Looking Forward

TigerBlog had a meeting Saturday morning in the gorgeous chemistry building that creates a triangle with Jadwin Gym and Princeton Stadium (although, as he recalls from Mrs. Mancuso's geometry class, any three points create a triangle).

When it was over, he walked out into the bright, brilliant late morning sunshine, with the multi-colored leaves of mid-fall visible through the openings in the stadium.

It was a great morning to be on the Princeton campus, with pristine weather and wall-to-wall people, all wearing either orange and black or crimson.

The first person TB saw when he walked outside was an older gentleman who was wearing a Crimson blazer. He looked at TB and saw his Princeton Athletics shirt and said "good luck to the Tigers today."

Any time that he is in that kind of situation, TB is reminded of the time that he pulled up to Columbia for a football game and had the parking attendant, another kindly older gentleman, say "I hope you enjoy the game," to which one of TB's favorites, Harvey Yavener, replied "we didn't come here to enjoy the game; we came here to kick your a--."

Forgetting for a minute that Yav really shouldn't have cared who won, because he was a newspaper writer and not affiliated with Princeton itself, the moment was pretty funny. And TB always thinks he's going to respond in a similar fashion one day, just for the shock value.

Sadly, TB is far too mature for that. Well, maybe not mature. Maybe he just wants to keep his job.

So what TB said to the man in the Harvard jacket was this: "Good luck to the Crimson as well."

To that, Mr. Crimson responded with what was basically the prevailing thought a little before noon Saturday, something along the lines of "we should win football, you should win field hockey, we'll see who wins soccer, beautiful day."

As it turned out, Princeton won field hockey.

And men's soccer in overtime.

And women's soccer.

And of course, football, in a game that you might have by now heard about.

A 4-0 day against Harvard. And yes, in beautiful weather.

There aren't too many Princeton fans who could ask for more than that from their Saturday.

As for TigerBlog, well, he's always cautious when it comes to days like that. You never want to get too high or take anything for granted, because days like that don't come along very often.

The first instinct in athletic communications would be to stick the chest out and trumpet that success. The reality is that you never want to go overboard.

Why?

Because there are a lot of other weekends coming up, and they all can't be this good. It's important to be humble and move on to the next.

And you never want to give the other teams something to gnaw at them any more than necessary. 

Besides, for all of those teams, there are still so many huge games coming up, including this weekend at Cornell, before the fall is over.

It's always a weird feeling for TigerBlog when there are huge midseason games, win or loss, and then the one-week wait until the next one. The drama continues to build, and seasons can turn so dramatically from one week to the next.

So yes, this past Saturday was, in many ways, historic, for the football game alone.

But there is a lot left to play for across the board.

The women's soccer team and field hockey team would get at least a share of the Ivy League title with a win in Ithaca. The men's soccer game is huge.

And football?

One of TigerBlog's favorite coaches was a man named Donnie Marsh, who coached men's basketball at the College of New Jersey when TB was in the newspaper business. Marsh once said something that has stuck with TB ever since, when he essentially said that anyone can win a big game; what's tougher is the game after the big game.

Now that it's Tuesday, the glow from last weekend can fade as it's time to get back to business as usual, with a renewed focus on this coming weekend.

As George C. Scott says in the final line of "Patton" as he walks across the field: All Glory Is Fleeting.