Welcome To August

TigerBlog rolled over, saw it was after midnight, and had one thought: Princeton has athletic events later this month.

Okay, it's much later this month. When TB looked at the clock, it was just a few minutes into the month of August. And the first athletic events aren't until a few hours before the end of the month.

And TB has always had this theory that August is the longest month of the year, that one day in August lasts as long as about three or for in February.

It's always hot. It's usually humid. While it starts to get dark a little earlier, there's still a ton of daylight.

By the time the month begins to roll along, pretty much everyone has been on vacation and is gearing up for back-to-school time.

Still, today is August 1.

And on August 31, Princeton's 2012-13 athletic year will begin.

Princeton will have four teams open their seasons that day, which is four weeks from Friday, with events in women's soccer, men's soccer, field hockey and women's volleyball.

For now, though, it's all Olympics, all the time.

TB's thoughts since yesterday?

Well, while she seems like a nice lady, it's enough with shots of Michael Phelps' mother. Don't any of the other swimmers have mothers?

The gymnastics coverage showed the problem with doing events on tape-delay (though as TB said yesterday, NBC doesn't have a choice). With the results known, then NBC can manipulate the competition to make it appear more dramatic or even more scripted, rather than a spontaneous athletic event.

Plus, can they stop worshiping the American gymnasts? That makes it appear to be even more contrived, especially when the athletes from the other countries are perceived to be sort of like a cross between extras in a movie scene and the guys from Cobra Kai in the first "Karate Kid."

And stop calling the Americans by their first names. Just stop it already.

What else? TB saw more cycling this morning when he watched the time trials. What's with the throne that they make the top three sit in? For the most part, they know they're not going to get medals, because there are so many others on the course who they know are going to beat their times.

And how crushing is it to finish fourth? It has to be awful in any circumstance, but in the time trial, you can be sitting second or third and see it coming from several minutes away. That has to be excruciating.

Oh, and major controversy in badminton? TB saw the highlights, and if you haven't, it's laugh-out-loud funny how bad they were in trying to hide what they were doing. TB especially liked the shot that was hit sideways off the court rather than towards the net.

At the same time, the goal is to win a gold medal, not to win that particular match. So should the Chinese, South Koreans and Indonesians have been booted for throwing round-robin matches to set up a better road to a medal?

Yes, yes, yes.

With everything that happened yesterday, the big event here at Princeton was on in the middle of the day, when the United States played its second field hockey game. This time, the U.S. won, defeating Argentina 1-0 in a huge moment for the team's hopes of moving on to the medal round.

The U.S. team includes the Reinprecht sisters, Julia and Kate, who are playing huge roles for the Americans.

As a result, it became a big event here on the balcony of Jadwin.

TigerBlog has a TV in his office, though it's not quite a flatscreen HD TV.

Way back when, TB bought his friend Charlie's friend Noelle's TV for $75 just before college graduation. As TB remembers, Noelle was moving to Nebraska to get married and was looking to unload the relatively new TV before she left.

TB had that set for about a decade before it died, right in the middle of a football game. With no choice, TB went to Sears, bought a new TV and came back to watch the rest of the game. That is the TV that is still going strong in his office, albeit with no remote and the down arrow on the channel changer long ago broke off.

Anyway, even with such a bad TV, TB's office was packed for the field hockey game yesterday. And it worked out well for the U.S., since a win over Argentina is huge.

Several hours later, TB realized it was August, though he was half asleep at the time.

And now he sits here wondering how the Reinprechts will make the adjustment to playing games on TV in the Olympics to returning to play for Princeton. That'll have to be weird, no?

In the meantime, welcome to August. And TB can't be worrying about the games at the end of the month.

He was too much Olympics left to watch.