Tie Game

If you were to invite FatherBlog to the beach, there's a 50-50 chance he'd show up in a jacket and tie.

Okay, maybe not 50-50. At least 40-60 though.

It was FatherBlog who taught his son to tie a tie, a long, long time ago. It was FatherBlog who tried to instill in his son that he should wear a tie to work every day, regardless of what the job was.

And it was FatherBlog who winced that rainy, muddy Thanksgiving Day in the 1980s, when TigerBlog set out to cover a high school football game wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

These days, TigerBlog is most likely to be found wearing Princeton Athletics gear during his work day. Oh, he still has some ties, a few of which are Princeton-centric, including a great yellow Princeton lacrosse tie.

He also has two red-and-blue ties, but that's just a coincidence.

TigerBlog Jr. goes to a school where ties are required every day. TB always chuckles when he sees a group of students there, especially late in the day, when the ties aren't exactly in perfect order.

TB can tie a nice tie, with a good, crisp knot that aligns perfectly with the collar. Even if he doesn't have to do it that often.

The OAC is the home of head shots for Princeton's athletes, and hundreds and hundreds of young men have come into TB's workplace and attempted to tie ties without a mirror.

In most cases, they use the same tie for an entire team. The first player will put it on, get his picture taken and then give it to the next. Often they will share the same dress shirt and jacket even, if necessary.

It's all part of team bonding, TB supposes. Well, the tie part. Even the jacket. The shirt part is a bit gross.

It's quite a sight, seeing a line form, knowing that there is one tie for an entire team, knowing that TB is going to hear "how do I look?" and "is my tie straight" a few dozen times in the next half hour or so.

In all the years that this has gone on, TB has encountered two freshmen who didn't know how to tie a tie. TB will not be naming names.

The most recent example was Monday. Like the first time, TB showed him how to tie it, and he did okay for the first try. Not great. But it was a start.

And when you see his picture on goprincetontigers.com, you won't be able to tell that the back of the tie drifted down below the front.

All this talk of ties got TB thinking about, well, ties. Of a different sort.

The 1995 Princeton football team won the outright Ivy League championship at Dartmouth. Heading into the final weekend, TB put the list of possible scenarios in his game notes.

Prior to that game, there was the possibility of anything from an outright championship to a four-way tie between Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell and Penn, who all played each other that weekend. Almost as an afterthought, TB included what would happen in the event of tie games.

As it famously turned out, Brock Harvey scrambled to inside the one-yard line with four seconds left, and Alex Sierk hit the field goal that tied Dartmouth 10-10, giving Princeton the outright title.

There was no overtime back then, so the tie stood.

Suppose there had been overtime in 1995. What would Princeton have done on the final play of regulation? Go for the touchdown and the championship? Kick the field goal to go to overtime?

TB has to think it would have been worth the risk from inside the 1. After all, there's probably close to an 85% chance or so that you'd score a touchdown, while overtime is 50-50.

Football doesn't exactly lend itself to sudden-death overtime, though TB prefers the college OT method to the NFL one. 

The 1995 game against Dartmouth was the last one Princeton played where ties were possible. The rule to have overtime came in in 1996, and Princeton was involved in an OT game in Week 1, when it lost to Cornell.

This would be Season No. 18 with the overtime rule in college football, and Princeton has played 14 overtime games in that time, going 8-6. The biggest win of those OT games was the 2006 two-overtime win over Penn, 31-30, in a game that featured the famous Jeff Terrell-to-Rob Toresco pitch on fourth down after Terrell was stopped short of the goal line.

TB loves overtime in men's lacrosse, because it can end at any time and the drama is constant. He doesn't understand why women's lacrosse doesn't play sudden death as well, instead playing two three-minute OTs and only then sudden death if it's still tied.

Field hockey has to have a winner. Soccer doesn't. When soccer does need a winner, it goes to penalty kicks, something TB hates. Basketball overtime should only be three minutes, not five.

And what's so bad about a tie in football anyway? The rule probably exists to take the pressure of coaches from having to explain why they kicked the extra point to get a tie rather than going for two and the win.

Anyway, ties aren't so bad.

Once you learn how to tie them.