The first working day of the New Year is upon us, which means that everyone here at the Department of Athletics has spent the last hour or so saying "Happy New Year" to everyone else.
The Department of Athletics has been closed since Dec. 21, and really hardly anyone was here the week before that.
Today brings everyone back to work, which seems to include the requisite greetings of how was your holiday, get any good presents, etc. Adlay Bugg, the ultra-nice woman who works in the director's office, gave TB an embrace - a Bugg hug, as it were. TB wonders what the "Happy New Year" etiquette is and how long it's necessary to say "Happy New Year" to people.
Women's track and field coach Peter Farrell gave two quick movie reviews, giving thumbs down to both "Django Unchained" and "Les Miserables."
TigerBlog didn't see the first and did see the second and would have given it three thumbs up if he had that many thumbs.
When he asked Farrell why he didn't like it, the response was something like "the plot drags on and they sing everything," as if these are shocking revelations about "Les Mis."
It'll be back to business-as-usual around here soon enough, though January is an odd month in Princeton Athletics. One thing that TB does love about January is that the following statement is now true: lacrosse season begins next month.
It starts out with a solid, though not overwhelming, amount of events between now and Jan. 13 and then nothing for two weeks due to first semester exams.
After that, the floodgates open with all kinds of games in all kinds of sports through the rest of the school year actually, with little if any letup.
TigerBlog did the top 10 events of 2012 in his final entry of the year. He thought about doing the top 10 athletes, but he didn't really know what order to put the two Reinprechts and Kathleen Sharkey in and it all sort of broke down from there.
Still, had he done so, he has no doubt who would have been ranked No. 1 at Princeton in 2012: Donn Cabral.
As 2013 kicks in and 2012 fades, TB wanted to take one last look back at the previous year, this time with a slightly different top 10 list.
This top 10 would be the 10 events that generated the most readers on goprincetontigers.com in the year 2012. TB figured it'd be interesting to contrast that with the events in his own top 10.
As such, here is the list of the most-read events from 2012, with TB's rating next to them:
10. Men's lacrosse win over Yale (2,923 viewers, not ranked in TB top 10)
9. Football vs. Lehigh (3,155, NR)
8. Football vs. Columbia (3,246, NR)
7. Football vs. Brown (3,367, NR)
6. Football vs. Yale (3,809, NR)
5. Men's lacrosse vs. Cornell (3,963, No. 9 on TB top 10)
4. Men's basketball win over Harvard (4,004, NR)
3. Men's squash national championship (6,474, 2nd in TB top 10)
2. Field hockey national championship (6,973, 1st in TB top 10)
1. Football vs. Harvard (8,752, 3rd in TB top 10)
The football win over Harvard had nearly 2,000 more viewers than anything else. It also was the one event on TB's top 10 list that the feedback suggested people disagreed with or felt was too high.
Football had five of the 10 most read event stories of 2012. As an aside, TB only counted events, not previews or features or anything like that.
Other huge events didn't generate nearly the readership, such as Cabral's steeplechase championship (1,027) or Jonathan Yergler's NCAA epee title (2,101). The field hockey semifinal game against Maryland attracted 2,219.
What does it mean?
Clearly, more people are going to read about football, or at least football wins, than anything else. Princeton won five football games in 2012, and four of those five stories were in the top 10. The other football win, the one against Lafayette, ranked 18th, with baseball, men's track and field, men's cross country, women's basketball and women's cross country all finding their way into the Top 20, along with three more men's lacrosse stories.
Again, that's just post-event stuff.
The list is dominated by, among other entries, the coverage of Princeton's Olympians and their efforts last summer in London.
Anyway, that's your last top 10 list from TB for 2012.
It's 2013.
Happy new year to you.
And that's the last time TB is saying that for awhile as well.
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1 comment:
Happy new year, Tiger Blog. I'm a somewhat recent squash alum and was pleased to the news about the national championship played pretty well in the statistics! Sometimes I wonder if only squashies care about that sort of thing.
In a bit of a random aside, I've recently started a squash blog. I think I have the dubious distinction of being the only Princeton alum squash bloggger. I invite you to come by and check it out!
Happy 2013
Pierre Bastien '98
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