, presuming there was a rise in that figure, how that could then benefit all other Ivy sports in terms of ability to promote to a slightly larger fan base. TigerBlog isn't sure what that effect would be, but it would be interesting.
And that was what TB came up with.
Oh, that and doubling his salary. Forgot to mention that one too.
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2 comments:
So when can we expect that public statement from the Ivy League presidents on postseason football?
It would be the best thing to happen to Ivy League football since the forward pass.
Unfortunately, the presidents seem as close-minded on this as ever.
It's interesting you assume that Ivy postseason football participation would increase stadium attendance. One of the themes that runs through many of your posts is the difficulty, if not impossibility, of understanding what drives attendance at Princeton football games. The athletic department experiments with a lot of variables in the name of increasing attendance but you write that, after all the experimentation, you still don't know what gets people into the stands.
What makes you think that Ivy participation in FCS playoffs would make a difference when so many other variables don't yield a tangible, measurable increase?
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