TB-Baltimore Chimes In

TigerBlog has offered anyone who ever worked in TigerBlog HQ the opportunity to contribute. Today, TigerBlog-Baltimore (a.k.a. David Rosenfeld, who worked here as an intern in the mid-’90s and then again for five more years before leaving in 2008 to work in communications at the Gilman School). TB-Baltimore's favorite sport at Princeton was men's basketball, and he was the contact during his second stint here at HQ. After receiving a present in the mail, TB-Baltimore offers up these thoughts:

Tonight is Midnight Madness, which has become the traditional beginning of the Division I college basketball season at many schools. (Okay, it’s not at midnight anymore, but it’s still the same idea.)

Fans show up early; marketing and promotion staffs entertain them with contests, games and prizes. Eventually, out come the teams, men and women, to thunderous applause.

Some schools play short intrasquad scrimmages. Almost all have dunk contests with the men’s team. The coaches give motivational speeches to the crowd, urging for their support throughout the season.

As an aside, the Midnight Madness tradition began with TB-Baltimore's favorite college basketball team, the University of Maryland Terrapins (Fear the Turtle). Coach Lefty Driesell decided that his team should do a midnight mile run on the first day of practice in 1970. Two years later, one of his players asked Driesell if the team could have a midnight intrasquad scrimmage instead, and 8,000 people showed up. Maryland does Midnight Madness up pretty big; one of the highlights every year is the “Gary Williams Lookalike Contest,” when four or five students dress up like the head coach and imitate his well-known sideline mannerisms, all while the real Williams watches and “judges” the winner.

Princeton's experience with Midnight Madness is much tamer, but the unmistakable sounds of a new basketball season's approach will be obvious in Jadwin Gym as practices begin. As for an old season of Ivy League basketball, well, one is about to become a bit more famous.

"Outside the Limelight: Basketball in the Ivy League," written by Washington Post sportswriter Kathy Orton, will be released November 15.

Orton spent the 2005-06 season covering Ivy League basketball, coast-to-coast, and the result is a 240-page book in the vein of John Feinstein’s book on the Patriot League "The Last Amateurs." Feinstein, who sort of invented this genre with Season on the Brink and became very famous from it, is a colleague of Orton’s at the Post and wrote the foreword for Orton’s book.

The author was nice enough to send TB-Baltimore an advance copy, and it brought back lots of memories, both good and bad. Orton was there for Princeton’s 21-point performance against Monmouth, the lowest of low points, and for the season finale against Penn, when the Tigers won in overtime thanks to Justin Conway’s layup in the final seconds. It was a season of redemption for Princeton, which was 2-11 out of conference but finished 10-4 and in second place in the league.

TB-Baltimore also remembers specific times when Orton was around the Tigers, sitting on the floor for three hours during practice in a rec gym at Berkeley or during one her many one-on-one interviews with Scott Greenman, then the team’s senior captain and now an assistant coach. To his credit, then head coach Joe Scott was great about giving Orton that kind of access to the team, as were the rest of the league’s coaches.

Reading the book, TB-Baltimore tried to look at from the standpoint of an outsider. If you didn’t know anything about Ivy League basketball, what would be interesting about it? Two things stand out. One is the difficult Friday-Saturday night league schedule; the other is the lack of a postseason tournament. Nothing is easy when you play on back-to-back nights, sometimes with a four-hour bus ride between cities, and there’s no chance to make up for a disappointing finish with a miracle tournament run.

Some things about Ivy basketball are the same as every other league. The players practice and compete hard. They play on a high level, even against the highest-ranked teams in the country.

Some things are very different about Ivy basketball. Nobody’s on scholarship, no tutors travel with the team and no charter flights bring teams home after the games.

But the biggest difference between the Ivy League and any other league? It’s the hardest and most pressure-filled regular season in college basketball, and that’s what makes Ivy basketball interesting and Orton’s book worth reading.

Soccer, Soccer And ... Lacrosse

It was a big soccer night for TigerBlog, first as the Princeton men tied St. John's 1-1 and then when the U.S. team tied Costa Rica 2-2 on a goal nearly five minutes into stoppage time to win the CONCACAF group in the final World Cup qualifier and send Costa Rica – apparently they're called "the Ticos" – into a play-in series with Uruguay.

As far as the Princeton game goes, the teams are now a remarkable 7-7-9 combined after the tie (that's win-loss-tie, not win-draw-loss as the soccer world seems to do it). St. John's is now 3-2-7, just two off the NCAA record for ties in a season with five games to play. For whatever reason, it seemed somewhat preordained that the game last night would end up in a tie, even if Princeton had more good chances and St. John's had a layup in the final five seconds of the second OT.

The U.S. tie felt much more like a win, as the Americans – coached by Princeton alum Bob Bradley – rallied with two goals in the final 20 minutes to win the group, though TB isn't sure there's any tangible benefit to winning the group. The U.S., for that matter, had already clinched qualifying for the World Cup by beating Honduras Saturday night.

Costa Rica, which TigerBlog hears is a tremendous vacation spot, needed a win to qualify outright last night, and it was just seconds away from getting it. Instead, it is Honduras, which defeated El Salvador last night, who gets the third bid from the region (along with the U.S. and Mexico) and Costa Rica who must now get in by beating Uruguay.

As an aside, the U.S. game again proved that soccer works better than any other sport right now on TV. No commercials, a two-hour window to watch it and not-so-overbearing announcers. Which other sport can claim that?

After the U.S. game ended on ESPN2 (which had been preceded by the Princeton-St. John's game on ESPNU), TB turned to the Fox Soccer Channel to see one of his favorite shows, "The Fox Soccer Report." It's not as good as the "Premier League Review Show," but it's up there.

Because the entire day had consisted of World Cup qualifiers, TB got the whole global perspective. There was the game in Poland between Poland and Slovakia that was played in a blizzard. There were some teams – none as heartbreakingly as Costa Rica – who just missed qualifying. There were two (Spain and the Netherlands) who finished with perfect records in European qualification.

And, to prove that everything can lead back to Princeton lacrosse, there was Ireland, who finished second in its group and advances to a play-in series as well. TB was rooting hard for Spain and Ireland after the men's lacrosse trip to those countries a year ago, and it's good to see Ireland still in the mix after having reached only one World Cup tournament since 1990. Ireland failed to qualify for the 2008 European championships, an event that was going on while Princeton was in Europe. To put it mildly, it seemed to TB like a big deal to the Europeans.

Princeton's trip to Europe included two games in Spain against the English national team and one in Ireland against the English U19 team. The English were extraordinarily friendly "lads," and their coaches and managers were as well.

The English love for lacrosse was personified by Ravi Sitlani, known to all as "Baggy." And it was Baggy who replied to TB's email the other day with "lookin' forward to it, mate."

And what was TB's email? It was about the reunion of Princeton lacrosse and England lacrosse set for tonight at 7:30 or so at Class of 1952 Stadium, as the English are in town as part of their U.S. tour in advance of the 2010 World Championships, which will be held in Baggy's hometown of Manchester. Baggy, by the way, was interviewed on Inside Lacrosse after the English played at Hopkins earlier in the week.

Princeton will be playing for the first time with Chris Bates as its head coach. There are 23 players on the Princeton roster who played against the English team in Spain (not counting Jack McBride, who didn't join the trip until the Ireland leg after playing for the U.S. U-19 team).

The scrimmage tonight is free and open to the public. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. Either way, it'll be good to see Baggy and the rest of the English and of course some lacrosse.

After all, TigerBlog can't get by with just soccer.

Gently Down The Stream

TigerBlog would like to apologize to the people at "The Office" for doubting that they'd come up with a quality wedding episode for Jim and Pam last week. One of the best episodes of the show was the one where Phyllis got married, and yet TB thinks that the wedding of Jim and Pam topped it.

Certainly the scenes involving Andy were great. And Michael's interaction with the women in Pam's family. And anything with Dwight. It was a top 10 episode in the show's history, which is saying something.

Of course, it was on NBC at 9 last Thursday, which left it smack in the middle of Princeton-Colgate football. Not to worry. TB simply watched it Friday morning on his computer (while doing important work-related stuff at the same time, obviously).

This is the world we live in now. Can't see the show Thursday? Watch it on your computer whenever you want.

To those who have passed 30 or so, it wasn't always that way. TigerBlog remembers traveling with the Princeton men's basketball team on its Ivy League road trips back when he was in the newspaper business, which meant pulling out of Jadwin Gym after practice at around 7 or so and arriving at a hotel well after 11. In other words, it meant missing "Seinfeld" and "ER."

So what to do about it? Well, TB could set his VCR, but it seemed like having an available video cassette was always an issue. Plus, there was the whole issue of setting the VCR properly and not accidentally recording the wrong time or wrong channel. Or forgetting to do it in the first place.

TB was fortunate that his old roommate Jim Chesko was a bit, uh, consumed by recording every episode of many TV shows, and so Chet had his three VCRs going at the same time. He'd eventually edit the commercials out, and he'd have volume after volume of his favorite shoes, especially "Seinfeld," "The Larry Shandling Show" and "Friends." He also had great collections of live music he'd record from various sources.

Sadly, not everyone was as fortunate as TB was to live with Chet at the time. Besides, TB was evicted when Chet got married, leaving no access to the video collection - or Chet's two cats, Cybil and Lola, whom TB had grown to accept.

Fast forwarding nearly two decades, technology has long since rendered the VCR obsolete. Today, everything is available on your computer, or should be.

All of which brings us to TigerZone and Princeton's videostreaming efforts, as well as something of a education on priorities.

Princeton's earliest forays into videostreaming were basically about getting the local cable TV telecasts of Tiger football onto the earliest Webpage. It wasn't until maybe two years ago that videostreaming started in earnest, which is somewhat shocking to think about.

TigerBlog remembers a meeting two or three years ago with several coaches who wanted to go down the videostreaming path and TB's research into how hard it would be. The answer came back as "not very," and now not that far removed from those early meetings, Princeton (and every other school in the country) can videostream any event that originates from a site that has an ethernet connection.

The problem is that the more you're able to provide, the more that is expected of these productions. For the most part, videostreaming has consisted of using coaches' video, as opposed to a professional production with announcers and multiple cameras. Often, we here at HQ find ourselves at the mercy of the coaches and teams to find someone to run the camera; if not, there have been times where the camera stays as wide as possible and never moves (or, as in the case of a field hockey game, points only at one goal).

Still, as technology continues to advance, videostreaming will improve in quality. It's TigerBlog's contention that eventually it'll wipe out regular TV, with an ESPN360-type format being the norm.

The other issue is archiving the games, which is not a difficult task. It does, however, fall under the heading of many other tasks that people have to deal with that often get pushed away in favor of other, more interesting, projects.

The former director here at HQ is Kurt Kehl, who, by the way, celebrates his birthday today (it's also the 62nd anniversary of the day Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier). Kurt would always point out that the all-sports schedule that was printed here (back when we printed stuff) wasn't very glamorous but at the time was the publication with the highest quantity printed. In other words, so many more people would see the all sports schedule than, say, the men's lacrosse guide, but the idea of putting more of an effort into the schedule than the guide never entered TB's mind.

It's the same with archiving games. They're an afterthought compared with much of what goes on around here, but they are a huge part of what we do and more importantly a huge part of what people want to see.

It's easy to lose track of that fact in the day-to-day operation around HQ. It's easy to devote all of your time and all of your resources in certain directions, only to figure out in the end that it hasn't been a worthwhile allocation of those resources. At the same time, something as basic as archiving games goes a long way towards filling the needs of a large chunk of your constituents.

After all, it's 2009. If you want to watch Jim and Pam's wedding – or Princeton's most recent soccer games or any other event – it should be there for you.

Pop Quiz

You never know where your next abstract discussion of athletics is hiding, just waiting to pounce. In TigerBlog's case, it came up in the supermarket recently, in the dairy section.

That's where TigerBlog stumbled upon Marvin Bressler, the retired professor emeritus of sociology and the model for the Princeton Academic Athletic Fellows program. Dr. Bressler is also one of Pete Carril's best friends and a long, longtime observer of Tiger athletics.

The conversation started as TB saw Bressler furiously studying the nutritional content on a container of yogurt.

"You're 85 years old," TigerBlog said. "What do you care what's in it?"

Marv gave a quick laugh and started in about how he's more interested in the social statement his food choice is making than in its nutritional value. Then it was on to some other subjects.

It began with his thoughts about the Princeton-Colgate football game and went on for the next 20 minutes or so about Princeton coaches Roger Hughes and Sydney Johnson, who both pass Marv's "would you let your son play for them" test.

The main part of Marv's talk (lecture?) was about the nature of athletics and why people care about them. Why should he care so deeply, for instance, if the Phillies win or lose. He also said that when the Flyers were winning Stanley Cups in the 1970s and the entire city was fired up, he was asking what the big deal was that "our Canadians beat their Canadians."

TigerBlog has mentioned this before, but speaking with Bressler is a real treat. He's like life's graduate seminar professor: When you see him, you're almost always going to be left with a philosophical issue to debate with yourself.

In the dairy section, the pop quiz involved the reason why you root for a team. TB had no real answer to that other than entertainment or escapism or something like that, and he actually spent some of the day trying to figure it out.

TigerBlog's favorite pro team in any sport is by far is the Giants, a team that he has rooted for as long as he could remember and a team that has won three Super Bowls while TB has been a fan. The run two years ago to the championship would probably last TB forever if the Giants never win again.

Beyond that, TB has always been a Knicks' fan, though the last few years has made that nearly impossible. In baseball, his team early on was the Mets, but he switched to the Braves in 1990, the year before they started to get good, because 1) MotherBlog lived in Atlanta and 2) TB moved to Trenton, where he could not get Mets games anymore. His interest in the Braves lasted until TBS stopped showing the games, though it didn't hurt that the Braves were so good for so long and that David Justice, whom TB met on a plane trip from Atlanta to Philadelphia, called MotherBlog when she was in the hospital with terminal cancer and spoke with her for 20 minutes.

Anyway, between those teams, TigerBlog has had more than his share of moments where he had to have the "it's only sports; there are much more important things in life" talk with himself after tough losses. TB can understand being crushed by Princeton losses, where at least he knows the people involved, but Bressler is right: Why be so emotionally invested in something where you don't know any of the people involved?

Moving on from there, another big Bressler pop quiz is why universities field athletic teams, which leads to an argument Bressler has always said "he hopes to lose." The answer is actually much different at different schools on different levels, from raising the school's profile to history to habit to, of course, money.

Here at Princeton, it's often said and written that athletics are an extension of the overall educational mission of the institution. The interesting thing to TB is that we actually seem to mean it, and that's among the main reasons that we field athletic teams.

There are others, to be sure. Money, but way more through alumni contributions than from ticket sales, is a huge issue. Tradition is another. Princeton's athletic tradition runs so deep and is so ingrained in what the University is that it's impossible to conceive of it being any other way.

Which is, of course, a good thing. As TigerBlog has often said, the No. 1 point of identity for Princeton and the other seven schools is being called "the Ivy League." TB has heard any number of middle school parents talking about how great or unlikely or impossible or anything else it would be for their kids to go on to Ivy League schools.

And where did the term "Ivy League" come from? Right, it's an athletic designation.

So, there you have it, Dr. Bressler. TB's answers to today's pop quiz.

Now go home and eat your yogurt, and don't worry about the fat content.

Congrats To Bob Bradley

TigerBlog was flipping through the channels a few weeks ago when he stumbled on Bahrain-Saudi Arabia in their World Cup qualifier soccer game.

As the game approached the 90th minute with the score tied at 1-1, the announcers made it clear that a tie would send Bahrain on into the final play-in series, while Saudi Arabia needed a win to get the play-in spot. The one who didn't advance to the play-in would be eliminated from World Cup contention.

As an aside, TB was fascinated by the crowd shots, which showed no women in the stadium in Riyahd. TB also saw some of the first play-in game later on and was pretty sure there were no women in the crowd then either and wondered if the wives or female staff members or female media members with the New Zealand team were not permitted to attend.

Anyway, four minutes get added to stoppage time, and Saudi Arabia scores about 3:45 into those four minutes. This touches off a wild celebration that lasts nearly 10 minutes, but the ref makes play resume instead of calling the game at that point. Bahrain kicks off deep and gets a quick shot, which deflects off a Saudi defender for a corner kick.

As TigerBlog understands it, the refs will usually allow the corner kick before calling the game (would it be so hard to keep time on the scoreboard, and while we're at it, can we make it so you can't be offsides outside the box?), so Bahrain was able to take its corner. The result? Goal, and a 2-2 tie, so it was Bahrain that advanced to play New Zealand.

World Cup qualifying can have its bizarre moments. TB hasn't found one person, for instance, who can explain how the European groups are set up. Is it random? Some seeding? It's not geography, that's for sure.

For drama, though, it's been amazing to watch. It's somewhat like watching conference tournaments during college basketball season, only multiplied out to a few powers. The difference between qualifying and not qualifying for countries where soccer is so much a part of the national psyche is enormous.

There are currently 19 teams who have qualified for the 2010 World Cup, and the United States is one of them, after a 3-2 win over Honduras Saturday night that stunningly and shortsightedly was not shown on television in this country. Of the 19 teams that have qualified, the U.S. is one of six – along with Italy, Germany, Brazil, Spain and South Korea – to have made each of the last six World Cup tournaments.

Maybe this is a payoff for the army of kids who play soccer and how the soccer model with its travel teams and year-round play has completely changed the youth sports landscape in this country across almost every sport. Like many, TigerBlog has heard for decades that soccer was about to explode in this country, and to be honest it never really has, though it's certainly going down a bit of a different path the last few years.

TigerBlog – who had Cosmos season tickets at Giants Stadium back in the ’70s when that fad was playing out – attributes this to some smart marketing, advancing technology and good fortune. For starters, the soccer world has finally been able to get its great international stars to be recognizable figures in this country. Then there's the explosion of international soccer on American TV, especially the English Premier League. For TigerBlog's part, he could probably not have mentioned 10 players who played in the 2006 World Cup; now, less than four years later, he can probably name 10 times that many international soccer players.

And then there's the way soccer plays on television. It's a perfect fit, with no commercials and a two-hour window; it's completely unlike the way the NFL is determined to kill its golden goose with score-commercial-kickoff-commercial-play segments that spread three plays over six minutes or so. And don't get TB started on baseball, where a 0-0 baseball game in the sixth inning can reach the 2:30 mark, like last night's Yankees-Twins game did.

The head coach of the U.S. soccer team is of course Bob Bradley, a member of the Princeton Class of 1980. Bradley, the brother of current Princeton baseball coach Scott Bradley, played at Princeton and later coached the Tigers to the 1993 Final Four.

He remains one of the most interesting people TigerBlog has met at Princeton. Back in the newspaper day, TigerBlog covered the 1993 team on its run to the Final Four, and he has never forgotten his talks with Bradley about his philosophies on coaching, on the sport of soccer, on college athletics in general.

Through the years, TB has seen Bradley a few times but not too often, and TB and Bradley were never what could be considered close. Still, Bradley has always greeted TB by name, with obvious memories of prior conversations and experiences, with genuine interest in how TB is doing.

As a rule, TigerBlog likes to root for the U.S. in international competition. For the most part, at least, though he's not over the top about it. And TB has never understood why he should care if Italy can beat the U.S. in luge in the Winter Olympics or if some guy he never met from Austria can dominate some guys he never met from this country in tennis. Still, Bradley makes it even easier to root for the USA, even more so next year in the World Cup.

The U.S. qualification started TigerBlog thinking about Princeton alums coaching internationally. There are any number of Princeton alums who coach in the college and pro ranks in this country in many different sports, and Princetonians have coached in the Olympics many times.

Still, TB was trying to think of a similar achievement on the international stage, of a Princeton alum coaching the U.S. national team in an event as big as the World Cup. TB can't think of many, if any, that trump this one.

So congratulations to Bob Bradley for guiding the U.S. through the very complex road of World Cup qualifying and into the field of 32 in South Africa next year.

TB will be watching and rooting. Why not? It only takes two hours.

Working OT

TigerBlog has a bookcase in his office that contains basically nothing but dust and some hard-bound books. One of the books contains every men's lacrosse media guide produced here at HQ; the other 25 or so contain the football game programs during each year going back to the 1980s.

TB broke out the 1996 binder this morning in search of something specific, which he found at the back of that year's Brown game program. Before getting to that, though, TB took a stroll down memory lane, which included some great stuff from Princeton Athletic News, Volume 64, No. 3, including:
* a story by Manish Mehta on Princeton offensive tackle Dave Maier; Manish is now "M.A." Mehta, who continues to write similar stories for the Star-Ledger
* a story about two other offensive linemen, Travis Pulliam and Jason Griffiths, which included the headline "Block Party;" the headline was probably written by Kurt Kehl, now Vice President of Communications for the Washington Capitals
* Two TB features about three of his all-time favorites from Princeton Athletics: women's basketball player Kim Allen, the subject of the "Tiger Tracks" feature that is still a staple of the game program, and a piece on Hank Towns and Cap Crossland of the equipment staff, reflecting on the old stadium in that's year's series "Palmer Memories"

Eventually, TB made it to the last page, where he found what in some ways was the forerunner of TigerBlog itself, an opinion piece entitled "The Last Word." This particular edition was written by TB-Baltimore, and it was entitled: "OT? Not for me, says this fan of college football." If TigerBlog is correct, it went on to win a CoSIDA writing contest award.

TB-Baltimore wrote about how in the first week of the first season with the OT rules, two of the four Ivy League games played went to overtime.

"What is it about ties in college football that precipitated the current overtime rule," he wrote, "a rule that breaks down a hard-fought battle between two evenly matched teams and turns it into the first-and-two-completions game you played as a kid?"

Pretty good stuff out of TB-Baltimore. No wonder he won an award.

As an aside, OT came to college football largely to protect coaches from having to explain why they played for a tie or a win.

Anyway, TigerBlog always thinks back to that piece whenever Princeton plays overtime, which it did for the 14th time when the Colgate-Princeton game was tied 7-7 after 60 minutes. Colgate ended up winning 21-14 in two OTs, leaving Princeton 7-7 in those 14 games.

It's not that TB is anti-overtime per se; it's that overtime and football don't go together so well.

Overtime is best in men's lacrosse, of course, when each second of the OT is dramatic and few OT games go past the first four-minute session. TB is not a fan of the women's lacrosse OT rule that says that the teams will play two three-minute periods regardless of how many goals are scored; OT should be sudden-death.

Baseball has a natural flow with extra-innings. Basketball overtime is two minutes too long for TB, but he can deal with it. Hockey? It's great for five minutes, after which a tie is fine, and postseason overtime hockey in college or the NHL is tremendous for its drama (unless it goes four overtimes or something like that). TB is no fan of the shootout.

Soccer on the college level has it right. Two 10-minute periods, sudden death. Drama, without getting tedious (except when it gets to the penalty kicks in the NCAA tournament; TB hates that). Of course, soccer on the college level has so many rules that are better than soccer on the international level, most notably reasonable substitution rules and most importantly a clock that is actually kept on the scoreboard for everyone to see.

Getting back to football, though, it's hard to figure out what's right. Is it the NFL, where the coin toss to start OT is so important? Is it the college way, which takes special teams basically out of the equation? The biggest problem with NFL overtime is that the end is so anti-climactic, since it's usually obvious that a team is setting up a chip-shot field goal or pounding it in from close.

At least in the college game, there is drama. Princeton scored a touchdown on its first possession, meaning that Colgate had to do likewise to force a second OT (which the Raiders did).

Given the choice between the current NFL and college formats, TB would choose the college one. Maybe if the NFL spotted the ball on the 20 and then flipped a coin, giving the winner the choice between offense and defense, the NFL format would be better.

TigerBlog's main objection to the college game is what it does to the final score and the stats. Last night's game was 7-7, which is indicative of a great defensive struggle, not 21-14, which is an average score. All the stats in the overtimes are somewhat tainted as well, though they count towards team and individual records.

Mostly, TB comes back to this: Princeton's last outright Ivy title was won with a 10-10 game against Dartmouth, and the most famous game in Ivy football history was a 29-29 epic between Harvard and Yale in 1968.

In other words, what's so bad about a tie?

Mazel Tov, Jim And Pam

So Jim and Pam are getting married tonight? Ah, there's nothing like a great TV wedding. The woods are filled with them, some of which have been well done and most of which end up being 1) hokie and 2) the beginning of the end of the show.

As for "The Office," let's hope that this show is in the minority, the one that can stay funny after the big wedding episode.

Still, there's no reason to actually watch "The Office" tonight. First of all, this episode can't be nearly as funny as the one when Phyllis got married several seasons back. Second, if you really want to see it, it'll be online tomorrow.

And finally, you can't watch it because Princeton is playing Colgate in football on ESPNU at 7 p.m., so it'll be early in the second half of the game when the wedding starts.

Princeton is fortunate to have its ESPN deal, one that guarantees seven home events will be on one of the ESPN networks each year. In reality, we've had more than seven each year, because away events (usually lacrosse games) don't count towards the agreement.

The deal grew out of Princeton men's basketball's history of being on television, especially ESPN. Through the years, Princeton had great games on ESPN, beginning of course with the 1989 NCAA tournament opening round game against Georgetown and including games at North Carolina and Duke, in the Meadowlands, at Kansas, in Hawaii, in the postseason NIT and many others, even games from Jadwin.

Out of that contact grew our original ESPN arrangement, which has since been extended so that this is Year 2 of a new five-year deal. Who knows where TV will be in four more years and what technologies will exist then, but it's safe to say ESPN figures to still be a major part of any college sports landscape.

As for the people at ESPN, they've been very open to televising a variety of sports, including events like water polo and soccer (next week's game against St. John's is on). Hockey has been a strong newcomer to the agreement, with another game this January to be televised.

Basketball and lacrosse are key components of the schedule each year, as is the night football game. This is the fourth straight year that Princeton will have one of its home games on ESPN, and it moves to Thursday night after the previous three Friday night events.

TigerBlog is wary of doing too much to change schedules for TV, especially after seeing football games on the schedule on Tuesday night and Wednesday night. Still, the opportunity for Princeton to have its game on in such a prominant spot, especially now that ESPNU continues to expand its availability, has been great for the athletes.

As for the game itself, it's easy to say No. 24 Colgate is a big favorite, but who knows? Princeton struggled a week ago against Columbia, but you're never as bad as you look when you lose and never as good as you look when you win.

Just as the woods are filled with TV weddings, they're also filled with teams written off the early season who came back to do just fine.

Going For 200

The official cereal of TigerBlog is Corn Flakes, which accounts for about 85% of the, oh, 10 million boxes of cereal TB has eaten in his life. Almost all of the rest has been Rice Krispies, though there have been brief flings with Golden Grahams, Frosted Cheerios, Apple Jacks and a few others.

As an aside, why do the cereal manufacturers insist on packaging their products inside plastic bags that cannot be opened without completely ripping apart the front, ensuring the cereal either falls into the bottom of the box or all over the counter when you try to pour it out?

Anyway, there was TB this morning, eating his Corn Flakes and reading the newspaper, when whose giant picture should be all over Page 1 of the sports section but Princeton High senior girls' soccer player Chantal Celestin?

Chantal is the older of Ron and Annette Celestin's two daughters, along with C.C., a freshman at Princeton High. Ron Celestin has been part of the women's soccer coaching staff at Princeton since 1995, Julie Shackford's first season as head coach.

Shackford has won 157 games at Princeton, more than any other men's or women's soccer coach in school history. Prior to that, she started the program at Carnegie Mellon and won 42 games there, giving her 199 for her career.

With one more victory, Shackford will become the 40th coach in Division I women's soccer history to reach the 200-victory mark for a career. Her winning percentage of .657 prior to this season ranked 34th all-time (TB didn't feel like adding up every active coach in the same general area as Shackford, so we'll go with the beginning of the season). The accomplishment is more impressive considering that at Carnegie Mellon her teams played only 15 games per year, and the 17 regular-season games Ivy schools play are also fewer than the rest of D-I.

Her first attempt at 200 wins comes Saturday afternoon at Brown. Milestones, by definition, usually fall fairly randomly in the history of an athlete or coach or team, and this time will be no different.

For Shackford, her biggest win is No. 157, the one that put Princeton into the 2004 NCAA Final Four. It is the only time an Ivy League team has reached the women's soccer Final Four and the only time any Ivy League team has reached the Final Four of a 64-team NCAA tournament, and it is the equal of any great athletic accomplishment at Princeton in the last 25 years or so.

Other big wins include 102 (first Ivy League title for the Tigers in 18 years), 116 (first NCAA win at Princeton for Shackford), 152 (2004 OT win over Harvard) and 195 (OT win over Penn for last year's Ivy title, the program's fifth in the last nine years).

They're all random numbers, but they were all huge wins, certainly bigger than No. 200 will be. Still, a milestone like the 200th win for a coach is as good a time as any to reflect on the coach and the program.

Princeton has had some great head coach-assistant coach combinations since TB has been around, combinations that were notable not only for their success but also for their ability to sustain it over many years. The two most notable, of course, were men's basketball with Pete Carril and Bill Carmody (17 year together) and Bill Tierney and David Metzbower in men's lacrosse (20 years together).

Now in its 15th season, the Shackford-Celestin combination is Princeton's second-longest current matchup of a head coach and an assistant coach (Bob Callahan and Neil Pomphrey in men's squash have been at it two more years). They were introduced at Ft. Dix, of all places, by current religion professor and Academic Athletic Fellow for the men's soccer team Jeff Stout, when Shackford was new to Princeton and recruiting at a tournament there and Celestin was working with his ODP team. Celestin, who had coached Princeton High to a state championship as its boys' coach, has been together with Shackford ever since.

As with any other head coach-assistant coach combination, their roles are much different, and it is Shackford (like Tierney, with whom she was very close) who has been the national Division I Coach of the Year, the one whose name appears in the NCAA record books, the one who talks to the media after the game, the one who speaks at the coaches' luncheons.

She is the first to credit her entire coaching staff for her success, including current assistants Scott Champ and Julio Vacacela and all of her former assistants. It's part of being a good head coach.

Still, there is a special closeness between Shackford and Celestin, forged over the years they've been together. They've seen each other through good times and bad, big wins and tough losses, deaths in the family, births of children and even the stroke that Celestin suffered two years ago.

Win No. 199 for Shackford came Monday night, when the Tigers defeated American 1-0 at Roberts Stadium. As is the case after most home games, Shackford's children Kayleigh, Keegan and Cameron hopped the fence to get onto the field, as did C.C. Celestin. For about the next half-hour, the three Shackford kids, all strong youth players, shot on C.C., who towered over them as the goalkeeper. Chantal stood off to the side and watched.

No. 200 will be a nice accomplishment, but ultimately it's just a number. Decades from now, when they look back on their time together, Shackford and Celestin will probably remember moments like after the game Monday night, when five kids who have literally grown up together as their parents rebuilt Princeton women's soccer and turned it into a national power played soccer on a practice field, a next generation united by their parents' unbreakable bond.

Kid Cam

TigerBlog Jr. and his friend Matthew (a 12-year-old with size 12 shoes) strolled into the PA booth at Princeton Stadium Saturday afternoon before kickoff for the Princeton-Columbia football game.

They were ready to do their usual: eat, drink, wander around, come back, ask for money, eat more, watch the game, ask for more money, run around for the fifth quarter. It's pretty standard procedure by now.

This time, though, TigerBlog was one step ahead of them. How would they like to take the FlipCam and spend the game walking around the stadium interviewing kids? Put together a video for goprincetontigers.tv?

The video itself is filled with some cute moments, none cuter than when the shy little girl with the big blue eyes runs back to her mother and hides on her shoulder. If there is one that rivals that moment, it's when the little boy says he's going to get "popcorn and water."

There's also Matthew's brother William, who announces that No. 94 is his favorite player. No. 94, of course, is Kevin Sochovka, a promising freshman linebacker who has not played yet. And it was good to see how many little kids there were at the game, and it was nice to see how they warmed up to the camera.

Also, TBJ captured much of what goes on at Princeton football, with a good look at TigerTown and some footage from the sidelines, especially of the postgame handshake ("good sports," TBJ says in the background, "good sports.").

The most telling thing to TB about the video, though, is at the end, when TBJ is on the field for the fifth quarter. He asks three somewhat older kids (maybe in the 12-14 range) how they liked the game, how they like the fifth quarter. Then he asks if they're bummed that Princeton lost.

"Yeah, but it's still exciting," one of them says.

That, in a nutshell, is what we here at HQ are trying to accomplish as far as football marketing goes. It's a Trenton Thunder theory - get families to the game and provide them with a great atmosphere, and if the game is secondary to that, that's okay.

TigerBlog has always assumed that very few people who go to Thunder games know the players, know who won, know what the Major League affiliates are, know the standings of the Eastern League. They go for the event, for the atmosphere.

It's not 100% the same at Princeton football, because 1) there are five or six home games a year instead of 71 and 2) because the Ivy League football championship is a more tangible goal than the EL championship, where the issue is more on player development. Still, there is a great segment of the audience to whom we are marketing who are coming for the entertainment.

To that end, we are not competing against Rutgers or the NFL for ticket buyers. We're competing against the movies, against roller skating parties, against mini-golf, against trips to the shore, against an expensive dinner out. At least as it applies to the families who attend.

We're doing this with low ticket prices (lower than the movies, that's for sure), and with the kind of entertainment that TBJ got in his video.

Princeton lost to Columbia 38-0 Saturday. At physical therapy Monday morning, Sue greeted TigerBlog with a thank you for the tickets and a mention that Paige, her nine-year-old, loved the game and asked when they could go again.

That's a big part of what we're looking for here at HQ.

If They Won't Print You

This TigerBlogger recently read that his hockey team of choice, the Los Angeles Kings, hired its own beat reporter, a fellow named Rich Hammond who, until hired by the Kings, worked for the L.A. Daily News. Hammond will cover all things Kings for lakings.com, the team's Web site.

Of course, one of the first questions is, how can a writer be truly independent if his bill is being footed by the team he's supposed to cover? We'll get to that in a moment, but first let's touch on why the Kings hired their own writer and what this has to do with Princeton.

In the Los Angeles sports scene these days, there is Laker season and Laker offseason. That's pretty much it. Everything else is filler, sadly, even the Dodgers. A hockey team that hasn't won a playoff series since 2001? Not high on the list.

With newspapers cutting their staffs to bare bones, who's got the time or money to send a writer to Edmonton to cover a fifth-place team?

At Princeton, whether Tiger teams get coverage has little to do with win-loss record and almost everything to do with the sports climate in the state. New Jersey isn't a big college sports state, and with Princeton being a private school with students from all corners of the Earth rather than the state's main public university, coverage is further rationed with the way newspapers are today.

If you're not the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets, Phillies or Eagles, good luck getting on the front page of the sports section in the Garden State.

Rather than hoping for a squirt of ink from the local papers, the Princeton Athletic Communications office took to the Web a decade ago, cutting out the middleman. The Kings may have just hired their own writer, but Princeton Athletics has had a handful of people to cover games and bring them directly to interested readers since 1999.

Want to read about how the soccer game went? It'll be on GoPrincetonTigers.com before the bus is warm. Preview stories, video, on and on, we've got it here. It's content that outside media doesn't have the manpower to cover, but we do, and professional teams are figuring that out. Not satisfied with the coverage you're getting from the L.A. Times and ESPN.com? Cover yourself, yourself. You're able to get out the message you want, promoted as prominently as you want it in the kind of timely manner you want it displayed.

Can we be independent in what we write? Consider the difference in what we're asked to cover. We cover college kids who, as the NCAA commercials say, are likely to go pro in something other than sports. Typing up a column criticizing a 20 year-old from whatever sport when s/he goes back to the on-campus residence after the game to prepare for the next day's organic chemistry exam seems a little unnecessary. The Kings' writer is going to cover professional hockey players, most of whom have been preparing for life as a professional hockey player since before they could drive themselves to practice.

That said, the Internet provides a way for feedback, something you can exercise by clicking that comment button and sending us your thoughts. We haven't been shy about allowing criticism in the past.

So, as the professional teams pick up on the trend Princeton and many other universities began years ago, each Web site becomes its own little newspaper, digitally updated as the trend toward narrowcasting continues.

It's an era when the quaint New York Times slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print" is as much of an anachronism as waiting until the morning paper hits your doorstep to find out the score.