The Film Session, Starring Bob Surace

Miss TigerBlog's high school field hockey season is past the two-thirds point.

Her team is doing well, with a 9-4 record. It's been a bit frustrating to watch some of the losses, since her team scored first in three of them.

At one point, TigerBlog asked the father of another player on the team - a man whose older son TB had coached in youth lacrosse - why it doesn't seem to bother the players on the team that they let those games get away.

His response: "It's not as important to the girls as it is to the boys."

TigerBlog hates to think that's the case. He coached many of these same girls in basketball when they were younger, and, despite being told that he couldn't coach girls the same way as boys, he tried to do so anyway.

If you're going to play, you have to play the right way. It doesn't matter if it's men's or women's, boys' or girls' sports. 

Despite the unbelievable gains women have made in the sports world, there is still a large segment of the population that views women's (and girls' ) athletics as less valuable, less interesting, less worthy than those of their male counterparts.

The shocking part is how many women feel this way. TigerBlog has seen this up close with MTB's sports, with many of the mothers and girls who compete who view it as something of an extension of a social activity, rather than a competition.

TigerBlog wasn't stunned to hear on the radio - sports talk, and politics station - that so many men didn't like having Jessica Mendoza as an ESPN analyst for the Yankees-Astros playoff game the other night. He was stunned that women who called didn't like her either.

TigerBlog watched almost none of the game, but he did hear enough to think that Mendoza - a four-time All-America softball player at Stanford - knew her stuff and conveyed it well.

One thing TB likes about Mendoza is that he has no idea what she looks like. If nothing else, it means she's not on TV simply because of her looks.

TigerBlog thinks that very few people have set back the cause of women being taken seriously in sports as sideline reporters. You know, the ones who say "so and so told me that ..." Why do viewers need to know that the coach told her that?

TB heard one exchange last week that went like this:
Sideline report: You told me that you're not interested in sack stats, but how do you get more pressure on the quarterback?
Coach: We have to have 11 guys playing together.

Then he ran off. Wow. TigerBlog felt so informed after that one.

There will be no TV for the Princeton-Colgate football game tomorrow. Princeton looks to run its record to 4-0 in its final non-league game, while Colgate looks to get back to .500.

The Raiders bring a 2-3 record to Princeton, though it was 0-3 two weeks ago. In defense of the Raiders, they have played a tough schedule, with losses to Navy, New Hampshire and Yale before wins over Holy Cross and Cornell.

There will be a bigger crowd at the game than there was at the last one. Of that, TigerBlog is certain.

The last one, if you forgot, was a 10-5 Princeton win over Columbia in the first 10-5 game in program history. The week before that Princeton beat Lehigh in the first 52-26 game in program history.

The week before that, Princeton beat Lafayette in the second 40-7 game in program history, though the first win. TigerBlog is going to guess that whatever the final score of the game tomorrow, it won't be the first time in program history that that score comes up.

Anyway, TigerBlog doesn't want to talk about Princeton's football game. He wants to talk about Princeton's football coach, Bob Surace.

In case you didn't realize it yet, Surace isn't your average football coach.

What your average football coach doesn't do is take time out of his gameweek preparations to appear in a video with the University mascot, a spoof of a video at that.

And what your average football coach especially doesn't do is refilm the video two days later to make it a little better. And what your average football coach really especially doesn't do is push back a staff meeting 15 minutes to do the refilming.

That, of course, is exactly what Bob did earlier this week.

Bob appears in the fourth episode of "Who's The Tiger," in a video entitled "The Film Session."

The video is currently on goprincetontigers.com.

You can see all four of the videos through the links in that story. There will be two more next week, and several others will follow those.

As for Surace's performance, TigerBlog gives him high marks. He could have played it low-key, but he went all in with his delivery.

If you don't know Surace, that's him in a nutshell. Do the video? Sure. Do it again? Sure. Do it now? Okay, let me just move my meeting.

If you don't know him, he's a fun guy, a nice guy, a team guy, a solid guy.

Oh, and a really good coach.