Kicking Off

TigerBlog didn't make it anywhere close to the end of the Rutgers-Fresno State game last night.

He mostly forgot about the game until this morning, when he was checking out Twitter, which is a really frustrating way to figure out who won. Nobody ever posts the final score, at least TB's followers don't.

Take  Eddie Timanus of USA Today and Patrick Stevens of #d1scourse, for instance. They keep TB updated in a very humorous way, except at the end, when they simply say things like "oh well" or "that's the game" or "goodnight Twitterverse."

TigerBlog had to go all the way to his Yahoo sports app to get the final score this morning.

And what a final it was. Fresno State 52, Rutgers 51 in overtime.

TigerBlog wanted to see Rutgers win. He knows a lot of RU alums and no Fresno State alums.

In addition, Rutgers tight end Paul Carrezola is the older brother of Bridget Carrezola, one of Miss TigerBlog's buddies and a field hockey and lacrosse teammate. There are actually four Carrezola children, each one a big-time athlete, with Bridget the youngest and possibly best of all of them.

Rutgers, playing in the AAC this year after the Big East last year and the Big 10 next year, combined with Fresno State for 114 passing attempts and nearly 1,100 yards of offense, of which 804 came through the air.

It was quite a start to the college football season, not just in the game but all around the country.

The Thursday before Labor Day is the first day of the college football season, and there were games galore. The marquee player was South Carolina's Jadeveon Clowney, who is probably going to be the No. 1 pick in next year's NFL draft.

TB can't hep but wonder if Clowney is that good or just happened to make about the biggest hit ever in a football game, something that is etched in everyone's mind and replayed a billion times - and possibly illegal this year by the next rules about hitting defenseless ballcarriers.

The schedule gets even more crowded as the weekend goes along, with some pretty good matchups along the way. There were 17 games yesterday, with eight more today and then 47 tomorrow, two Sunday and one Monday.

College football is back. And it should be back in a big way, what with the way that sport has driven all of the conference realignment that has left so many soccer players and field hokey players and yes, basketball players, left to sort through the carnage as they make insanely long trip after insanely long trip to play schools they have no natural connection to, while longtime rivals are doing the same.

As is the case every year, Princeton football is going through its earliest practices while the rest of the college football world is playing games.

TB is okay with it.

Princeton opens Sept. 21 - three weeks from tomorrow - at home against Lehigh. It's the start of the 10 games in 10 weeks sprint that is Ivy League football.

TigerBlog thinks the perfect schedule for an Ivy League team would be to start the season two weeks earlier than it does now, meaning next weekend. The teams would play six games, and then the entire league would take a week off, coming back the following week to play five more games, all within the league.

This adds an 11th game obviously, something that is pretty controversial within the league. And it pushes the start of preseason back two weeks, which adds significant expense.

Even if the possibility of an 11th game is unlikely, TB would love to see the season start a week earlier and have each Ivy team take that one week in the middle off.

It'd be good for resting and recovering from the pounding of an Ivy season, which is the No. 1 reason TB likes it.

It would also be good for recharging the season itself, with a big push for the second half, as each game is a league game and the season really starts to sort itself out.

Anyway, that's what TigerBlog would do.

In the meantime, there is a lot of college football to be watched, even if it's not yet September.

And of course the Princeton athletics season has its first games a week from today, with soccer, field hockey and volleyball kicking off as well.

So enjoy Labor Day weekend. Come Tuesday, it'll be gameweek for Princeton.

If TB's plan were enacted, it would apply to football as well.