Eye Of The Storm

TigerBlog is doing something right now that he's never done before. And it's not really right now.

It's actually Saturday night. Miguel Cabrera just popped out with the bases loaded.

For all TB knows, the World Series is over now. Just not while he's writing.

TigerBlog usually writes the morning of and sometimes the night before, especially if he has a meeting or something early the next day.

So why is did he write Saturday night, which is what it is right now as he types, though it's Tuesday morning as you read?

Oh, before getting to that, TB would like to point out that the blogger function offers the option to post something at a predetermined time in the future, which he does maybe 15% of the time or so. Until now (Saturday night, not Tuesday morning), he's never posted one more than one day in advance.

So why now?

Well, it's Sandy's fault.

As TB writes, the forecast is awful. Rain. Wind. No power for 7-10 days.

And so if TB waited until Tuesday and there was no power, imagine what could go wrong. Maybe his laptop wouldn't be charged and couldn't be recharged. Maybe there would be no way to get to the internet.

So faced with this, TB wrote twice Saturday night. Yesterday's was also actually written today, which is really three days ago.

TB has no idea what Hurricane Sandy will become, or has become, since it's actually now, as opposed to Saturday.

He does know that in the time leading up to the storm, there was a rush on all kinds of stuff, like generators and bottled water. Bottled water? It would have to get really, really bad for it to come to that.

The supermarket was picked clean.  There wasn't a loaf of bread to be found. The call was to have three days of food that doesn't require electricity to make on hand. To TB, that meant Pop Tarts.

TB is not a fan of blizzards that close schools and work and keep people anchored at home for a few days. He's even less of a fan of major rain events, especially those that knock out power and flood basements.

Luckily, Sandy held off long enough for the weekend's athletic events to go off, and all of the remnants will be gone by Saturday, when Princeton hosts Penn in a bunch of hugely important games.

One of them will be in football, when the Tigers and Quakers get together at 1 on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.

Princeton and Penn are both 3-1 in the league, tied with Harvard for first place. Cornell and Dartmouth are both 2-2.

The last two Princeton games have been wildly exciting, to say the least.

In fact, in the win over Harvard and loss to Cornell, there have been a total of 2,168 yards of offense, of which 1,679 have come through the air. In the two games, there have been 15 passing touchdowns.

TB has no way of knowing if those are two-game records for Princeton. He does know that those numbers are off the charts extraordinary.

Princeton scored 120 points in seven Ivy League games a year ago. In the last five quarters, Princeton has scored 69 points.

The winning points in each of the last two games have come in the final minute.

So what's next? The Quakers.

Penn plays Harvard next week, and Harvard still has to play Yale after that. Penn still has to deal with Cornell. Princeton finishes with Yale and Dartmouth after Penn.

In other words, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the league champ will have two losses.

On the other hand, there is the argument that Harvard has lost for the last time, so Princeton needs to go 3-0 to get a share of the title.

Whichever is true, it's important to keep in mind that Princeton is building, transitioning from the team that went 1-9 the last two years. To accomplish what the Tigers have, with such a young team and without running back Chuck Dibilio, has been extraordinary.

With three weeks to go, Princeton still has a chance to to play for the championship. That's all anyone can ask for.

Well, that and for Sandy to fizzle out as quickly as possible.

Now it's time to write Wednesday's entry. Just to be safe.