Going For A Walk

TigerBlog was about 15 minutes into his walk around the campus Saturday evening when he came to the metal Tigers at the head of the football stadium.

It was nearly 6, and TB was struck by the fact that there was barely anyone else in his view, even if he turned 360 degrees.

Then he hoped that wouldn't be the case exactly one week later, which would be this Saturday at 6, when Princeton opens its football season against Lehigh. Hopefully at that moment there will be at least a few people, or a few thousand people, at the stadium.

For last Saturday, though, there was nothing but calm. In every way, it was calm.

The weather was perfect. School had just started, so the students weren't flooded with work. It was still early, so nobody was all that concerned about how to spend Saturday night.

Nope. It was just calm.

TB took a huge loop around the campus, starting in Lot 21, heading up past the football stadium, onto Prospect Street, across Washington Road, past McCosh, over to the chapel, past Nassau Hall, up to Nassau Street, back down around Mathey, across towards Dillon, down past Prospect House, back to Elm Road, past the softball field, past Roberts Stadium and the Lenz Tennis Center, across to Class of 1952 Stadium, up past the new neurosciences building, across the bridge over Washington Road, past the chemistry building, past Jadwin and back to Lot 21.

Then he did an abbreviated version. In all, it took about 75 minutes. It's how old people exercise. When they're not playing squash, because people who shall remain nameless but who happen to be the head men's lacrosse coach keep saying things like "today's no good but definitely tomorrow."

When you're on the Princeton campus basically every day for a quarter-century or so, you start to take the place for granted. That was the best part of TigerBlog's walk. It reminded him of just how special this campus is.

For starters, he works in a basketball arena. People pay money to come into this building to watch games. The back part of his office slopes upward, because it's underneath the balcony seats.

As he walked up onto campus, he came to the chapel.

Every time he goes by it, he thinks of the weddings he's attended there - and the funerals. He also thinks about how Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there.

Mostly he thinks about its insane beauty, with its stained glass with the perfect amount of light, all housed in a building that makes TB think that whoever designed it back in 1928 knew exactly what he was doing.

Then there's Nassau Hall.

There was activity outside on the grass, mostly families and little kids running around, kicking balls and such, taking pictures on the little statues. Nassau Hall is another beautiful building from the outside, and when you walk by it so many times, it's easy to forget that this building was once the capitol building of this nation and that the Continental Congress had met there.

Maybe TB's favorite spot on campus - or at least non-athletic venue - is probably the Prospect Gardens.

As TB walked by there Saturday, a wedding was about to begin. Or at least TB guessed it was a wedding, with the way the chairs were set up.

TB can't imagine how much effort, and yes money, goes into keeping those gardens looking the way they do year-round. He assumes it's significant.

Along the way of his walk, he stumbled upon any number of people who were doing the same thing he was.

He saw a husband and wife on Prospect Street, with the husband's wearing a "Santa Clara Water Polo" hat. Santa Clara water polo was on campus last weekend for the Princeton Invitational, which included Princeton's first ESPNU event of the academic year.

TigerBlog has never been to Santa Clara's campus, though he has a sense it's pretty nice. He wondered what the visitors' take was on Princeton's campus, but on this day, they had to be impressed.

Diana Chamorro, Princeton's water polo contact, is a Santa Clara graduate, so she can now relate to what it's like for TB when Princeton plays Penn. Anyway, Diana said that Santa Clara's campus is much smaller than Princeton's but is nonetheless beautiful, that it's nicer than Stanford's campus and that it's the oldest institution of higher learning in California (something that TB never would have guessed).

Meanwhile back at Princeton, TB also came across different pockets of students.

He saw one group of five women debating what the first name of a sixth, who had just peeled away from their group, was. He heard someone yell through a dorm window "anyone have a car I can borrow?"

He saw a bunch of guys - he believes they were hockey players - playing sand volleyball in a courtyard.

It was typical college stuff.

He also saw a group of larger young men wearing Princeton football shirts or shorts.

Unlike every other football player in the country from Pop Warner through the NFL, their season was still a week away.

Exactly one week later, they'd be much busier. They would be at their most intense, their most focused, their most emotional.

For this idyllic Saturday, though, they were like everyone else TB found on his walk around the campus.

They were calm.

So was all of Princeton University.

It really is a beautiful place. TB's walk was a perfect reminder of that.

Sunday Afternoon At Bedford And Roberts

TigerBlog parked his car, walked down the path towards Roberts Stadium and Bedford Field and heard the roar of the crowd.

Clearly, someone had scored in the field hockey game. Clearly, it was Princeton, which had cut Penn State's lead to 4-3 with, as it turned out, 13 minutes left.

By the time he got to Bedford Field, there were about seven minutes to go. TB got to see the final frantic minutes of the game, which seemed headed to a late tying goal and then OT.

Unfortunately, it never happened. This time, Princeton had no late magic, and Penn State was able to escape with a 4-3 win over the defending NCAA champion.

After that, it was time for the two minute walk over to Roberts Stadium, for Princeton's men's soccer home opener against Seton Hall. Princeton would win 1-0, on freshman Bryan Windsor's first career goal, which came midway through the second half.

Let's go back to field hockey for a minute.

The first thing TB noticed was that crowd at Bedford Field was huge. And from where TB stood, behind the goal, it looked awesome.

Princeton had several chances in the seven minutes that TB saw but just couldn't convert. Each time Princeton had possession, and the buzz would grow, only to be end in an unsatisfying "oooooooohhhhhhhhhh" as the ball just didn't find the cage.

And yes, it would have been nice had Princeton gotten the equalizer. Still, TB was more focused on the big picture.

He thought back to the first Princeton field hockey games he ever saw, which were played on Gulick Field, which was the field above Lourie-Love Field. If you stood by the benches on Lourie-Love, Gulick - the field next to it - was slightly elevated.

Today those two fields make up Roberts Stadium. The hill that Gulick Field was on was smoothed out to create Plummer Field, the FieldTurf practice field next to Myslik Field, the soccer game field.

Back then, Gulick was an immaculately maintained grass field with small wooden bleachers and no amenities. The key word here is grass, as in the surface field hockey used to be played on, back before basically every college team switched to artificial turf.

The ball flies on the turf, as opposed to natural grass. No matter how much TB liked Gulick Field (with its huge parking lot behind it, a parking lot that is now the neuroscience building), it's impossible to argue that the sport is so much faster, so much more athletic, on artificial turf.

TB has seen pictures of the earliest days of Princeton field hockey. He thinks that the players in those pictures have to marvel at what has become of the sport that they helped mold at Princeton.

Today Princeton plays at a field hockey-only facility. The crowd at yesterday's game dwarfed any TB ever saw at Gulick.

And who was there to watch? Men. Women. Boys. Girls. It was a perfectly pristine late summer day, and families and fans came out to see field hockey.

There was nothing odd or special about it. And that's the real story. It's a real victory for women's athletics when fans come out to support them like that, and it shows how mainstream women's sports are, especially at schools like Princeton.

Sometimes marketing can be tricky. And expensive. Other times it can be simple and free. Here is the defending NCAA champion, stocked with Olympians and national team players, not to mention a roster of seemingly likeable women. It's a recipe for marketing success.

Then there was the soccer game.

TB loves to watch games at Roberts, where no matter where one goes there is a perfect view of the field, combined with one familiar face after another, one familiar youth jersey after another.

TB's favorite spot to watch is from behind the goals, where he can stand, kibbitz and watch the game.

For the Seton Hall game, TB spent about 20 minutes behind the goal and the rest of the game in the press box.

It was the debut of John Nolan, who is doing the audio for Princeton men's and women's soccer this year on goprincetontigers.tv, as part of the Ivy League Digital Network.

John is a Syracuse alum and the radio voice of the Fort Wayne Tin Cats, the Single-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres. His presence will greatly enhance the videostreaming, which previously has not included any audio.

Windsor's goal was all the Tigers would get and all they would need. They would come close to getting a few more but couldn't convert, but the team that deserved to win did so in this one.

Princeton is now 1-2, having played the tough New Jersey trio of FDU, Rutgers and now Seton Hall.

TB was happy for Jim Barlow that his team won, especially with the way the Tigers had clearly outplayed the Pirates.

Beyond the win and the loss, though, TB's time Sunday afternoon was a reminder of what a great product Princeton offers to the local community at these two venues - and for free.

When the weather is perfect, like it was Sunday, it just makes it even that much better.

Yes, getting a sweep would have been great.

On this Sunday afternoon, though, it was still a pretty good place for a Princeton fan to be.

Not Yet

TigerBlog was just procrastinating. He does that sometimes. Actually, he does that a lot.

For instance, even as we speak, TigerBlog has a load of laundry in his dryer that he has not yet folded, though each of the last two mornings he has taken what's he's needed out of the dryer and left the rest, to be folded at another point in time.

That's quality procrastinating.

As for today, Bob Surace came in about 45 minutes ago, did some dance about the Yankees while singing their theme song (the best thing about the Yankees, by the way, is that song) and then used a PG-13 rated word to describe this weekend for an Ivy League football coach.

Ah, but before TB started down the path of agreeing with Surace, he flipped around the web for a little while.

The high point might have been when he read the New York Post headline "Beauty Queen - Miss America 'Fat As Bleep.' " TB didn't read any further; he didn't have to.

The low point was when he found out the Jumble page is under construction and today's puzzle couldn't be played. What does he do about that?

Somewhere in the middle was the story about how Raiders' kicker Sebastian Janikowski was angry because the kicker for the Jaguars said that Janikowski had told him that roots against the A's because the sooner the baseball season ends, the quicker the dirt infield is gone and Janikowski doesn't have to worry about not kicking on grass. Janikowski said he never said that.

The surprising part for TB was the idea that the Raiders and A's are the only football/baseball teams that share a stadium.

When TB was a kid, almost everyone in the NFL shared a stadium with a Major League Baseball team.

The Jets and Mets shared Shea Stadium. The Yankees and Giants shared Yankee Stadium.

The Phillies and Eagles were the Vet. The Steelers and Pirates were at Three Rivers. The Reds and Bengals played at Riverfront. The Orioles and Colts played at Memorial Stadium.

Pick a city. The teams were co-tenants.

Then the whole smaller, baseball-only revolution began, followed by football teams with gigantic stadiums that don't exactly bring cities their money's worth. If they're lucky, they're used 40-50 times a year.

The dirt infield covering the football field was a staple of NFL games in September. These days, that only happens in Oakland.

Football season starts in high school and college in August. The NFL is in Week 2.

The Ivy League? Nope. A week away.

This is always the toughest week for league teams, who are ready to finally get to play someone else but have to wait one more week to get started.

TigerBlog's idea is a great one.

Start this weekend. Play five weeks in a row. Take Week 6 off. Play five more weeks. That's 10 games, 11 weeks, one week for everyone to rest in mid-season.

If it ever came to be that an 11th game was added, then the season could start a week earlier still. The idea of having the whole league off in the middle is perfect for resting and healing.

Not that it isn't a busy weekend for Princeton sports.

Among the highlights:

* women's soccer at Seton Hall tonight after being postponed last night by thunderstorms and then  Sunday at Rutgers

* men's soccer at Rutgers tonight and home with Seton Hall Sunday

* field hockey home with Michigan State tonight and Penn State Sunday

* sprint football at Mansfield tomorrow at 7:30, on ESPN3 no less

* men's water polo all weekend, with the 6:30 game tonight against Santa Clara on ESPNU

There's also about 1,000 college football games on television and the NFL weekend, minus last night's horrible Jets-Pats game.

Just no Ivy League football just yet.

They'll get around to that next week.

And TB? He'll get around to folding his laundry at some point.

Pitchability

Is it possible that TigerBlog has finally seen enough of "The Sopranos?"

TB saw each episode multiple times when the show had its first run on HBO. Then he watched the edited reruns on A&E for years.

Now, as the show is repeated every night on one of the HBO channels, TB has been DVRing them and watching them again.

In this iteration, he has now seen each season two or three times through. And maybe, finally, he's had enough.

The show is currently in Season 3, and Tony's mother just died. TB started out watching it and then deleted it instead, opting for "Two And A Half Men," another show he's seen over and over. For some reason, seeing "2.5 Men" over and over is better than "Big Bang Theory" over and over, even if "BBT" is probably a better show. TB can't figure that out.

He's never seen an episode of "Modern Family," though he may be giving that one a chance now that it's coming to syndication. He tried to get into "How I Met Your Mother" but it didn't take. He's heard "Modern Family" is hilarious.

As for "The Sopranos," TB couldn't help but wonder if the reason the show is different now is because 1) he's seen each episode so many times or 2) because of the death of James Gandolfini, who played Tony Soprano.

He doubts it's the first, at least based on his history of watching the same show or movie a million times. Maybe it's tied to the second.

Either way, he doesn't really have a go-to show right now. He's getting ready for Season 3 of "Homeland," obviously.

He tried to get into "Walking Dead" and "Breaking Bad" with little success, and he will never be into a reality show. 

He's actually taken to watching, of all things, some Major League Baseball games of late. Oh, not a complete game or anything. But he's paying closer attention these days than he has in years, possibly because of how little else there is to watch.

He can't stand the Yankees, of course. And yet here they come, after a year of showing little in the way of promise for any kind of run.

He can't stand Alfonso Soriano, but the Yankees desperately needed a presence like his in the lineup. And A-Rod? He's played well enough to give them way more production than they'd been getting at third base, even if he's an unrepentant cheater who can't possibly have a friend on his team or any other.

Seriously, how can he in good conscience pretend he's being honest about anything? Right now, he's fifth all-time in Major League history in home runs, seven away from Willie Mays, and sixth all-time in RBIs, 29 away from Lou Gehrig. He has 2,936 career hits.

And yet he has absolutely zero chance of ever being in the Hall of Fame.

He was supposed to challenge Barry Bonds for the all-time home run record (if one acknowledges that Bonds is the legitimate home run champ). Instead, he's challenge Bonds for the all-time revulsion record.

And yet there are the Yankees, just a game behind the Rays for the final A.L. wild card spot, which is going to be the wildest part of September baseball, as the Yankees, Orioles, Indians and Royals are all within two games of the Rays, who are 2.5 games behind the Rangers.

In the National League, the playoff teams are set with the Braves, Dodgers and three Central teams - the Cards, Pirates and Reds, who are fighting it out for first place, which avoids the wild card game.

The Pirates are this year's feel-good story, after not having a winning season since well before Bonds decided to start his long career of cheating.

TB's fear is that the Yankees will come all the way back, get into the playoffs and win it all. Oh well.

TB has been following Will Venable's season pretty closely.

The Princeton alum had a great August, and he now has 21 home runs and 51 RBIs and a .271 batting average. He also earned a two-year contract extension, worth $8.4 million.

Venable figures to be in the lineup tomorrow night in Atlanta, where the Padres will take on the Braves. San Diego definitely won't be in the postseason and would need to finish 15-3 to get to .500, but the team has at least been competitive for most of the season.

On the mound in Atlanta tomorrow night will be David Hale, who will become the latest Princetonian in the majors when he makes his debut for the Braves.

Here's what the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said about him:
Hale, a Marietta native and Princeton University graduate, was 6-9 with a 3.22 ERA in 22 games (20 starts) for Gwinnett, and seven of his last eight games were quality starts of six innings or more with three earned runs or fewer.
“He’s got some good stuff,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said after that outing. “Getting out of that jam… He’s got pitchability. He’s got some quality pitches. He elevated the fastball, he can sink it. He’s been impressive.”Hale had 77 strikeouts with 36 walks in 114-2/3 innings at Gwinnett this season, after posting 124 strikeouts with 67 walks in 145-2/3 innings at Double-A Mississippi in 2012. He had one or no walks in five of his last seven starts for Gwinnett.
A third-round draft pick of the Braves in 2009 out of Princeton, Hale returned to school for consecutive fall semesters after minor league seasons ended in order to complete work on his degree in economics. He said his dream was to pitch in the major leagues, but he wanted to make sure he had a solid fallback option if it didn’t work out.

While at Princeton, Hale was a .291 hitter with seven home runs and 29 RBIs in addition to his pitching success.

And now he's making his Major League debut. Against Will Venable, who sometimes leads off, which would mean the first batter Hale ever faced would be a fellow Princeton alum.

TB would root for Venable to hit a home run and then Hale to settle down for six strong innings in a win.

And for a Yankee loss.

His sense, though, is that this will be a bad fall for the anti-Yankee crowd.

12 Years Later

If you're looking for something about Princeton sports, you're here on the wrong day.

Not on 9/11. Never on 9/11.

Today isn't about Princeton sports, or anything else, for that matter. It's about remembering what happened not that far from here 12 years ago today, on the single worst day in the history of the United States of America.

So, no, it's not a day to talk about anything else. TB's fear is that if he stops, and everyone else little by little stops, then the horror of that day will recede from all of our minds, and that is something that can never, ever, ever happen.

TigerBlog has written this each of the last few years, and he'll repeat it each 9/11 as long as he can.

Sept. 11, 2001, was the worst day in this country's history. It was a day that changed forever how the country and the world think and operate. No day has gone by for any of us since then that hasn't been touched by the events of that day.

Everyone has a story from that day.

TB's friend Corey was flying here and was diverted to Nashville, from where he had rent and car to drive back. FatherBlog was in his office in midtown working and ended up having to walk a few miles to get to a ferry to get back across the river.

He knows one person who landed at Newark about an hour before the first plane hit the World Trade Center and was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike and could see the twin towers.

He knows another person who was in Ireland and watched in on television, wondering if it was real and then, when finding out it was, wondering what coming home would be like, or, for that matter, how in fact coming home would be accomplished in the first place.

He knows several people who were in the towers that morning. He knows one - former Princeton men's lacrosse player John Schroeder - who didn't get out alive.

TigerBlog's own experience was from a safer distance, and yet he was petrified by the end of the day, in a way he's never been before or since. TB considers himself to be a pretty laid back person, able to roll with the punches, able to be optimistic, able to always wonder "what's the worst that can happen."

Except for that night.

He stood at the end of his driveway in the darkness and looked up and the clear night sky. There wasn't a plane to be seen anyway, all aviation in this country having been stopped.

It was the eeriest moment of TB's life.

That Tuesday started out as a day of total serenity, with a bright blue sky, no humidity, pleasantly warm, the kind of day that is a reminder that summer is ending and autumn is just about here.

Miss TigerBlog was very Little Miss TigerBlog back then, having just turned one, and TB had to drop her off at her babysitter, about three miles north of Princeton. After that, the routine was to drop TigerBlog Jr. off at the University League Nursery School, across FitzRandolph from the Jadwin parking lot. TBJ was four.

As he dropped him off, TB heard the office manager for the school mention that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. As with pretty much everyone else when they first heard the news, TB's first thought was: "How is that possible on such a crystal clear day?"

The rest of the day isn't a blur at all. Each detail is right there, as it unfolded 12 years ago. How TB tried to get in touch with FatherBlog to make sure he was okay. How the only television here back then was in the Caldwell Field House athletic training room, where people from the department gathered in silence, filtering in and out, unable to watch it in large doses.

And then eventually it was time to go back and get the kids, first TBJ. And TigerBlog found him and his nursery school pals on the swings, oblivious to the fact that the innocence of their world - if not their childhoods - was gone.

Of course, there were a lot of kids in their age-group who had the innocence of their childhoods gone as well, the kids who had one parent or even two not come home that night.

And that night was so surreal, with the quiet of the neighborhood - and in the skies - and the inability both to watch the television and to turn away.

And with that, TB wants to rerun what he said here two years ago to the day, changing only the "10" to "12." So here goes:

TB wondered that night on the driveway whether or not the United States would be able to survive such a shadowy enemy, wondered what a post 9/11 world would look like, whether or not he could take for granted that Princeton University would still field athletic teams.

And then an amazing thing happened. The sun came up the next day, and the resilience of New Yorkers - especially then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani - began to inspire the entire country.

TB remembers one quote from Giuliani more than any other: "We will honor those who died by living our lives."

And that's what's happened.

If you asked TB to write down the best moments of his life, many of them have happened in the last 10 years.

As for Princeton, some of the greatest moments in Princeton athletic history have happened in the last 12 years. Today, Princeton is heading off into a new athletic year with athletes who were, what, in elementary school on 9/11?

One thing that TB has struggled with in these last 12 years is watching the events again on TV. In a world where it's so hard to separate reality and fantasy, TB has always felt it's somewhat voyeuristic and disrespectful to watch the planes hit the tower again, watch the towers fall, see the people jump out the windows because it was a better option for them - almost like it was watching a war movie or some episode of a cop show.

But the last few days, when TB has seen those images, it's served as the best reminder of the biggest heroes of that day, equal to the ones on the flight that crashed outside of Pittsburgh when the passengers fought back - the New York City police and firefighters who ran INTO the buildings, helping evacuate them before they collapsed.

In the aftermath, there were all kinds of fundraising events, including a huge one at Madison Square Garden. TB remembers a New York City firefighter who was on the stage and said his name and address into the mic and dared Osama Bin Laden to have the guts to come to his house.

TB heard an interview yesterday on the radio with one of the firefighters, a man who was trapped for 13 hours before being rescued. He talked about people he worked with who died, talked about the horror of the day.

Then he talked about resilience, how New York City came back, how the people got up off the canvas and went about their business and how proud that makes him.

And he's right.

It's been 12 years since the worst day in American history, one that left TigerBlog and tens of millions of others afraid about what the future would look like.

Twelve years later, the world has changed, but the American people haven't. They've lived their lives, as Giuliani said.

They've gone to work and gone on vacation and had children and sent them to college and gone to their weddings. They've played sports and watched sports and gone to the movies and gone to concerts. They've argued politics. They've cleaned out flooded basements and gotten sick and gotten better.

And every morning, they've gotten up.

It's 12 years later.

The terrorists won big on 9/11.

America has won big since.

Meet The 17ers

Had TigerBlog not overheard a casual remark about how early this year's freshman student-athlete orientation was going to be, he would have assumed it was at noon, just as it has been every other year going back as far as he can remember.

Instead, it was at 8 a.m. this time around. Were it not for that little moment, TB would have missed it completely.

Instead, he was there bright and early, along with more than 200 members of the Class of 2017, freshly arrived on campus, about to pick their classes later today and then actually start them tomorrow.

TigerBlog didn't realize that freshmen hadn't picked their classes yet. He tried to remember back to his first semester of college and when he picked classes, and he thought it was done long before he arrived on the Penn campus.

Maybe it wasn't. No, he's pretty sure it was. So then he started to think about what classes he took his first semester freshman year, and he's pretty sure it was this: Economics 1A, German, some political science class and calculus.

That particular college, by the way, was tied for seventh in the U.S. News and World Report rankings that came out today.  Along with MIT and Duke.

The No. 1 school on the list is, again, Princeton, followed by Harvard, Yale, Columbia and then a tie for fifth between Stanford and Chicago, whose athletic director is Erin McDermott, who worked at Princeton for more than a decade and was earlier at Columbia.

The fact that Princeton had been named No. 1 again drew a nice round of applause from the freshmen.

It was Gary Walters who mentioned the new rankings, mentioned them in his opening remarks, which included the fact that minds like Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer lectured in McCosh 50, the same room where the orientation was taking place.

TigerBlog had two thoughts when Walters said that.

First, this was the first time since Walters made his announcement last week that he is stepping down as Director of Athletics at the conclusion of this academic year that it dawned on TB that this would be a year of lasts with his boss, and this was the first "last," as it were, his last freshman student athlete orientation session.

It was a weird thought.

TB's second thought was that, as he looked around the room, he wondered if the group of young people assembled in it realized the great good fortune they have to be part of something like Princeton Athletics. Just to get to that room, they all had to excel athletically and academically far above the norms of both.

He hoped that they appreciated it. Maybe you don't when you're 18 or 19 or however old they are. Or maybe you can't when you've always excelled at everything.

Or maybe you do. TB isn't sure.

What he is sure about is that this event is always fascinating to him.

He writes this every year, but he can't help as he sits there but to look around and wonder what's in store for everyone.

Some will get hurt. Some will quit. Most won't. Most will have great four-year experiences.

And some will win the Roper Trophy and the von Kienbusch Award - as the top senior athletes - at the end of their four years, when the same members of the class gather at the senior awards banquet.

It seems so far in the future, that day. And yet it'll be here soon enough.

The program at McCosh 50 started with a video (TB's lone actual contribution) of some Princeton highlights, along with some Princeton Athletics facts - and the Angels and Airwaves song "Call To Arms."

Then there was a video of a speech Adam Berry, the former football receiver, gave a few years back on diversity at Princeton. Berry is very, very impressive.

Then came the speakers. The students heard about the McGraw Learning Center, about the medical staff and its policies and procedures, from the Office of the Dean of the College. Lastly, they heard from Jack Berger, the captain of the hockey team, about his own experiences here, as a student and an athlete.

Mostly what he said is to enjoy it, because it won't last forever.

TB's advice?

Reach out when they have questions, need help or feel alone. There are people here to talk to, people whose job it is to make their experiences better.

Make as many relationships as they can on campus. Take advantage of your time here.

When it was over, TigerBlog left the building and made his way back to Jadwin. As he walked, he thought about all the times he's gone from that side of campus back to his office and yet for all these years, he's never figured out the absolute best path to take.

After all, there are so many different ones.

As for the members of the athletic Class of 2017, they too left the room, headed down their own individual paths.

TB wishes them all the best.

The Best Of All Possible Worlds

TigerBlog can't remember in what class he first read the novel "Candide," or even if it was an English class.

It might have been senior year of high school English, in Mrs. Danielson's class.

He had American literature as a sophomore with Mr. Ridley, where he was first exposed to "The Great Gatsby" and "The Catcher In The Rye," two of his five favorite books, as well as some Hemingway, two Arthur Miller plays and something by Steinbeck, not to mention one of the two most practical things he ever learned in school, grammar. The other, by the way, was ninth-grade typing, which was done on a manual typewriter.

Junior year meant English lit with Ms. Nastaj. That was Shakespeare and "The Canterbury Tales" and that kind of stuff, which never really appealed to TB. As for Ms. Nastaj, TB's level of respect for her grew throughout the year and then really grew when he got to college and beyond, when he had a much better appreciation of what it was she tried so hard for 10 months to get across in her classroom, which was basically to think for yourself.

Mrs. Danielson's class was world literature, including some fascinating stuff, including a study of the Bible as literature. And "Candide." TB thinks. Because it could also have been in a world history class as well.

No, he thinks it was world literature.

As an aside, TB would rank all three in the top five of teachers he had in school, and that includes four years at Penn.

Meanwhile, the title character in "Candide" was a simple little sort who thought "all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds." Sort of an optimist, ol' Candide was.

Anyway, he stumbles across El Dorado, a utopian city where the streets are paved with gold. TB's memory is a little fuzzy on this part, as he hasn't read it in more than 30 years, but he either gets tired of utopia or someone explains to him that because everything is perfect all the time that it becomes mundane and he can no longer appreciate it.

Oh, and somewhere in there he says that someone must clearly be the happiest person on Earth because "he is above everything he owns," to which he is told "the best stomachs are not those that reject all foods."

Meanwhile, the part about not appreciating utopia has long resonated with TigerBlog. He thought about it again Friday as he wandered back and forth between field hockey and women's soccer, which were the first home games of the 2013-14 academic year at Princeton.

What made him think of Candide? The weather.

It was perfect. No, it was beyond perfect. It can't get any better than the weather was here Friday night.

And if it was like that all the time, would TigerBlog appreciate it? Or does he need a cold, rainy February day or a 95-degree, 85 percent-humidity day in July to enjoy Friday night to its fullest?

Whether it was the weather (homophones can be fun), both games had big crowds, despite the fact (or possibly because of the fact) that they were played at the same time, about 100 yards apart.

It would be a good weekend for both teams, as each won Friday night and then again later in the weekend, also at home.

The field hockey team had a great 3-1 win over Duke Friday night and then a we're-the-defending-NCAA-champ-everyone-is-coming-after-us-because-beating-us-would-make-their-year win over Fairfield Saturday.

Princeton outshot Fairfield 12-0 in the first half - 22-6 for the game - but had to fight off the Stags 4-3. That's what happens when people come after you that hard, which is what happens every game when you won the NCAA title the year before.

As for women's soccer, the Tigers beat Richmond 2-0 and Army 3-0, with three of those five goals from freshman Tyler Lussi and the other two from junior Lauren Lazo.

A year ago, when Princeton went 14-4-1 and 7-0-0 in the Ivy League, Jen Hoy had 18 goals, while Lazo had 11. With Hoy now a graduate in the professional league, the biggest question was if Princeton could come close to replacing her production; Lussi, through two games, seems to be the best bet for that.

Beyond just the wins Friday, the games themselves were great events. There were kids everywhere, and both facilities looked great, even with the construction still ongoing at Bedford Field.

As TB said Friday, events like those offer a great opportunity, especially for kids, to see all that is positive about intercollegiate athletics.

Neither game disappointed.

The season is under way around here.

It got off to a great start.

Opening Night, Big Night

While TigerBlog is pretty fired up for the start of games for the 2013-14 athletic year here at Princeton, even he will acknowledge that there are bigger sporting events in the world today than those that can be found involving the Tigers.

In case you forgot, there are two games on campus this evening, both at 6, as the defending NCAA champion field hockey team hosts Duke at 6 on Bedford Field, while about 100 yards away on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, the defending Ivy League champion women's soccer team hosts Richmond, also at 6.

Admission is free.

Again, admission is free. So is parking.

Given that the weather isn't this good on the nicest days in heaven and that the games are free, there is absolutely no reason not to go.

Think about it. What else in the entertainment world can provide this kind of value? You have two games within one minute's walk of each other, high-level Division I games at that, for no charge.

And you get to see the kind of athletes and athletics that will make you forget all of the headlines about conference realignment and Johnny Manziel and all of the things that make the sporting public shake their head about college sports.

When the game's over, walk up to one of the athletes and say hi. Bring you kids, boys and girls. They'll love it, and so will you.

There are around 125 FBS college football teams and about 100 players on each (scholarship plus walk-on). That comes to 12,500 FBS football players.

There are 330 Division I men's basketball teams. Figure they average 13 players per roster. That's another 4,300 athletes. Add them together, and you get 16,800. Round it to 17,000.

Then according to that commercial, there are approximately 400,000 NCAA athletes. That means roughly 96% of them don't play FBS football or Division men's basketball.

Unfortunately, all of college athletics gets labeled together way too often, especially in the national media. TB once challenged Kevin Blackistone, then with the Dallas Morning News (and now a professor and regular on "Around the Horn"), to come to Princeton and see for himself what goes on here after he'd written a series of articles critical of college athletics.

Blackistone took TB up on it and came to a Princeton-Lafayette football game. He also spoke to several Princeton athletes and coaches. He told TB that he thoroughly enjoyed the perspective here and his experience here, and TB could tell he meant it.

So that's what will be on display here tonight. Come and check it out.

In the meantime, the biggest sporting events in the world today are the World Cup soccer qualifiers.

TB's focus, like most in this country, is on the U.S.-Costa Rica game, which will be held at the national stadium in San Jose, beginning at 10 tonight Eastern time.

TB imagines Diego Quesada will be watching.

Diego was one of the three tour guides the Princeton men's lacrosse team had during its trip to Costa Rica 15 months ago. It was a great experience for everyone who made the trip, including TB.

One of his top memories is from attending the WCQ match between Los Ticos, as the Costa Ricans are known, and El Salvador, in the preliminary round.

To say it was wild is an understatement. To say the home crowd was into it is an understatement.

TB assumes that will all be multiplied out by a factor of about 10,000 or so for tonight's game. For starters, the stakes are higher, as both are on the verge of clinching spots in the field for Brazil next summer.

And then there's the first game between the two, in Denver in March, when the Americans won 1-0 in a blizzard. The Costa Ricans are still a tad miffed that the game was played in such conditions, and apparently there has been little in the way of accommodation for the U.S. team made for the return leg.

Right now the U.S. leads the group with 13 points, followed by Los Ticos with 11. Mexico is next with eight, followed by Honduras with seven, Panama with six and Jamaica with two.

The Americans have a bunch of players one yellow card away from having to sit out the next game, which is Tuesday at home against Mexico. And the country of origin for the ref tonight? Yup, Mexico.

Costa Rica, on the other hand, goes to Jamaica Tuesday. The final games are next month, with games on Oct. 11 and Oct. 15.

The top three teams in the group automatically qualify for the World Cup. The fourth place team plays New Zealand home-and-home for a spot in Brazil.

It's going to be hard for the U.S. and Costa Ricans to play their way out at this point, but goofier things have happened.

Tonight's game should be a great one, though it is on BeIn Sports TV, which TB doesn't get. Oh well.

He'll have to be content with opening night here.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all. Happy 5774.

That's 5,774 continuous years of the Hebrew calender, one whose years run of a similar but not exact length to the Gregorian calendar. Because of that, and the fact that not all Hebrew months and years are the same length, the Jewish holidays fall in similar but not exact spots each year.

TigerBlog recently read something interesting about that subject.

All Jewish holidays begin at sundown, so for instance Rosh Hashanah this year actually started last night, not today.

Hanukkah this year starts on sundown Wednesday, Nov. 27, which is the absolute earliest it can start. The next day, Nov. 28, is Thanksgiving, which means the first day of Hanukkah will be on Thanksgiving Day. This is also the latest that Thanksgiving Day can fall, since it is the fourth Thursday in November.

The last time Hanukkah was on Nov. 28 and Nov. 28 was the fourth Thursday of the month was 1861, before Thanksgiving was an actual holiday. And because of the way the Hebrew calendar is just out of sync enough with the solar year, Hanukkah won't be able to fall on Nov. 28 again until the Hebrew calendar cycles through the Gregorian calendar, which would be in the year 79,811.

TB won't be around then.

Meanwhile, Rosh Hashanah falls insanely early this year as well. It's almost never this early in September.

In fact, Jewish holidays are never on time. As TB wrote a year ago:
In Jewish culture, the High Holy Days never come on time. They're either early or late, as in "the holidays came really early this year," which is said at every family celebration as a way of suggesting that the hostess was caught completely off guard, what with the end of the summer and all, and therefore couldn't create a proper meal for the occasion. This is usually followed by a general agreement that "we should only be together on wonderful occasions."

Rosh Hashanah is the start of the Jewish High Holy Days, an eight-day period of celebration and introspection that culminates in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when TigerBlog's people fast for 24 hours to atone for their sins.

The customary greeting for today, though, is simply "Happy New Year," as that's what Rosh Hashanah is, the start of the Jewish new year.

So happy 5774, one and all.

TB has always thought that this is a good time for the new year, as opposed to Jan. 1. New school year. End of summer. Change of seasons. All of that suggests a turning of the page.

And so it is at Princeton Athletics, as the wildly successful 2012-13 academic year is officially in the rearview mirror and the curtain is rising on 2013-14.

The first games of the new academic year are a little more than 24 hours away.

Princeton hosts two games tomorrow, as the field hockey team begins defense of its NCAA championship when it takes on Duke at 6 on Bedford Field and the women's soccer team follows up on the second-best season in program history when it hosts Richmond, also at 6.

Combine those two from a year ago, and you have a 35-5-1 overall record, a 14-0-0 Ivy record, a 6-1 NCAA tournament record (all games played away from home) and one NCAA championship. That's not too bad.

The field hockey team is also home Saturday, this time at 4, against Fairfield. The women's soccer team hosts Army Sunday at noon.

There's no admission charge for either sport, by the way.

The men's soccer team is at FDU tomorrow at 7. Jim Barlow's team has its home opener as week from Sunday at 2 against Seton Hall, after playing at Rutgers next Friday.

The women's volleyball team also plays tomorrow, when it begins its season at the George Mason tournament.

All of these opponents, by the way, have already played multiple games this season. Princeton teams start a weekend or two later, and it takes a few games to achieve full fitness levels.

Still, it's the first games of a new year.

What will 2013-14 have in store?

The first games are always exciting, the start of a run into early June at the NCAA track and field championships.

Happy New Year to all.

Gary Walters Steps Down

Gary Walters ducked his head into TigerBlog's office last Thursday morning and said he wanted to talk to him about something later that day. When TB asked what it was, Walters said he'd just tell him later that afternoon.

Now when the boss says he wants to have a few words, the mind runs the gamut from "minor issue" to "campus safety will be escorting you out and don't ever come back."

TB spent about five hours pretty sure it was closer to the first one. As it turned out, it was hardly minor.

Walters told TB that he'd be stepping down as the Ford Family Director of Athletics at Princeton at the end of the 2013-14 academic year and that he wanted to make the announcement at the department's annual kickoff meeting a few days later.

TB has spent hours and hours meeting with Walters in the AD's office. If he had to add it all up, TB imagines it adds up to multiple weeks worth of time through the years.

As Walters broke the news to TB that this would be his 20th and final year in charge of Princeton Athletics, TB couldn't help but think back to the first of their meetings, back in July 1994.

TB and Walters started at Princeton on the same day. TB was actually hired when there was no athletic director, and his second-to-last story at the newspaper was the about the press conference announcing Walters' hiring.

One day earlier in Walters' tenure, he and TigerBlog had a quasi-interview. TB had already been hired obviously, so there wasn't really much at stake in the way of actual employment.

Still, TB remembers clear as day that Walters brought him down for a get-to-know-you session. TB's biggest memory? When Walters said TB was lucky because he wouldn't have hired a Penn guy for that position.

To this day, TB isn't sure if Walters was serious or not.

There is a lot about his boss of the last 19+ years that TB is sure about.

For starters, TB has always said that had Walters come to Princeton with a things-are-going-well-don't-fix-it-if-it-ain't-broke attitude that the athletic program wouldn't be anything close to what it is today.

Instead, Gary rebuilt Princeton, to the point where nothing is remotely close to what it was before. His charge as AD was to fully integrate athletics into the larger campus community, and that's exactly what he has done.

He worked tirelessly through the years to fight for the causes he believed in on this campus and nationally, for the coaches and the athletes and the Princeton name. The harder the fight, the more he relished it.

It's easy to sum his tenure up in wins and losses, of which there have been enormously more of the first than the second.

Princeton has won the Ivy League's unofficial all sports points championship each of his 19 years. There has been at least one team or individual national champion each of those years as well. Princeton has been the highest finishing Ivy League school in the Directors' Cup 16 of the 19 years it has been awarded, and the Tigers routinely finish in the top 40 nationally, usually as the top non-BCS conference school.

Princeton has won 214 Ivy League championships in his time as AD, a total 82 higher than the next highest total in the league during that time. There have been 48 national championships.

It's sometimes easy to forget how amazing this record is. Consider that Princeton won four NCAA championships last year - four - at a school with small enrollment and the highest admissions standards of any school in the world of intercollegiate athletics. Actually in the world.

So that's part of his legacy. It's not his complete legacy. It includes:

* winning

* the ability to hire young, unproven head coaches and give them the tools and guidance to be successful. This began with his first head coaching hire, Julie Shackford, who came from a small Division III program to become the greatest women's soccer coach in Ivy League history. It includes people like Kristen Holmes-Winn, who won the NCAA field hockey championship a year ago, and Scott Bradley, who has taken Princeton to so many NCAA tournaments in baseball that TB can't remember them all, and Courtney Banghart, who wasn't even 30 years old when he hired her and watched her turn the women's basketball program into a national power, and John Thompson, who had been the second assistant with no head coaching experience when he was elevated to head basketball coach, and Kathy Sell in women's tennis and Guy Gadowsky in hockey and so many others that TB is sorry if he left out any obvious ones. In all, 17 of his hires who came here with no previous Division I head coaching experience have won at least one Ivy League title.

* the co-curricular elements of intercollegiate sports, which he refers to as "Education Through Athletics." The concept has been in place since Day 1, long before ETA became the department motto. Drawing on his own experiences here with the late (and great) Marv Bressler from his own days as a men's basketball player, Walters established the wildly successful Princeton Academic Athletic Fellows program, which has given Princeton's athletes a voice to turn to for any number of reasons and which has brought so many faculty and staff members into the inner circle of teams. But it's more than just the PAAF. He created a Varsity Student Athlete Advisory Committee before it became an NCAA rule to do so. He has met thousands of times with University committees, advocating for so many causes that impact the athletic departments and athletes. There have been victories and defeats, but there has been a constant presence on the other side of Washington Road.

* holding his staff, coaches and athletes to the highest ethical standards at all times. He has been unwavering in this respect, and he has stressed what he has always referred to as either Values Based Coaching or Character Based Coaching.

* mentoring senior staff mentors who have gone on to become athletic directors or conference commissioners. There have been no fewer than seven of those.

* a total overhaul of Princeton's facilities and fundraising. He created the Princeton Varsity Club, which supports the Performance, Values and Community of Tiger Athletics. He has worked to allow Friends' Group support to reach unimaginable levels.

* a place in the national debate in college athletics through his work with the NCAA, most notably (but not limited to) his work on the Division I men's basketball committee.

* a complete commitment to providing the best possible experience for Princeton's student-athletes.

When TigerBlog sat down in Walters' office that day in 1994, his title was Manager of Sports Media Relations. Since then he has been promoted six times, to the point where he is now a Senior Associate Director of Athletics. From that day to today, his salary has tripled.

Each time, it was Gary Walters who was doing the promoting. Walters has been very, very good to TigerBlog.

This isn't to say that there haven't been hurdles along the way. There have been many disagreements, some of which TB was able to win and most of which he wasn't.

On the whole, though, coming to work in the 19 years that TB has been here has been, more than anything else, fun. When people say it must be fun to work at a place where you go to games all the time, TB thinks that it is, but it wouldn't be at a place that didn't have the onfield success and didn't have a sense of proper values about how to achieve that success.

Gary Walters deserves much of the credit for that.

And now it will be winding down.

TB sensed that this might be Gary's last year. He had said a few years ago to TB in passing that he thought he wanted to put in 20 years. It was the only time he ever mentioned anything like that to TB, but it stuck in TB's mind.

Gary hasn't exactly mellowed or slowed in his passion and commitment to Princeton and its athletes. In fact, he even announced his recommitment to his former staple, the 7 a.m. breakfast meeting. TB doubts his 20th year will be anything different.

Walters made his announcement to the staff this morning, he started out by saying that it had been 50 years since his father dropped him off at 345 Pyne Hall for his freshman year at Princeton. He had come from Reading High School, where his basketball coach had been Pete Carril.

He spoke for about two or three minutes about that first day, and how he met his first roommate, from Hawaii. How Pyne was next to Dillon Gym, which kept him from reaching the library as much as he should have.

Then he went through the rest of the meeting.

Eventually he came to the end of his agenda, and it was time to let his secret out.

It was an emotional time for him, and why wouldn't it be? So much of who he is has been tied to Princeton, in his 50 years. As a point guard on a Final Four basketball team. As an assistant coach. And for the last 19 years as Director of Athletics.

With one more to go.

He received a long ovation from the coaches and staff who were gathered at Dillon Gym. He spoke at a podium set up on the basketball court itself, on the court where he first played 50 years ago. TB wondered, as he watched, if anyone else was struck by how it has come full circle for him.

Princeton University has seen few people in its long history who have been as loyal, as dedicated, as committed to the institution as Gary Walters.

He read to the staff from a prepared script. He spoke from the heart, and said he couldn't believe his great good fortune in life.

The staff listened intently, and when he was done, he was given a long, long ovation.

Gary is not a product of privilege. In his talk, he called himself the son of a welder with an eighth grade education.

He came to a place of privilege, and he gave every single thing he had to give.

His final year figures to be more of the same Gary. He will fight his battles. He will hold everyone to his standards.

And then in June, he will step down. There will be parties, TB assumes. There will be testimonials. There will be honors.

They have been more than earned.

Gary Walters has been one in a million at Princeton University. He has given far more than he has gotten back.

Princeton is lucky to have had him all these years.