So two people snuck into the White House for a formal state dinner? TigerBlog hopes that the Secret Service doesn't take the blame for this, because it's unlikely that it's their fault.
The fact that these two did this shows a great deal about contemporary society. What was the motivation? To get on a reality TV show, of course.
America today is all about celebrity, regardless of what it took to get it. It used to be that celebrity was achieved by actually doing something, usually something requiring at least some degree of talent. Aside from Ed McMahon and Princeton's own Brooke Shields, TigerBlog doesn't remember too many people who were famous simply for being famous.
Today, the woods are full of people who have achieved fame by being on a reality show or any other now-familiar paths. Looking for a good punishment for the two White House crashers? Never allow them on TV again. That'd be perfect for them.
And why can TigerBlog be so sure it wasn't the fault of the Secret Service? Because TB has dealt with that organization twice, and both times he came away fairly certain that nobody who wasn't on the right list with the right ID and with the proper security check was going to be getting anywhere near the President.
TigerBlog has been fortunate enough to shake the hand of two sitting United States Presidents, one of whom he voted for and one of whom he didn't. Regardless of that little fact, it was an honor to be able to meet the President, one TigerBlog owed to Princeton athletes both times.
The first time came in 1996, when Bill Clinton spoke at graduation at Nassau Hall. TigerBlog volunteered that day to work as a coordinator of the national press corps, a job that included taking Wolf Blitzer to the U-Store.
TB was told to be at Chancellor Green at 6 a.m. that day in advance of the visit of the President and the press that follows him. While walking up Washington Road, TB saw a limo speed by and turn onto Prospect, where the door opened to allow a gardener, a student, a businessman, a priest and a jogger to get out. TB assumes they were all Secret Service agents.
TigerBlog was greeted by Secret Service agents at the first security checkpoint, where he was cleared and issued a credential. The checkpoint was inside the buildling; the area between the building and the green at Nassau Hall was considered restricted. During the next six hours or so, not one person who wasn't authorized to cross from Point A to Point B was able to do so. What struck TigerBlog most was how polite the Secret Service agents were to those who tried to get across the path, no matter how belligerent the person became.
Finally, Mr. Clinton arrived, in the middle of a caravan of limos that included sharpshooters in every one. They went along with the sharpshooters who had been positioned on the roofs surrounding the area.
After his speech, Mr. Clinton greeted the women's rugby team and the men's lacrosse team, both of whom had won national championships. TigerBlog was allowed to be part of the lacrosse reception line, and he stood at the end of the group as the President came by and shook everyone's hand. To this day, more than 13 years later, TB always pauses when he goes by that spot in front of Prospect House and thinks "this is where I shook the President's hand."
The second time TB met the President was in 2003, when the women's lacrosse team made its second-straight visit to the White House after winning the NCAA title. Because women's lacrosse contact Tom Milajecki had left for a new job, TB was selected to replace him for the trip to DC.
The Princeton bus that pulled up in front of the White House was searched thoroughly, including by agents who inspected the bottom of the vehicle. Then it was through checkpoints that included pressurized chambers before entering the White House.
Princeton was led upstairs to a waiting area before being brought into the main reception room. During this time, TB was able to get his picture taken under the portrait of Ronald Reagan.
Eventually, a White House staffer came in and told the assembled teams (all spring NCAA champs from that year) how to act when President Bush came into the room. Specifically, the rules said not to reach to him unless he reached to you first.
And then it was time to wait for Mr. Bush to come in through the same entrance as each of the teams, or so everyone thought. Instead, the President came in through a side door, which put him right next to TigerBlog as he walked in. Mr. Bush grabbed TB's hand and said "thanks for coming."
After he made his remarks and greeted one player from each team (TB took a good picture of the President with Sarah Small), the President was off, and each of the teams made their way out. In Princeton's case, it was off to the Capitol for a reception with the two Princeton alums in the Senate - Paul Sarbanes of Maryland and Bill Frist of Tennessee, then the Senate Majority Leader.
As TB looked back at the White House as the bus pulled away, he was struck by that he might never be back, might never have the chance to meet the President again. If not, TB considers himself lucky to have had the opportunity in the first, and second, place.
Looking back on it, TB also thinks that sneaking back into the White House wasn't exactly a good option and wasn't something that would have ended well for him. No matter, though.
TigerBlog isn't in it for the fame.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Same Old, Same Old
The NCAA women's soccer Final Four will be contested this weekend at Texas A&M, and it's not hard to guess who will be participating.
North Carolina? Check.
UCLA? Check.
Notre Dame? Check.
Those three teams seem to be a given in any women's soccer Final Four (real name: the College Cup, but TigerBlog doesn't like that term). UCLA's appearance this weekend will be its seventh straight, while Notre Dame will be there for the fourth straight time and seventh time in 11 years. North Carolina is only there for the third straight time, though the Tar Heels will be making their 25th semifinal appearance and will be chasing their 20th championship.
The fourth team is actually the top-ranked team in the country, Stanford, who is unbeaten and untied. The Cardinal are making their second-straight appearance in the Final Four, which means that the four teams who meet in College Station this weekend will be the same four who came together a year ago in Cary, N.C., when Carolina defeated UCLA and Notre Dame defeated Stanford in the semis before Carolina defeated Notre Dame in the final.
Clearly, it's a pretty elite group that reaches the Final Four in any sport, but in women's soccer, it's practically a closed club.
There have been 40 Final Four berths in women's soccer this decade, and those 40 spots were taken by just 12 teams, out of more than 300 who play the sport on the Division I level. One of those 12 was Princeton.
It's been five years since Princeton made its magical run to the Final Four, crashing the party along with UCLA, Notre Dame and Santa Clara. Princeton sprinted to a 15-2 regular season in 2004, earning the No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament.
The Tigers then defeated Central Connecticut 5-0, Villanova 1-0 in double overtime (on Maura Gallagher's goal off a corner kick), Boston College 2-0 (on two Emily Behncke goals) and then Washington 3-1 (second half goals by Esmeralda Negron and Kristina Fontanez) to advance to the Final Four. UCLA then defeated Princeton 2-0.
TigerBlog was at the Princeton men's opening round NCAA soccer game against Bucknell, which was the first postseason game played on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. Watching the rain fall and seeing how the field held the water and seeing the fans in the stands with access to a real concession stand and real bathrooms, TigerBlog couldn't help but think back to Lourie-Love Field, which used to stand on the same spot and was the site for all four of Princeton's 2004 NCAA women's games.
Lourie-Love had none of the amenities that Roberts Stadium has, and to be honest, Princeton is decidedly lucky to have the new stadium. In many ways, it's a direct result of the women's team's 2004 run.
Still, there was something charming about the rickety old wooden stands at Lourie-Love, stands that were jammed with more than 2,500 fans for the quarterfinal win over Washington.
TigerBlog has served as the sports information contact for football, men's basketball, men's lacrosse, men's and women's squash, sprint football, wrestling, men's and women's water polo and men's and women's rowing during his time here at HQ. He also spent three seasons as the women's soccer contact, including the 2004 Final Four run.
At the time, TB had no real context of the historic nature of what Princeton was accomplishing. Sure, he knew it was the first - and still only - women's soccer Final Four appearance by an Ivy League school, and clearly Princeton was treading in unchartered waters in terms of national rankings.
Now, looking back five years ago this week to Princeton's appearance in the Final Four, it's apparent that what the Tigers were able to accomplish then was extraordinary.
Getting to the Final Four in women's soccer? A handful of teams have done it, including the group that seems to do it every year. More than 300 never have and probably never will. Only 12 have done it this decade, including a history-making team from Princeton that joined the club five years ago.
North Carolina? Check.
UCLA? Check.
Notre Dame? Check.
Those three teams seem to be a given in any women's soccer Final Four (real name: the College Cup, but TigerBlog doesn't like that term). UCLA's appearance this weekend will be its seventh straight, while Notre Dame will be there for the fourth straight time and seventh time in 11 years. North Carolina is only there for the third straight time, though the Tar Heels will be making their 25th semifinal appearance and will be chasing their 20th championship.
The fourth team is actually the top-ranked team in the country, Stanford, who is unbeaten and untied. The Cardinal are making their second-straight appearance in the Final Four, which means that the four teams who meet in College Station this weekend will be the same four who came together a year ago in Cary, N.C., when Carolina defeated UCLA and Notre Dame defeated Stanford in the semis before Carolina defeated Notre Dame in the final.
Clearly, it's a pretty elite group that reaches the Final Four in any sport, but in women's soccer, it's practically a closed club.
There have been 40 Final Four berths in women's soccer this decade, and those 40 spots were taken by just 12 teams, out of more than 300 who play the sport on the Division I level. One of those 12 was Princeton.
It's been five years since Princeton made its magical run to the Final Four, crashing the party along with UCLA, Notre Dame and Santa Clara. Princeton sprinted to a 15-2 regular season in 2004, earning the No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament.
The Tigers then defeated Central Connecticut 5-0, Villanova 1-0 in double overtime (on Maura Gallagher's goal off a corner kick), Boston College 2-0 (on two Emily Behncke goals) and then Washington 3-1 (second half goals by Esmeralda Negron and Kristina Fontanez) to advance to the Final Four. UCLA then defeated Princeton 2-0.
TigerBlog was at the Princeton men's opening round NCAA soccer game against Bucknell, which was the first postseason game played on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. Watching the rain fall and seeing how the field held the water and seeing the fans in the stands with access to a real concession stand and real bathrooms, TigerBlog couldn't help but think back to Lourie-Love Field, which used to stand on the same spot and was the site for all four of Princeton's 2004 NCAA women's games.
Lourie-Love had none of the amenities that Roberts Stadium has, and to be honest, Princeton is decidedly lucky to have the new stadium. In many ways, it's a direct result of the women's team's 2004 run.
Still, there was something charming about the rickety old wooden stands at Lourie-Love, stands that were jammed with more than 2,500 fans for the quarterfinal win over Washington.
TigerBlog has served as the sports information contact for football, men's basketball, men's lacrosse, men's and women's squash, sprint football, wrestling, men's and women's water polo and men's and women's rowing during his time here at HQ. He also spent three seasons as the women's soccer contact, including the 2004 Final Four run.
At the time, TB had no real context of the historic nature of what Princeton was accomplishing. Sure, he knew it was the first - and still only - women's soccer Final Four appearance by an Ivy League school, and clearly Princeton was treading in unchartered waters in terms of national rankings.
Now, looking back five years ago this week to Princeton's appearance in the Final Four, it's apparent that what the Tigers were able to accomplish then was extraordinary.
Getting to the Final Four in women's soccer? A handful of teams have done it, including the group that seems to do it every year. More than 300 never have and probably never will. Only 12 have done it this decade, including a history-making team from Princeton that joined the club five years ago.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving As A Great Fall Nears Its End
As holidays go, you can't do much better than Thanksgiving. It's got it all, really: a huge meal (with turkey, no less), football, family, history (dates back to 1621), start of a four-day weekend for most people, leftovers. It's even a secular holiday, so every American can dive right in, regardless of religion.
TigerBlog attended many Manalapan-Marlboro Thanksgiving games a long, long time ago (the latest edition will be at Manalapan at 10 a.m. tomorrow). The Lions and the Cowboys, obviously, always play at home on Thanksgiving, and the NFL has now added a third game (maybe a little too much), which this year features the Giants and Broncos. Beyond watching football, how many out there have played their own Thanksgiving football games, all of which, by the way, are named "the Turkey Bowl?"
The holiday may lag behind Christmas in terms of great Hollywood movies, and "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" is no match for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Still, there are some great moments in movies and TV shows around Thanksgiving.
Rocky and Adrian had their first date on Thanksgiving – "To you it's Thanksgiving; to me it's Thursday," Rocky said romantically – as did Meadow and Jackie Jr. on "The Sopranos" (it didn't quite work out as well as it did for Rocky and Adrian). "Everybody Loves Raymond" had two pretty good Thanksgiving episodes, the one where Marie makes a low-fat dinner and the one where Debra makes fish instead of turkey. As an aside, TigerBlog's Aunt Regina once made Cornish game hens instead of turkey, so he knows how they all felt. And of course, there was the Thanksgiving episode of "Cheers," which has the big food fight at the end.
The Woody Allen movie "Hannah and Her Sisters" starts and ends on two different Thanksgivings. "Miracle on 34th Street" is a Christmas movie, but it does start with the Thanksgiving parade in New York City.
And of course, there is the best of all Thanksgiving movies: "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." It'll make you laugh a lot and cry a little, and it ends on Thanksgiving.
Today, the day before Thanksgiving, is much like the days before and after Christmas here at HQ, as there is almost nobody here. Some teams are on the road (women's basketball is already in California, with the men's team soon to follow; those trips are probably easier to make than the one the men's hockey team has to make tonight to Connecticut to play Quinnipiac.
It is a rare Thanksgiving when Princeton still has fall teams who are competing; in fact, this is the third time TB can remember. The first was in 1993, when the men's soccer team reached the Final Four. The second was 2004, when women's soccer and men's water polo played in the Final Four.
The third time is now, with men's water polo again in the Final Four, which will be played next weekend at DeNunzio Pool, no less. It's an achievement that will end a remarkable fall for Princeton teams.
Men's water polo will be the second Princeton team to compete in an NCAA Final Four, after the field hockey team did a week ago. A third team, women's cross country, finished fifth nationally, out of 321 Division I schools that sponsor the sport.
TigerBlog watched the cross country championship on television, and it doesn't exactly translate to how TV likes to televise sports. For starters, a 19-minute race doesn't need two separate two-minute breaks or a "sideline" reporter.
Still, the race was fascinating for two reasons. First, there was the story of Colorado's Jenny Barringer, who was supposed to win by a huge margin. Instead, after leading for much of the first half of the race and pulling away with Florida State's Susan Kuijken, Barringer slowed noticeably, was passed by numerous runners and ultimately collapsed. Amazingly, she got up and finished – a distant 163rd. The fact she finished was stunning because 1) she managed to go another two or three miles after falling and 2) because nobody stopped her from doing so (imagine the lawsuit if something bad had happened).
The second part of watching the race was the total inability to figure out what happened. As runners started crossing the line, it was impossible to keep track of who was from where and what it meant for the team scoring. Eventually it came out that Princeton was fifth, which is an incredible achievement.
Beyond the two Final Four teams and the cross country finish, there was also an NCAA appearance for the men's soccer team, who started and finished strong and earned a bid out of the incredibly tough Ivy League.
The women's soccer team went .500, but with the nucleus of freshmen assembled, the team is positioned extraordinarily for the next few years. Women's volleyball got off to a slow start under its new coach Jolie Ward, but the Tigers surged in the second half of the season to finish third in the league.
The men's cross country team finished second in the league by a single point to Columbia, also with a young team. The football team won its final two games and is now looking at a new start with a new coach, and the sprint football team, well, bless their hearts they keep trying.
All in all, it was an extraordinary fall for Princeton, one that doesn't want to come to a close.
So get your water polo tickets, as they're going fast.
And have a great Thanksgiving.
TigerBlog attended many Manalapan-Marlboro Thanksgiving games a long, long time ago (the latest edition will be at Manalapan at 10 a.m. tomorrow). The Lions and the Cowboys, obviously, always play at home on Thanksgiving, and the NFL has now added a third game (maybe a little too much), which this year features the Giants and Broncos. Beyond watching football, how many out there have played their own Thanksgiving football games, all of which, by the way, are named "the Turkey Bowl?"
The holiday may lag behind Christmas in terms of great Hollywood movies, and "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" is no match for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Still, there are some great moments in movies and TV shows around Thanksgiving.
Rocky and Adrian had their first date on Thanksgiving – "To you it's Thanksgiving; to me it's Thursday," Rocky said romantically – as did Meadow and Jackie Jr. on "The Sopranos" (it didn't quite work out as well as it did for Rocky and Adrian). "Everybody Loves Raymond" had two pretty good Thanksgiving episodes, the one where Marie makes a low-fat dinner and the one where Debra makes fish instead of turkey. As an aside, TigerBlog's Aunt Regina once made Cornish game hens instead of turkey, so he knows how they all felt. And of course, there was the Thanksgiving episode of "Cheers," which has the big food fight at the end.
The Woody Allen movie "Hannah and Her Sisters" starts and ends on two different Thanksgivings. "Miracle on 34th Street" is a Christmas movie, but it does start with the Thanksgiving parade in New York City.
And of course, there is the best of all Thanksgiving movies: "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." It'll make you laugh a lot and cry a little, and it ends on Thanksgiving.
Today, the day before Thanksgiving, is much like the days before and after Christmas here at HQ, as there is almost nobody here. Some teams are on the road (women's basketball is already in California, with the men's team soon to follow; those trips are probably easier to make than the one the men's hockey team has to make tonight to Connecticut to play Quinnipiac.
It is a rare Thanksgiving when Princeton still has fall teams who are competing; in fact, this is the third time TB can remember. The first was in 1993, when the men's soccer team reached the Final Four. The second was 2004, when women's soccer and men's water polo played in the Final Four.
The third time is now, with men's water polo again in the Final Four, which will be played next weekend at DeNunzio Pool, no less. It's an achievement that will end a remarkable fall for Princeton teams.
Men's water polo will be the second Princeton team to compete in an NCAA Final Four, after the field hockey team did a week ago. A third team, women's cross country, finished fifth nationally, out of 321 Division I schools that sponsor the sport.
TigerBlog watched the cross country championship on television, and it doesn't exactly translate to how TV likes to televise sports. For starters, a 19-minute race doesn't need two separate two-minute breaks or a "sideline" reporter.
Still, the race was fascinating for two reasons. First, there was the story of Colorado's Jenny Barringer, who was supposed to win by a huge margin. Instead, after leading for much of the first half of the race and pulling away with Florida State's Susan Kuijken, Barringer slowed noticeably, was passed by numerous runners and ultimately collapsed. Amazingly, she got up and finished – a distant 163rd. The fact she finished was stunning because 1) she managed to go another two or three miles after falling and 2) because nobody stopped her from doing so (imagine the lawsuit if something bad had happened).
The second part of watching the race was the total inability to figure out what happened. As runners started crossing the line, it was impossible to keep track of who was from where and what it meant for the team scoring. Eventually it came out that Princeton was fifth, which is an incredible achievement.
Beyond the two Final Four teams and the cross country finish, there was also an NCAA appearance for the men's soccer team, who started and finished strong and earned a bid out of the incredibly tough Ivy League.
The women's soccer team went .500, but with the nucleus of freshmen assembled, the team is positioned extraordinarily for the next few years. Women's volleyball got off to a slow start under its new coach Jolie Ward, but the Tigers surged in the second half of the season to finish third in the league.
The men's cross country team finished second in the league by a single point to Columbia, also with a young team. The football team won its final two games and is now looking at a new start with a new coach, and the sprint football team, well, bless their hearts they keep trying.
All in all, it was an extraordinary fall for Princeton, one that doesn't want to come to a close.
So get your water polo tickets, as they're going fast.
And have a great Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Help Wanted
TigerBlog isn't sure when "at the end of the day" earned such superstar status among American catch phrases. It's certainly not something people said 10, 20 years ago, or maybe it was, and TB never noticed.
It's never been one of TigerBlog's favorite ways of punctuating a thought with great finality, and apparently he's not alone. TB much prefers to say "here's the deal" to "at the end of the day."
Still, it's such a normal part of speaking these days that TB has been known to thrown it out there as well, as in "At the end of the day, maybe the best way to measure a Director of Athletics is by his or her track record in hiring head coaches."
Princeton has seven head coaches who predate the current AD, Gary Walters. Of those seven, two (men's track and field coach Fred Samara and women's track and field coach Peter Farrell) predate the previous AD, Bob Mylsik, and were hired by Sam Howell during Ken Fairman's tenure.
Myslik hired five coaches who are still here, and all five are among the greatest coaches in Princeton history: men's squash coach Bob Callahan, women's squash coach Gail Ramsay, women's swimming and diving coach Susan Teeter, men's swimming and diving coach Rob Orr and women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer. Myslik also brought legendary coaches like Bill Tierney in men's lacrosse and Glenn Nelson in volleyball to Princeton.
As for Walters, he has hired 41 head coaches in his 15+ years at Princeton, beginning with women's soccer coach Julie Shackford (the only coach ever to take an Ivy team to the women's soccer Final Four and a national Coach of the Year) in 1995.
To look realistically and honestly at Walters' record, only two of his 41 hires have not worked out at all: former men's basketball coach Joe Scott and former men's hockey coach Len Quesnelle. TigerBlog remembers the day Scott was hired, when almost every single person felt that Princeton basketball was headed to perpetual Top 25 status under the man who had such a great history at Princeton and who had taken Air Force to the NCAA tournament. TB remembers only one voice of caution, and it came from Brown SID Chris Humm, who suggested that it might not go as smoothly as everyone was predicting. Who knew the Hummer would be the one who'd get it right?
The hiring process at Princeton under Walters has been pretty standard, with only a few exceptions (men's basketball, mostly). A committee is assembled, comprised of athletic administrators, representatives of the sport itself and sometimes representatives of the University administration or faculty. The candidates meet with the committee as a whole, and the members of the committee speak freely about their own views about which direction they would go in once the final candidate has been interviewed.
TigerBlog's two questions about hiring at Princeton have always been these: Can you do the job, and can you do the job here? There are unique circumstances to coaching and working at Princeton and within the Ivy League, and it's not for everyone. Identifying coaches who buy into that and have a real understanding of what it means to building a program is as important as finding people who are great at X's and O's.
Walters has also proven himself to be willing to take a chance on younger coaches who might not have a great deal of experience but demonstrate in the search process that they have they're ready and the right fit.
Looking back at his track record, it's hard to argue with the success that Walters has had. Field hockey? Kristen Holmes-Winn had no experience coaching on the college level, as a head coach or assistant; she has taken Princeton to six Ivy titles in seven years and this past weekend to the NCAA Final Four. With its core of All-America freshmen and sophomores, Holmes-Winn has Princeton positioned to make a serious national championship run.
Baseball? Scott Bradley had almost no coaching experience - and none on the college level - when his Major League career ended. Today he's one of the best college baseball coaches anywhere.
Softball? Maureen Barron had one year's coaching experience and then led Princeton to four Ivy titles. Her replacement, Trina Salcido, has won another Ivy title in her two years as head coach.
Women's tennis? Kathy Sell was an assistant coach for one season before coming to Princeton. She left a year ago after winning the Ivy title - to be replaced by another up-and-coming coach, Megan Bradley.
Men's lightweight rowing? Greg Hughes had never been a head coach before; this past year he won the national title.
Women's open rowing? Lori Dauphiny had never been a head coach, and she has built a perennial national contender. Her 2006 team is one of the best, if not the best, in the sport's history.
Men's hockey? Guy Gadowsky was an unknown coach at a frozen school 5,000 miles away (Alaska-Fairbanks) before he came to Princeton and turned one of the worst teams in the country into a back-to-back NCAA tournament participant.
Women's basketball? Courtney Banghart had three years experience as an assistant coach. Now in her third year as head coach, she has Princeton moving from six wins to being the No. 3 preseason pick in the Ivy League with a young nucleus whose best days are ahead.
Men's baskeball? John Thompson was hired after having never been above the position of second assistant; he has turned out to be one of the best coaches in college basketball. As for the current coach, Sydney Johnson, everything that applies to Banghart applies to him as well.
That's just a sample of the coaches who have come out of Princeton's search processes. The result? An athletic program that continues to win the Ivy League's unofficial all-sports points championship (23 straight years) and produce quality teams and athletes (25 of 33 teams that compete in Ivy sports last year finished in the top three in the league; a total of 48 Princeton athletes were named All-America last year).
All of this, of course, brings us to the soon-to-commence football search. As everyone knows by now, Roger Hughes has been relieved of his duties as head football coach. It's easy to point to a coach who has been let go and suggest that it didn't work out, but that's not the case with Hughes: 10 years at Princeton, an Ivy title, continued improvement during his first seven years, a struggle the final three years that finally resulted in the need for a change.
As such, the same selection process that has built much of Princeton's athletic success begins again. Will it be successful?
At the end of the day, history suggests it will be.
It's never been one of TigerBlog's favorite ways of punctuating a thought with great finality, and apparently he's not alone. TB much prefers to say "here's the deal" to "at the end of the day."
Still, it's such a normal part of speaking these days that TB has been known to thrown it out there as well, as in "At the end of the day, maybe the best way to measure a Director of Athletics is by his or her track record in hiring head coaches."
Princeton has seven head coaches who predate the current AD, Gary Walters. Of those seven, two (men's track and field coach Fred Samara and women's track and field coach Peter Farrell) predate the previous AD, Bob Mylsik, and were hired by Sam Howell during Ken Fairman's tenure.
Myslik hired five coaches who are still here, and all five are among the greatest coaches in Princeton history: men's squash coach Bob Callahan, women's squash coach Gail Ramsay, women's swimming and diving coach Susan Teeter, men's swimming and diving coach Rob Orr and women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer. Myslik also brought legendary coaches like Bill Tierney in men's lacrosse and Glenn Nelson in volleyball to Princeton.
As for Walters, he has hired 41 head coaches in his 15+ years at Princeton, beginning with women's soccer coach Julie Shackford (the only coach ever to take an Ivy team to the women's soccer Final Four and a national Coach of the Year) in 1995.
To look realistically and honestly at Walters' record, only two of his 41 hires have not worked out at all: former men's basketball coach Joe Scott and former men's hockey coach Len Quesnelle. TigerBlog remembers the day Scott was hired, when almost every single person felt that Princeton basketball was headed to perpetual Top 25 status under the man who had such a great history at Princeton and who had taken Air Force to the NCAA tournament. TB remembers only one voice of caution, and it came from Brown SID Chris Humm, who suggested that it might not go as smoothly as everyone was predicting. Who knew the Hummer would be the one who'd get it right?
The hiring process at Princeton under Walters has been pretty standard, with only a few exceptions (men's basketball, mostly). A committee is assembled, comprised of athletic administrators, representatives of the sport itself and sometimes representatives of the University administration or faculty. The candidates meet with the committee as a whole, and the members of the committee speak freely about their own views about which direction they would go in once the final candidate has been interviewed.
TigerBlog's two questions about hiring at Princeton have always been these: Can you do the job, and can you do the job here? There are unique circumstances to coaching and working at Princeton and within the Ivy League, and it's not for everyone. Identifying coaches who buy into that and have a real understanding of what it means to building a program is as important as finding people who are great at X's and O's.
Walters has also proven himself to be willing to take a chance on younger coaches who might not have a great deal of experience but demonstrate in the search process that they have they're ready and the right fit.
Looking back at his track record, it's hard to argue with the success that Walters has had. Field hockey? Kristen Holmes-Winn had no experience coaching on the college level, as a head coach or assistant; she has taken Princeton to six Ivy titles in seven years and this past weekend to the NCAA Final Four. With its core of All-America freshmen and sophomores, Holmes-Winn has Princeton positioned to make a serious national championship run.
Baseball? Scott Bradley had almost no coaching experience - and none on the college level - when his Major League career ended. Today he's one of the best college baseball coaches anywhere.
Softball? Maureen Barron had one year's coaching experience and then led Princeton to four Ivy titles. Her replacement, Trina Salcido, has won another Ivy title in her two years as head coach.
Women's tennis? Kathy Sell was an assistant coach for one season before coming to Princeton. She left a year ago after winning the Ivy title - to be replaced by another up-and-coming coach, Megan Bradley.
Men's lightweight rowing? Greg Hughes had never been a head coach before; this past year he won the national title.
Women's open rowing? Lori Dauphiny had never been a head coach, and she has built a perennial national contender. Her 2006 team is one of the best, if not the best, in the sport's history.
Men's hockey? Guy Gadowsky was an unknown coach at a frozen school 5,000 miles away (Alaska-Fairbanks) before he came to Princeton and turned one of the worst teams in the country into a back-to-back NCAA tournament participant.
Women's basketball? Courtney Banghart had three years experience as an assistant coach. Now in her third year as head coach, she has Princeton moving from six wins to being the No. 3 preseason pick in the Ivy League with a young nucleus whose best days are ahead.
Men's baskeball? John Thompson was hired after having never been above the position of second assistant; he has turned out to be one of the best coaches in college basketball. As for the current coach, Sydney Johnson, everything that applies to Banghart applies to him as well.
That's just a sample of the coaches who have come out of Princeton's search processes. The result? An athletic program that continues to win the Ivy League's unofficial all-sports points championship (23 straight years) and produce quality teams and athletes (25 of 33 teams that compete in Ivy sports last year finished in the top three in the league; a total of 48 Princeton athletes were named All-America last year).
All of this, of course, brings us to the soon-to-commence football search. As everyone knows by now, Roger Hughes has been relieved of his duties as head football coach. It's easy to point to a coach who has been let go and suggest that it didn't work out, but that's not the case with Hughes: 10 years at Princeton, an Ivy title, continued improvement during his first seven years, a struggle the final three years that finally resulted in the need for a change.
As such, the same selection process that has built much of Princeton's athletic success begins again. Will it be successful?
At the end of the day, history suggests it will be.
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Decade Of Roger Hughes
The title character in Pat Conroy's "The Great Santini" called everyone "Sports Fans," regardless of whether it was one person or multiple people.
As for TigerBlog, he remembers three actual people who have had the same knack for assigning a universal nickname to basically everyone they saw. The first was a woman who worked in the dining hall in West Philadelphia who called every student "Dearheart." Not "Dear" or "Sweetheart," but "Dearheart." The second is the teacher from the after-school program where Little Miss TigerBlog goes, who greets every parent by calling them "Sunshine."
The third is Roger Hughes, who was relieved of his duties as Princeton football coach Sunday after 10 seasons. Hughes calls everyone "Tiger," and TB can remember hundreds of times that Hughes has stopped by and said something like "what's up, Tiger?" or "nice day, Tiger" or anything else along those lines. When injuries would permeate his lineup, he'd offer "how'd you like to play for us this weekend, Tiger?"
And it wasn't just to TigerBlog. It was to basically anyone, male or female. TigerBlog always wondered if he had done that his whole life or if he started using "Tiger" as his universal nickname after he came to Princeton 10 years ago.
Hughes is an interesting man, the holder of a Ph.D. who became a college football coach. TigerBlog was a kid when Dick Colman coached at Princeton, but from TB hears, perhaps Hughes is the same kind of professorial coach that Colman was, though in a much different era.
TigerBlog recently wrote a story about the 1964 Princeton team for the game program, and Cosmo Iacavazzi described Colman, his coach at Princeton, this way: "He was a very intellectual man. If you met him and he said he worked at Princeton, you'd probably think he was a professor of humanities. He may have seemed out of place on the football field from a macho stereotype, but he had a great football mind."
How much of that describes Hughes? To those who've never met him and whose only context is what they see and hear, Roger Hughes is one of the nicest people around. He is a quality person who treated the Princeton football program like an extended family, who built great relationships all over the campus and who is never lacking for a smile or a kind, supportive word.
He was supportive of Princeton's overall athletic program, always in a behind-the-scenes way. In many ways, he bought into completely what Princeton athletics is all about, broad-based participation where football does not drive the whole department and athletics as an extension of education.
At the same time, he chose to enter a profession where it's so easy to be defined in one way: your record. Going back to Colman, he may have looked like a humanities professor, but when you look in the record book, he was also 75-33 and is now in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Hughes went 47-52 in 10 years. For those wondering why he coached 99 games, it's because the 2001 game against Lafayette was canceled after 9/11.
For Hughes, the bright spots on his resume are a 16-4 run in 2005 and 2006 that included a 9-1 record and Ivy title in ’06. The 2006 wins over Penn and Yale are among the best for Princeton football in the last 40 years; the nine wins that season are the most since Colman's ’64 team went 9-0.
On the other hand, he did have only three winning seasons in 10 years, with one .500 record and six losing seasons. The last three years were all 4-6.
In the end, Roger Hughes is one of five coaches in Princeton football history to coach for at least 10 years. Of the eight coaches who have been at Princeton since the formation of the Ivy League, he is one of four who has won at least one Ivy title (okay, that's a little unfair to Charlie Caldwell, whose last year of a Hall-of-Fame career was 1956, the first year of the formal Ivy League, when Princeton finished second). He's also the coach who went 31-48 when Jeff Terrell wasn't the starting quarterback.
In decades to come, when TigerBlog thinks back about Rogers Hughes, he won't remember Pete Carril's aura, Bill Carmody's sharpness, John Thompson's charisma, Joe Scott's ferocity, Bill Tierney's intensity, Steve Tosches' organization.
No, he'll remember Roger as a good man who chose to enter a tough business, a man of the highest character and integrity who ultimately was what his record said he was.
As for TigerBlog, he remembers three actual people who have had the same knack for assigning a universal nickname to basically everyone they saw. The first was a woman who worked in the dining hall in West Philadelphia who called every student "Dearheart." Not "Dear" or "Sweetheart," but "Dearheart." The second is the teacher from the after-school program where Little Miss TigerBlog goes, who greets every parent by calling them "Sunshine."
The third is Roger Hughes, who was relieved of his duties as Princeton football coach Sunday after 10 seasons. Hughes calls everyone "Tiger," and TB can remember hundreds of times that Hughes has stopped by and said something like "what's up, Tiger?" or "nice day, Tiger" or anything else along those lines. When injuries would permeate his lineup, he'd offer "how'd you like to play for us this weekend, Tiger?"
And it wasn't just to TigerBlog. It was to basically anyone, male or female. TigerBlog always wondered if he had done that his whole life or if he started using "Tiger" as his universal nickname after he came to Princeton 10 years ago.
Hughes is an interesting man, the holder of a Ph.D. who became a college football coach. TigerBlog was a kid when Dick Colman coached at Princeton, but from TB hears, perhaps Hughes is the same kind of professorial coach that Colman was, though in a much different era.
TigerBlog recently wrote a story about the 1964 Princeton team for the game program, and Cosmo Iacavazzi described Colman, his coach at Princeton, this way: "He was a very intellectual man. If you met him and he said he worked at Princeton, you'd probably think he was a professor of humanities. He may have seemed out of place on the football field from a macho stereotype, but he had a great football mind."
How much of that describes Hughes? To those who've never met him and whose only context is what they see and hear, Roger Hughes is one of the nicest people around. He is a quality person who treated the Princeton football program like an extended family, who built great relationships all over the campus and who is never lacking for a smile or a kind, supportive word.
He was supportive of Princeton's overall athletic program, always in a behind-the-scenes way. In many ways, he bought into completely what Princeton athletics is all about, broad-based participation where football does not drive the whole department and athletics as an extension of education.
At the same time, he chose to enter a profession where it's so easy to be defined in one way: your record. Going back to Colman, he may have looked like a humanities professor, but when you look in the record book, he was also 75-33 and is now in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Hughes went 47-52 in 10 years. For those wondering why he coached 99 games, it's because the 2001 game against Lafayette was canceled after 9/11.
For Hughes, the bright spots on his resume are a 16-4 run in 2005 and 2006 that included a 9-1 record and Ivy title in ’06. The 2006 wins over Penn and Yale are among the best for Princeton football in the last 40 years; the nine wins that season are the most since Colman's ’64 team went 9-0.
On the other hand, he did have only three winning seasons in 10 years, with one .500 record and six losing seasons. The last three years were all 4-6.
In the end, Roger Hughes is one of five coaches in Princeton football history to coach for at least 10 years. Of the eight coaches who have been at Princeton since the formation of the Ivy League, he is one of four who has won at least one Ivy title (okay, that's a little unfair to Charlie Caldwell, whose last year of a Hall-of-Fame career was 1956, the first year of the formal Ivy League, when Princeton finished second). He's also the coach who went 31-48 when Jeff Terrell wasn't the starting quarterback.
In decades to come, when TigerBlog thinks back about Rogers Hughes, he won't remember Pete Carril's aura, Bill Carmody's sharpness, John Thompson's charisma, Joe Scott's ferocity, Bill Tierney's intensity, Steve Tosches' organization.
No, he'll remember Roger as a good man who chose to enter a tough business, a man of the highest character and integrity who ultimately was what his record said he was.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Three Things To Take TB's Mind Off Ireland-France
TigerBlog is still annoyed by what happened in the Ireland-France World Cup play-off.
Ireland ranks third or fourth on TB's list of favorite countries in the world, and as such he was rooting hard for the Irish to make it into the 32-team field. TB was in Ireland during the 2008 European championships, an event Ireland did not qualify for, and every local he spoke with was optimistic about the chances for being in South Africa in 2010.
So how does France simply in good conscience go to the World Cup knowing that it blatantly cheated to get there? What should FIFA do?
And what does this have to do with today's three subjects? Nothing.
Subject No. 1 - The Princeton field hockey team plays in the NCAA Final Four for the fifth time in program history when it takes on undefeated and top-seeded Maryland at 2 p.m. at Wake Forest. The Final Four is the Tigers and the ACC, as Virginia and North Carolina meet in the second semifinal; the championship game is Sunday at noon.
Princeton lost in overtime to Maryland during the regular season 3-2 after the Tigers had leads of 1-0 and 2-1.
By TigerBlog's count, Princeton has had eight teams compete in NCAA Final Four events: men's basketball, women's soccer, men's soccer, women's lacrosse, men's lacrosse, field hockey, men's water polo and men's volleyball. Of those eight, all but men's basketball have done so in the last 16 years.
This doesn't count teams that compete in NCAA championships in sports that don't have a team Final Four concept or teams like squash that are not NCAA sports.
As for the rest of the Ivy League, TigerBlog isn't doing all the research, but he is pretty sure that no school has as many teams that have reached the Final Four. The sport that has the highest percentage of league teams having reached the Final Four has to be men's lacrosse, where Princeton, Cornell, Yale, Penn and Brown have all done so. Of course, Princeton has done it 10 times, which TB believes equals the others combined.
Subject No. 2 - The men's soccer team fell 1-0 to Bucknell Thursday night in the opening round of the NCAA tournament on rainy Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. The game was delayed for 30 minutes with 24:47 to play by lightning; Bucknell scored shortly after that.
TigerBlog's prediction that the game would be decided 1-0 and that the goal would be scored when he wasn't looking came true: He was walking down the stairs from the press box to the concourse when the Bison scored.
It's a tough way for the season to end, but Princeton men's soccer had itself a great year. Perhaps no team at Princeton has it tougher, as the Tigers' regular regional opponents are always in or around the Top 25 and then the league itself is perhaps stronger nationally than in any other sport. Congrats to Jim Barlow and the team for getting to the tournament with a 4-0-1 run to end the regular season.
There are two other things to talk about regarding soccer. First, the crowd in the rain was still a strong one, with a great number of students in attendance. It goes to marketing rule No. 1 - you can market all you want; people either want to go to the game or they don't.
The other issue is that leading scorer Antoine Hoppenot did not play in the game due to the fact that he picked up his fifth yellow card in the season finale and therefore had to sit the next game. Issues like this always put people in sports information in a tough position: You want to be as forthcoming as possible, but at the same time, coaches will often want you to withhold information that might impact the other team's preparation for the game.
It's an issue that TigerBlog has dealt with his entire time here at HQ, and to be honest, he's still not sure what the right course of action is.
Subject No. 3 - The football season ends tomorrow in Hanover as Princeton takes on Dartmouth. For years, Princeton and Penn would open their seasons at Dartmouth or Cornell and then end the year at home against the other and then flip-flop the next year. It wasn't until 1991 that Princeton began to open with Cornell every year and finish with Dartmouth, regardless of home or away (the point was to avoid bad weather in Ithaca or Hanover in November).
Through the years, Princeton has played at Dartmouth on mostly pleasant days, and tomorrow is supposed to be fine as well.
Princeton and Dartmouth for years played for the Governor's Trophy, a mostly forgotten award that has been somewhat replaced by the Sawhorse Dollar, a 1917 dollar bill with a sawhorse on the back. It was the result of a friendly wager between a Princeton alum, Tad LaFountain, and a Dartmouth alum, T.J. Rodgers, who is the founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductors. When Princeton won and Rodgers owed LaFountain $1, he paid off with the 1917 Sawhorse Dollar.
LaFountain then donated it to the winner of each year's game annually.
Two postcripts to the Sawhorse Dollar story. First, it is the "Sawhorse Dollar," not the "sawbuck," which is a term for $10. Second, TigerBlog does not condone gambling in any way.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Thoughts On Tip-Offs at 6 a.m. and 7 p.m.
College basketball, TigerBlog fears, is doing everything it can to destroy itself.
The sport has become more about the coaches, refs and TV broadcasters than it is about the players. Think about it for a second. How many coaches can you name? How many refs? Especially how many TV on-air personalities? Now ask yourself how many players on Top 25 teams you can name? More than 10? More than 25? Unlikely.
It's also not because the best players all leave early and go to the NBA after one season. It's because the players are not what's marketed in college basketball; it's the coaches.
Still, that's not the biggest problem as TigerBlog sees it. In fact, there are two of them. Second is that the regular season (which begins three weeks too early) that spreads out now from mid-November through early March is essentially meaningless. Look at Rider. The Broncs opened with a win at Mississippi State, which is great, but for the team to get into the NCAA tournament, it almost surely needs to win the MAAC tournament over a three-game stretch in March, as only once has the MAAC sent more than one team to the NCAA tournament.
For the power teams, the regular season is about getting into and then getting a good seed in the tournament. And, because matchup means everything once the tournament is announced, it can sometimes be better to be the three-seed in one region rather than the two-seed in another.
But the No. 1 problem is television. There is such an oversaturation of games available that it has vaulted past "wow, this is great exposure" into "wow, every game looks the same" mode. It's only Nov. 19, but how many games have already been on? How many times can you watch North Carolina, Kansas, Syracuse, Ohio State - and especially Duke - before it's numbing. The only exception for TigerBlog is Georgetown, because it's coached by John Thompson with Mike Brennan on his staff.
The ESPN-driven 24-hour basketball event that happened the other day isn't even the problem. At first thought, TigerBlog reasoned that it was idiotic for teams to agree to play at 6 a.m. or 8 a.m., all in the name of getting on TV. After he thought about it more, TB changed his mind.
The 6 a.m. game was between Monmouth and St. Peter's. Had that been a normal, run-of-the-mill 7 p.m. start, who would ever remember it?
Take last night's Princeton-Manhattan men's game. It was a nice win for the Tigers, who twice looked to be in trouble (early on and then midway through the second half) before turning it around. Still, it's unlikely that this game will be etched in anyone's memory for very long.
But the Monmouth and St. Peter's players will never forget the day where they got up at 2:30 ("I can say without a doubt that I've come in at that time a lot more than I've gotten up at that time," said Monmouth coach Dave Calloway, one of TB's favorite coaches.) and played at 6 a.m. Yes, it was driven by the chance to play on ESPN, but ultimately it will be remembered more as an experience by itself rather than for a TV show. And good for the people at Monmouth and St. Peter's for having that experience.
Getting back to Princeton, it's been a pretty encouraging start to the basketball season, as both the men's and women's teams are both 2-0. This might not seem like such a big deal, but it's only happened four times since the women's program started in 1971-72 and not since 1995-96 (the other three were 1989-90, 1974-75 and 1973-74).
The women have gotten 18 points in each of their two games from freshman Niveen Rasheed and had four players in double figures while taking apart American Monday night. Princeton will be heading off to California to take on UCLA and UC-Irvine next week before returning to take on, among others, Rutgers before the Ivy League starts.
Dartmouth was the preseason pick to win the women's title, but Princeton has to be happy with the progress it has made. The same is true of the men's team, who like the women feature a good balance of young players and veterans and who are flying a bit under the radar in a league where all preseason attention has been focused on Cornell.
The men have defeated Central Michigan and Manhattan to start their season, reversing two losses of a year ago. More importantly, Princeton won games that could have gone either way, a pair of games in which the Tigers trailed either in the final minute (CMU) or late in the second half (Manhattan).
Ian Hummer already looks like quite a player (his ability to pass and see the court particularly impressed TigerBlog), and Princeton has all kinds of options, including the ability to put big men Pawel Buczak and Zach Finley on the court together.
In short, it's a good time to be a fan of Princeton basketball. On top of that, as TigerBlog sat in Jadwin last night, he couldn't help but think of what a great place it is to see a game these days. Tickets are affordable, fans can sit right on top of the court and there's plenty for kids to do there. Last night's game started at 7 and ended at 8:40, so it wasn't too late on a school night.
Also, it's two teams that play hard and are getting better. What more can you want?
The next chance is Saturday, when you can see both on the same day. The men host Army at 2, followed by the women against Delaware.
Best of all, it's not on TV.
The sport has become more about the coaches, refs and TV broadcasters than it is about the players. Think about it for a second. How many coaches can you name? How many refs? Especially how many TV on-air personalities? Now ask yourself how many players on Top 25 teams you can name? More than 10? More than 25? Unlikely.
It's also not because the best players all leave early and go to the NBA after one season. It's because the players are not what's marketed in college basketball; it's the coaches.
Still, that's not the biggest problem as TigerBlog sees it. In fact, there are two of them. Second is that the regular season (which begins three weeks too early) that spreads out now from mid-November through early March is essentially meaningless. Look at Rider. The Broncs opened with a win at Mississippi State, which is great, but for the team to get into the NCAA tournament, it almost surely needs to win the MAAC tournament over a three-game stretch in March, as only once has the MAAC sent more than one team to the NCAA tournament.
For the power teams, the regular season is about getting into and then getting a good seed in the tournament. And, because matchup means everything once the tournament is announced, it can sometimes be better to be the three-seed in one region rather than the two-seed in another.
But the No. 1 problem is television. There is such an oversaturation of games available that it has vaulted past "wow, this is great exposure" into "wow, every game looks the same" mode. It's only Nov. 19, but how many games have already been on? How many times can you watch North Carolina, Kansas, Syracuse, Ohio State - and especially Duke - before it's numbing. The only exception for TigerBlog is Georgetown, because it's coached by John Thompson with Mike Brennan on his staff.
The ESPN-driven 24-hour basketball event that happened the other day isn't even the problem. At first thought, TigerBlog reasoned that it was idiotic for teams to agree to play at 6 a.m. or 8 a.m., all in the name of getting on TV. After he thought about it more, TB changed his mind.
The 6 a.m. game was between Monmouth and St. Peter's. Had that been a normal, run-of-the-mill 7 p.m. start, who would ever remember it?
Take last night's Princeton-Manhattan men's game. It was a nice win for the Tigers, who twice looked to be in trouble (early on and then midway through the second half) before turning it around. Still, it's unlikely that this game will be etched in anyone's memory for very long.
But the Monmouth and St. Peter's players will never forget the day where they got up at 2:30 ("I can say without a doubt that I've come in at that time a lot more than I've gotten up at that time," said Monmouth coach Dave Calloway, one of TB's favorite coaches.) and played at 6 a.m. Yes, it was driven by the chance to play on ESPN, but ultimately it will be remembered more as an experience by itself rather than for a TV show. And good for the people at Monmouth and St. Peter's for having that experience.
Getting back to Princeton, it's been a pretty encouraging start to the basketball season, as both the men's and women's teams are both 2-0. This might not seem like such a big deal, but it's only happened four times since the women's program started in 1971-72 and not since 1995-96 (the other three were 1989-90, 1974-75 and 1973-74).
The women have gotten 18 points in each of their two games from freshman Niveen Rasheed and had four players in double figures while taking apart American Monday night. Princeton will be heading off to California to take on UCLA and UC-Irvine next week before returning to take on, among others, Rutgers before the Ivy League starts.
Dartmouth was the preseason pick to win the women's title, but Princeton has to be happy with the progress it has made. The same is true of the men's team, who like the women feature a good balance of young players and veterans and who are flying a bit under the radar in a league where all preseason attention has been focused on Cornell.
The men have defeated Central Michigan and Manhattan to start their season, reversing two losses of a year ago. More importantly, Princeton won games that could have gone either way, a pair of games in which the Tigers trailed either in the final minute (CMU) or late in the second half (Manhattan).
Ian Hummer already looks like quite a player (his ability to pass and see the court particularly impressed TigerBlog), and Princeton has all kinds of options, including the ability to put big men Pawel Buczak and Zach Finley on the court together.
In short, it's a good time to be a fan of Princeton basketball. On top of that, as TigerBlog sat in Jadwin last night, he couldn't help but think of what a great place it is to see a game these days. Tickets are affordable, fans can sit right on top of the court and there's plenty for kids to do there. Last night's game started at 7 and ended at 8:40, so it wasn't too late on a school night.
Also, it's two teams that play hard and are getting better. What more can you want?
The next chance is Saturday, when you can see both on the same day. The men host Army at 2, followed by the women against Delaware.
Best of all, it's not on TV.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
First-Team, Four Times
When the All-Ivy men's soccer team was announced Tuesday, the first thing TigerBlog noticed was that Princeton's four first-team selections included a freshman (Mark Linnville), a sophomore (Antoine Hoppenot), a junior (Josh Walburn) and a senior (Devin Muntz).
It's quite an honor for an athlete to be selected first-team All-Ivy League in any sport, even once. The overwhelming majority of players in the league never earn an All-Ivy honor of any kind (first-team, second-team, third-team in some sports, honorable mention in some sports), and it's not something that any of them take lightly, TigerBlog assumes.
For what it's worth, every single one of Princeton's head coaches who are alums was a first-team All-Ivy League selection at least once as an undergraduate: Jim Barlow (men's soccer), Bob Callahan (men's squash), Marty Crotty (lightweight rowing), Greg Hughes (heavyweight rowing), Sydney Johnson (basketball), Jeff Kampersal (women's hockey coach, obviously a men's hockey selection). Director of Athletics Gary Walters was also a first-team All-Ivy selection (basketball).
Linnville's selection in men's soccer puts him in a position to join a highly exclusive club, the four-time first-team All-Ivy League selection club. It's one that doesn't exactly have widespread membership.
TigerBlog went to the Ivy League website to total up how many four-time first-team All-Ivy selections there have been in league history. Keep in mind that in almost every sport, freshman participation didn't exist until the 1970s or later, which eliminates some of the greatest Ivy League athletes of all time.
TB only counted sports where coaches vote for the teams and did not count sports where All-Ivy status is determined by placing in league championships. This eliminated fencing, rowing, cross country, track and field and swimming and diving, where there are hundreds of four-time (or more) All-Ivy picks.
As for the voted-on-by-coaches variety, in Ivy League history there have been 154 four-time first-team All-Ivy League selections. Of those 154, 64 have come from the sport of squash (34 women, 30 men).
The next highest totals? Women's soccer has 19, followed by softball with 12 and women's tennis with 11. No other sport is in double figures.
Baseball and men's basketball have never had a four-time first-team All-Ivy selection. Men's lacrosse (Cornell's Max Siebald) and field hockey (Princeton's Amy MacFarlane) have had one each.
Of the 154 four-time first-team All-Ivy selections, 43 of them - or 28% - are Princeton alums. TigerBlog didn't total up every other school's selections, so he can't say for sure the 28% is the highest total, but if he had to guess, he'd say it is. Only Harvard appeared to be close.
Broken down by sport, nearly half of Princeton's four-timers came from squash, with 11 women and 10 men, including three (Mauricio Sanchez, Hesham El Halaby, Kimlee Wong) who graduated last year.
The next highest number belongs to softball with seven, followed by women's hockey with four and then women's soccer and wrestling with three each.
As for active athletes who have been named first-team All-Ivy each of their years to date, Princeton has nine, including three from this fall: Linnville and field hockey players Julia Reinprecht and Michelle Cesan. Reinprecht's sister Katie (who by the way has been the Ivy Player of the Year each of her first two years) and Kathleen Sharkey, also a sophomore, give Princeton field hockey four of the eight active players who could reach four-time status.
The other four are men's lacrosse player Chad Wiedmaier, women's tennis player Hilary Bartlett and women's squash players Neha Kumar and Amanda Seibert.
It takes a lot to get to be first-team All-Ivy four times, including staying healthy, maintaining performance level and other intangibles.
And of course, getting it done the first three years doesn't mean the senior year is a lock.
Consider Scott Bacigalupo, the goalie on the Princeton men's lacrosse team from 1991-94. Bacigalupo was first-team All-Ivy League as a freshman, sophomore and junior. As a senior, he was the national Player of the Year and the MVP of the Final Four.
And second-team All-Ivy League.
It's quite an honor for an athlete to be selected first-team All-Ivy League in any sport, even once. The overwhelming majority of players in the league never earn an All-Ivy honor of any kind (first-team, second-team, third-team in some sports, honorable mention in some sports), and it's not something that any of them take lightly, TigerBlog assumes.
For what it's worth, every single one of Princeton's head coaches who are alums was a first-team All-Ivy League selection at least once as an undergraduate: Jim Barlow (men's soccer), Bob Callahan (men's squash), Marty Crotty (lightweight rowing), Greg Hughes (heavyweight rowing), Sydney Johnson (basketball), Jeff Kampersal (women's hockey coach, obviously a men's hockey selection). Director of Athletics Gary Walters was also a first-team All-Ivy selection (basketball).
Linnville's selection in men's soccer puts him in a position to join a highly exclusive club, the four-time first-team All-Ivy League selection club. It's one that doesn't exactly have widespread membership.
TigerBlog went to the Ivy League website to total up how many four-time first-team All-Ivy selections there have been in league history. Keep in mind that in almost every sport, freshman participation didn't exist until the 1970s or later, which eliminates some of the greatest Ivy League athletes of all time.
TB only counted sports where coaches vote for the teams and did not count sports where All-Ivy status is determined by placing in league championships. This eliminated fencing, rowing, cross country, track and field and swimming and diving, where there are hundreds of four-time (or more) All-Ivy picks.
As for the voted-on-by-coaches variety, in Ivy League history there have been 154 four-time first-team All-Ivy League selections. Of those 154, 64 have come from the sport of squash (34 women, 30 men).
The next highest totals? Women's soccer has 19, followed by softball with 12 and women's tennis with 11. No other sport is in double figures.
Baseball and men's basketball have never had a four-time first-team All-Ivy selection. Men's lacrosse (Cornell's Max Siebald) and field hockey (Princeton's Amy MacFarlane) have had one each.
Of the 154 four-time first-team All-Ivy selections, 43 of them - or 28% - are Princeton alums. TigerBlog didn't total up every other school's selections, so he can't say for sure the 28% is the highest total, but if he had to guess, he'd say it is. Only Harvard appeared to be close.
Broken down by sport, nearly half of Princeton's four-timers came from squash, with 11 women and 10 men, including three (Mauricio Sanchez, Hesham El Halaby, Kimlee Wong) who graduated last year.
The next highest number belongs to softball with seven, followed by women's hockey with four and then women's soccer and wrestling with three each.
As for active athletes who have been named first-team All-Ivy each of their years to date, Princeton has nine, including three from this fall: Linnville and field hockey players Julia Reinprecht and Michelle Cesan. Reinprecht's sister Katie (who by the way has been the Ivy Player of the Year each of her first two years) and Kathleen Sharkey, also a sophomore, give Princeton field hockey four of the eight active players who could reach four-time status.
The other four are men's lacrosse player Chad Wiedmaier, women's tennis player Hilary Bartlett and women's squash players Neha Kumar and Amanda Seibert.
It takes a lot to get to be first-team All-Ivy four times, including staying healthy, maintaining performance level and other intangibles.
And of course, getting it done the first three years doesn't mean the senior year is a lock.
Consider Scott Bacigalupo, the goalie on the Princeton men's lacrosse team from 1991-94. Bacigalupo was first-team All-Ivy League as a freshman, sophomore and junior. As a senior, he was the national Player of the Year and the MVP of the Final Four.
And second-team All-Ivy League.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
We're In
There's nothing quite like an NCAA tournament selection show, at least from an anticipation standpoint. There's a helplessness to watching, since there's absolutely no pre-show warning or knowledge of what's going to happen.
TigerBlog remembers back to 1991, when he watched the men's basketball selection show in Kit Mueller's room with the great Princeton center and the rest of the team. The team was so wound up for the show that it collectively booed a human interest story that ended the network news, which preceded the selections themselves.
For awhile (and maybe still, TigerBlog isn't sure), the NCAA tournament men's basketball selection show received higher ratings than the games themselves that followed. And, of course, the TV people noticed, as selection shows across many sports now are all over television, many with the same basic format of some general banter between the announcers (which nobody cares about) followed by brackets that are slowly revealed, to build the drama. There are often cutaways to teams who joyously react at being selected (the reaction is always the same, regardless of the seed, draw or probability that the team would get a bid; the players, coaches, staff and friends all gather in a room, peer nervously at the screen and then leap to their feet, raise their arms and scream when their school's name comes up on the line) or "bubble" teams that haven't been picked yet.
Of course, the words "Princeton" and "bubble team" rarely go together. For the most part, Princeton teams know if they're in or out before the selection show, either because they hold an automatic bid, they are a shoo-in for the tournament or they obviously have no chance.
Largely, this is because the Ivy League is a one-bid league in basketball and some other sports (field hockey, which Princeton dominates), and, in the sports where there are multiple bids to be had, it's often obvious what's going to happen. In men's and women's lacrosse last year, for instance, neither Princeton team won the automatic bid but both knew they were locks for the tournament.
In fact, TigerBlog can only think of one time when a Princeton team could be considered a bubble team, and that was in men's basketball in 1998-99, when Princeton defeated teams like UNC Charlotte, Texas, Florida State and UAB but had some other tough losses, especially in overtime to Harvard and Yale, that ultimately sent the Tigers to the NIT, where they would beat Georgetown and North Carolina State before falling to Xavier. TigerBlog watched that year's selection show thinking that Princeton had at least a small chance.
All of this brings us to Monday's men's soccer selection show, at 5:30 on ESPNEWS. Princeton's men's team finished its regular season in style, blasting Penn and Yale to finish 9-5-3 with a strong RPI. It seemed like Princeton had a pretty good shot at a bid – but not a 100% lock. In other words, a genuine bubble team.
When ESPNEWS has a selection show, it doesn't go to the picks right away. Instead, it starts out with its normal programming and fits the selections in during the course of the half-hour.
When 5:30 rolled around, the first story was about how the Bengals were thinking of signing Larry Johnson and then mentioned how two guys TigerBlog had never heard of were named the baseball Rookies of the Year.
After that was news that Stephen Jackson had been traded from the Warriors to the Bobcats, which left TigerBlog wondering why teams continually take chances on proven malcontents like Johnson and Jackson. Next was a 10-minute discussion of the NFL, specifically Bill Belichick's decision to go for it on 4th-and-2 from his 28 against the Colts Sunday night (a move TigerBlog defended Monday and continues to believe was a great call).
Then, finally, it was time for the soccer selections. The bad part of selections on ESPNEWS is that they make you wait for 15-20 minutes (or longer) to start the picks; the good part is that they fly through them.
And so it started, with the first group of 12 teams (men's soccer is a 48-team draw; the women's tournament is 64 teams), followed quickly by the next. By this time, Brown and Dartmouth were in the field, and neither one of them had the Ivy League's automatic bid, which belonged to Harvard and meant that three Ivy teams were already in.
TigerBlog remembers full well Gary Walters' time on the men's basketball committee, including his year as chair, and Gary always said that the committee never considers how many teams from a league are in the field. TB has also heard other members of committees for other sports say the same thing, time and again. Still, when Brown and Dartmouth were in and Harvard was still not on the board, TB couldn't help but think "uh-oh."
The third group of 12 didn't include Princeton or Harvard, which made the drama build even more. Finally, the last group was flashed, and Princeton was the last school listed, all the way on the bottom. Princeton vs. Bucknell here Thursday, with the winner to play at Virginia Sunday.
It was torturous for TigerBlog to watch; it had to be twice as excruciating for the team. It had to be a helpless feeling of not having any way of knowing what was going to happen, to pure elation at finding out they were in. And at home, to boot.
Hey, it's what selection shows are all about.
TigerBlog remembers back to 1991, when he watched the men's basketball selection show in Kit Mueller's room with the great Princeton center and the rest of the team. The team was so wound up for the show that it collectively booed a human interest story that ended the network news, which preceded the selections themselves.
For awhile (and maybe still, TigerBlog isn't sure), the NCAA tournament men's basketball selection show received higher ratings than the games themselves that followed. And, of course, the TV people noticed, as selection shows across many sports now are all over television, many with the same basic format of some general banter between the announcers (which nobody cares about) followed by brackets that are slowly revealed, to build the drama. There are often cutaways to teams who joyously react at being selected (the reaction is always the same, regardless of the seed, draw or probability that the team would get a bid; the players, coaches, staff and friends all gather in a room, peer nervously at the screen and then leap to their feet, raise their arms and scream when their school's name comes up on the line) or "bubble" teams that haven't been picked yet.
Of course, the words "Princeton" and "bubble team" rarely go together. For the most part, Princeton teams know if they're in or out before the selection show, either because they hold an automatic bid, they are a shoo-in for the tournament or they obviously have no chance.
Largely, this is because the Ivy League is a one-bid league in basketball and some other sports (field hockey, which Princeton dominates), and, in the sports where there are multiple bids to be had, it's often obvious what's going to happen. In men's and women's lacrosse last year, for instance, neither Princeton team won the automatic bid but both knew they were locks for the tournament.
In fact, TigerBlog can only think of one time when a Princeton team could be considered a bubble team, and that was in men's basketball in 1998-99, when Princeton defeated teams like UNC Charlotte, Texas, Florida State and UAB but had some other tough losses, especially in overtime to Harvard and Yale, that ultimately sent the Tigers to the NIT, where they would beat Georgetown and North Carolina State before falling to Xavier. TigerBlog watched that year's selection show thinking that Princeton had at least a small chance.
All of this brings us to Monday's men's soccer selection show, at 5:30 on ESPNEWS. Princeton's men's team finished its regular season in style, blasting Penn and Yale to finish 9-5-3 with a strong RPI. It seemed like Princeton had a pretty good shot at a bid – but not a 100% lock. In other words, a genuine bubble team.
When ESPNEWS has a selection show, it doesn't go to the picks right away. Instead, it starts out with its normal programming and fits the selections in during the course of the half-hour.
When 5:30 rolled around, the first story was about how the Bengals were thinking of signing Larry Johnson and then mentioned how two guys TigerBlog had never heard of were named the baseball Rookies of the Year.
After that was news that Stephen Jackson had been traded from the Warriors to the Bobcats, which left TigerBlog wondering why teams continually take chances on proven malcontents like Johnson and Jackson. Next was a 10-minute discussion of the NFL, specifically Bill Belichick's decision to go for it on 4th-and-2 from his 28 against the Colts Sunday night (a move TigerBlog defended Monday and continues to believe was a great call).
Then, finally, it was time for the soccer selections. The bad part of selections on ESPNEWS is that they make you wait for 15-20 minutes (or longer) to start the picks; the good part is that they fly through them.
And so it started, with the first group of 12 teams (men's soccer is a 48-team draw; the women's tournament is 64 teams), followed quickly by the next. By this time, Brown and Dartmouth were in the field, and neither one of them had the Ivy League's automatic bid, which belonged to Harvard and meant that three Ivy teams were already in.
TigerBlog remembers full well Gary Walters' time on the men's basketball committee, including his year as chair, and Gary always said that the committee never considers how many teams from a league are in the field. TB has also heard other members of committees for other sports say the same thing, time and again. Still, when Brown and Dartmouth were in and Harvard was still not on the board, TB couldn't help but think "uh-oh."
The third group of 12 didn't include Princeton or Harvard, which made the drama build even more. Finally, the last group was flashed, and Princeton was the last school listed, all the way on the bottom. Princeton vs. Bucknell here Thursday, with the winner to play at Virginia Sunday.
It was torturous for TigerBlog to watch; it had to be twice as excruciating for the team. It had to be a helpless feeling of not having any way of knowing what was going to happen, to pure elation at finding out they were in. And at home, to boot.
Hey, it's what selection shows are all about.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Our Own Peyton vs. Tom
Decisions - in life, sports, whatever - shouldn't be judged on outcomes. They should be judged by the logic that went into making them.
As a result, TigerBlog considers Bill Belichick's decision to go for it on fourth-and-2 from his 28 with a little more than two minutes remaining against the Colts Sunday night to be one of the greatest coaching decisions ever. If the Pats had gotten the first down (and they came really, really close), the game would essentially be over. Basically, what Belichick did was say "hey, Peyton Manning's going to score, whether he has to go 28 yards or 99 yards, so let's keep the ball away from him if we can."
It was a move of pure genius, even if it didn't end up going in favor of the Patriots. It also went completely against the grain of everything TigerBlog hates about pro coaching - the desire to avoid being second-guessed.
If you watched the game, you might have noticed NBC's understated attempt to brand the game (TigerBlog hates that term, by the way) as one between the two "Teams of the Decade" in the NFL's top "Rivalry of the Decade," which can somewhat summed up as "Manning vs. Brady." Also, if you fell asleep early (like TB), you missed one of the great fourth-quarter comebacks you'll ever see.
All the "Peyton vs. Tom" stuff and rivalry stuff got TigerBlog to thinking about Princeton athletics and its rivals. Also, TB asked if Princeton has had a "Peyton vs. Tom" situation that he could remember.
To qualify, it has to be a situation where the individual rivalry between two players transcended the games themselves. Of course, with the nature of college athletics being what it is, it's hard for that type of rivalry to emerge in the span of four years.
Let's get back to that later. Before that, let's talk about the nature of rivalries.
The big thing about Princeton and its rivals is that they're different in different sports. The biggest rival in, oh, let's randomly pick a sport, say, men's lacrosse, is Cornell in the league and Syracuse or Hopkins out of it. In women's lacrosse, over the last 15 years or so, it's been Dartmouth in the league and a host of schools, most notably Virginia, out of it.
In football, you'll find a large group who think Harvard and Yale are Princeton's top rivals and another group (usually younger) who think Penn is Princeton's top rival. Still others think it should be Dartmouth, against whom Princeton finishes the regular season each year (including this week in Hanover).
Some sports, like field hockey and of late women's cross country, have no natural rival, as Princeton has dominated the entire league. A sport like women's soccer might say Harvard is its biggest rival, but in the last decade, Princeton has battled at different times Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia and Dartmouth for the top spot in the league.
If you're looking historically, the best rivalry in Princeton athletic history is without question the men's basketball rivalry with Penn. Princeton and Penn dominated Ivy basketball for nearly 50 years, and each time they played was the highlight of the athletic calendar. The rivalry today isn't what it was, though hopefully it'll get back to where it was.
If you're looking for the top rivalry at Princeton for the last few years, especially last year, it's men's squash vs. Trinity. Again, this is without question. The matches the two played last year were epic sporting events, excruciating emotional roller-coasters for both teams.
Getting back to the Tom vs. Peyton angle, it's hard to come up many. If you think men's basketball, maybe the closest you can come is Brian Earl vs. Michael Jordan (the one from Penn), but their games against each other were more team-oriented than a game of one-on-one with teams around them.
TB can really come up with only three from the 20 years he's been around:
* Yasser El Halaby vs. Yale's Julian Illingworth in men's squash, especially from the 2005-06 season, when Illingworth beat El Halaby during the regular season to deny Princeton the outright title, only to have El Halaby come back and wipe out Illingworth 9-6, 9-2, 9-1 in the national final.
* Ryan Boyle vs. Syracuse's Mikey Powell in men's lacrosse. Boyle and Powell had their four years in college overlap, and Powell won the Turnbull Award as the nation's top attackman all four years. Their teams played against each other seven times in four years, and Syracuse went 5-2 in those games. Powell's teams won two NCAA titles to one for Boyle, and the teams went head-to-head in the 2001 and 2002 NCAA final. As freshmen in 2001, Powell scored the game-tying goal with 16 seconds left in regulation in the championship game, and
Boyle set up B.J. Prager perfectly in overtime to win it. By 2004 they were clearly the two best players in college lacrosse.
* Keith Elias vs. Dartmouth's Jay Fiedler. This one goes back to football in the early 1990s. Fiedler (perhaps TigerBlog's all-time favorite non-Princeton Ivy athlete) went 3-0 against Elias on the varsity level (they had an all-time freshman game that TB believes Princeton won), but it was hardly Elias' fault. Dartmouth won the 1991 Ivy League title, and the teams shared the title in 1992 by virtue of Dartmouth's 34-20 win over Princeton to end the season (despite 207 rushing yards from Elias). The 1993 game was the best, though it came on a day when Penn won the Ivy title. Dartmouth beat Princeton 28-22 in Hanover in the final game for Elias and Fielder, and neither disappointed: Elias ran for 188 yards, while Fiedler threw for 224 of his 284 yards and both of his touchdowns in the second half.
In thinking about it, Boyle/Powell and Elias/Fiedler are probably the closest, because when they played against each other, the entire storyline was about that matchup. Also, there are probably others that predated TigerBlog.
There's something special about having that kind of rivalry, team or individual. The Colts-Pats game was great, but it was made greater by having Peyton Manning and Tom Brady in it.
As a result, TigerBlog considers Bill Belichick's decision to go for it on fourth-and-2 from his 28 with a little more than two minutes remaining against the Colts Sunday night to be one of the greatest coaching decisions ever. If the Pats had gotten the first down (and they came really, really close), the game would essentially be over. Basically, what Belichick did was say "hey, Peyton Manning's going to score, whether he has to go 28 yards or 99 yards, so let's keep the ball away from him if we can."
It was a move of pure genius, even if it didn't end up going in favor of the Patriots. It also went completely against the grain of everything TigerBlog hates about pro coaching - the desire to avoid being second-guessed.
If you watched the game, you might have noticed NBC's understated attempt to brand the game (TigerBlog hates that term, by the way) as one between the two "Teams of the Decade" in the NFL's top "Rivalry of the Decade," which can somewhat summed up as "Manning vs. Brady." Also, if you fell asleep early (like TB), you missed one of the great fourth-quarter comebacks you'll ever see.
All the "Peyton vs. Tom" stuff and rivalry stuff got TigerBlog to thinking about Princeton athletics and its rivals. Also, TB asked if Princeton has had a "Peyton vs. Tom" situation that he could remember.
To qualify, it has to be a situation where the individual rivalry between two players transcended the games themselves. Of course, with the nature of college athletics being what it is, it's hard for that type of rivalry to emerge in the span of four years.
Let's get back to that later. Before that, let's talk about the nature of rivalries.
The big thing about Princeton and its rivals is that they're different in different sports. The biggest rival in, oh, let's randomly pick a sport, say, men's lacrosse, is Cornell in the league and Syracuse or Hopkins out of it. In women's lacrosse, over the last 15 years or so, it's been Dartmouth in the league and a host of schools, most notably Virginia, out of it.
In football, you'll find a large group who think Harvard and Yale are Princeton's top rivals and another group (usually younger) who think Penn is Princeton's top rival. Still others think it should be Dartmouth, against whom Princeton finishes the regular season each year (including this week in Hanover).
Some sports, like field hockey and of late women's cross country, have no natural rival, as Princeton has dominated the entire league. A sport like women's soccer might say Harvard is its biggest rival, but in the last decade, Princeton has battled at different times Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia and Dartmouth for the top spot in the league.
If you're looking historically, the best rivalry in Princeton athletic history is without question the men's basketball rivalry with Penn. Princeton and Penn dominated Ivy basketball for nearly 50 years, and each time they played was the highlight of the athletic calendar. The rivalry today isn't what it was, though hopefully it'll get back to where it was.
If you're looking for the top rivalry at Princeton for the last few years, especially last year, it's men's squash vs. Trinity. Again, this is without question. The matches the two played last year were epic sporting events, excruciating emotional roller-coasters for both teams.
Getting back to the Tom vs. Peyton angle, it's hard to come up many. If you think men's basketball, maybe the closest you can come is Brian Earl vs. Michael Jordan (the one from Penn), but their games against each other were more team-oriented than a game of one-on-one with teams around them.
TB can really come up with only three from the 20 years he's been around:
* Yasser El Halaby vs. Yale's Julian Illingworth in men's squash, especially from the 2005-06 season, when Illingworth beat El Halaby during the regular season to deny Princeton the outright title, only to have El Halaby come back and wipe out Illingworth 9-6, 9-2, 9-1 in the national final.
* Ryan Boyle vs. Syracuse's Mikey Powell in men's lacrosse. Boyle and Powell had their four years in college overlap, and Powell won the Turnbull Award as the nation's top attackman all four years. Their teams played against each other seven times in four years, and Syracuse went 5-2 in those games. Powell's teams won two NCAA titles to one for Boyle, and the teams went head-to-head in the 2001 and 2002 NCAA final. As freshmen in 2001, Powell scored the game-tying goal with 16 seconds left in regulation in the championship game, and
Boyle set up B.J. Prager perfectly in overtime to win it. By 2004 they were clearly the two best players in college lacrosse.
* Keith Elias vs. Dartmouth's Jay Fiedler. This one goes back to football in the early 1990s. Fiedler (perhaps TigerBlog's all-time favorite non-Princeton Ivy athlete) went 3-0 against Elias on the varsity level (they had an all-time freshman game that TB believes Princeton won), but it was hardly Elias' fault. Dartmouth won the 1991 Ivy League title, and the teams shared the title in 1992 by virtue of Dartmouth's 34-20 win over Princeton to end the season (despite 207 rushing yards from Elias). The 1993 game was the best, though it came on a day when Penn won the Ivy title. Dartmouth beat Princeton 28-22 in Hanover in the final game for Elias and Fielder, and neither disappointed: Elias ran for 188 yards, while Fiedler threw for 224 of his 284 yards and both of his touchdowns in the second half.
In thinking about it, Boyle/Powell and Elias/Fiedler are probably the closest, because when they played against each other, the entire storyline was about that matchup. Also, there are probably others that predated TigerBlog.
There's something special about having that kind of rivalry, team or individual. The Colts-Pats game was great, but it was made greater by having Peyton Manning and Tom Brady in it.
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