TigerBlog spends his early Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at physical therapy, taking the next steps back to his rightful place among the elite of the Jadwin Gym lunchtime squash crowd. And who knows? If it all goes perfectly, perhaps he can make it all the way back to the Old Bucks, the over-35 lacrosse team with whom TB first wrecked his patellar tendon, oh, 15 months ago now.
Physical therapy is a fascinating place. This is actually TB's second attempt, about a year after his first go-round didn't fix the problem, leading directly to the scar that now runs top-to-bottom across his kneecap.
The patients all eye each other with the same "I know what you're going through" look. They all ask each other the same basic "what'd you do?" question, in probably the same way that people in prison ask each other what they're in for. In general, the knee people commiserate with each other, while the shoulder people have their own club.
The PT staff is basically the same as it was 12 months earlier. There's Paul and John and Scott, who talk NFL football and the Yankees and pretty much any other sports-related topic that comes along. There's Darlene and Robin, who usually are just getting there when TB is leaving.
And then there's Sue, TB's actual therapist, and Crystal, the office assistant.
Sue will talk about anything and everything, from her two older boys from her first marriage to her nine-year-old daughter from her current one to her parents and all of their issues to her broken washing machine to her latest shopping trip to her favorite TV shows to what she's making for dinner. She does all this while casually twisting and turning somebody's healing body parts all over, coming across not as annoying but rather as soothing, as someone who is basically saying "don't worry; you're in good hands."
Crystal is more of a philosopher than a gossip. She talks religion and what she's teaching in Sunday school. She talks about her own seventh-grade daughter and what she's into, and she tries to extend that to mothering all of the patients, despite being decades younger than most of them.
Sue and Crystal have more in common than their employer, though. They are, for the most part, the exact demographic that were here at TigerBlog HQ try so hard to get to come to Princeton athletic events, especially football.
Both live within 10 or 15 miles of campus. They are mothers with kids who are interested in sports. They themselves are football fans. Crystal is actually a former Rutgers season ticket holder who was priced out of the stadium a few years ago.
And yet, until TB began to go to physical therapy, Crystal had never been to a Princeton football game and Sue hadn't been since she was a kid.
So why not? Well, it raises all kinds of interesting questions.
For starters, we here at HQ spend all kinds of time talking about football attendance, from all kinds of different directions. We've basically tried every possible idea in marketing, including ticket prices that are ridiculously low to a kid-friendly environment to alumni seating to all kinds of promotions and advertising campaigns and everything else. On top of everything else, Princeton Stadium couldn't be a better place to see a game.
Also, we have no way of knowing if anything we're trying is successful. Yes, we can see what the attendance is, but we have no way of knowing if that's the top number the market will bear or if not, how far below the top number we are.
TigerBlog has often asked the same basic questions in our marketing meetings, among them being why don't more people come? Is it because they don't know about the games, or is it because they know and just aren't interested?
During last year's first round of therapy, TB gave Crystal tickets for her and her family. This came after conversations in which Crystal proved to fit one of two basic profiles that TB believes apply to those who might come but don't. In her case, she was used to the Rutgers model, which meant a sold-out stadium, higher ticket prices, difficult parking and students who, uh, had, um, started the party a little earlier on game days.
As a result, her comments to TB were basically that Princeton was probably the same way.
As for Sue, her comments fit profile No. 2. Why haven't you been to a game, TB asked her. Busy with the kids and their own stuff, especially sports, she answered.
TigerBlog gave both tickets for tomorrow's game against Columbia, which starts late enough (3 pm) for most kids' activities to be completed. TB is predicting that Sue will confirm another of his beliefs, one that Crystal did a year ago:
Once she goes to one game, she'll want to come back.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Evenin', New Jersey
Sociology 205 this semester at Princeton is entitled "Sociology From E Street - Bruce Springsteen's America." It's part of a trend of late, the embracing by academia of Springsteen's impact on American culture and society.
Springsteen has always represented to TigerBlog more than just great music. He's also about having something to say and saying it, and he's also a true rarity in that you can admire the man as much as the entertainer.
TigerBlog did some field research Wednesday night, attending the first in the series of the final concerts at Giants Stadium for The Boss.
And so it was slightly before 8:30 - and nearly 30 years and about a half-mile from when TigerBlog first saw a Springsteen concert - that Springsteen and the E Street Band emerged onto the stage and the giant video screens to the shrieks of "BRUUUUUUUUUUUUCE" that always greet him.
"Evenin', New Jersey," were the first words he said.
He began with a new song written especially for Giants Stadium entitled "Wrecking Ball" and ended more than three hours later with "Rosalita," a song written 36 years ago. It was vintage Springsteen, and TB and the rest of the 60,000 or so in attendance were left in amazement at how a person exactly one week past his 60th birthday could pull something like that off.
The sheer energy that comes from the singer and the band, most of whom were the same who played with him in his Jadwin Gym concert nearly 31 years ago, would be astonishing from people half their age. At the end, TB was left with the same sense as all the other times he's seen him in concert - that there is nothing else in the world that these people would rather do than play their songs, and TB can't really imagine that there's ever been anyone who does anything better than Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band put on a concert.
There were so many great moments in the concert, but the unquestioned highlight came in the middle, when he spoke about how the band was going to be playing one entire album during each of its three shows at the stadium this week.
"Friday night, we'll play 'Darkness on the Edge of Town.' Saturday, we'll play 'Born in the U.S.A.' Tonight? ..."
He had already given away what wasn't much of a secret anyway when he'd pulled out his harmonica moments earlier. He never finished his last sentence, never told the audience what it already knew, and he made it official when he took his harmonica and began to play "Thunder Road," the first song (on the first side, back when there were actual albums) of "Born To Run."
For TB, "Born To Run" is the greatest album of all time, and three of the eight songs are among the 10 best TB has ever heard: "Thunder Road," "Born to Run" and "Jungleland." He played all three at Jadwin in 1978, and he played all three again in 2009.
At points during the night, TigerBlog found himself looking around the old stadium, which is dwarfed by the new one nearly completed next to it. TB has been to Giants Stadium many times, including for Princeton football and most recently Princeton lacrosse in the "Big City Classic." The event is scheduled again for next year, and TigerBlog isn't 100% sure if it's in the old stadium, the new stadium or some other venue.
Anyway, TB was struck by the fact that this could be the last time he'd ever see an event at Giants Stadium and, quite possibly, could be the last time he ever went to a Springsteen concert.
At one point, Springsteen mentioned his hometown of Freehold, at which point much of the crowd cheered. Springsteen stopped what he was saying to ad lib that "that was more than the population of Freehold."
TigerBlog grew up next to Freehold, in the 1970s, and basically by requirement, everyone was a Springsteen fan. TB had one teacher in high school who had taught Springsteen, a math teacher who hopefully taught him how to count huge sums of money.
But Springsteen never seems to be about the money, and he never seems to have lost sight of where he comes from. He was completely at home on that stage, and it didn't look like he was having a great time because 60,000 people were loving everything he did.
No, it seemed like he would have been having the same great time had he and the band been the only ones in the building.
Somewhere in there is the sociology of E Street. That's for others to teach and learn, including at Princeton this semester.
For the rest of you, if you've never been to a Springsteen concert, get to one. He's 60, after all, and he can't keep doing it forever. Eventually, the E Street Band will shut it down, and much like the stadium last night, all that will be left will be the memories. For TigerBlog, they'll be memories of a man and a band who achieved perfection in what they did.
Springsteen has always represented to TigerBlog more than just great music. He's also about having something to say and saying it, and he's also a true rarity in that you can admire the man as much as the entertainer.
TigerBlog did some field research Wednesday night, attending the first in the series of the final concerts at Giants Stadium for The Boss.
And so it was slightly before 8:30 - and nearly 30 years and about a half-mile from when TigerBlog first saw a Springsteen concert - that Springsteen and the E Street Band emerged onto the stage and the giant video screens to the shrieks of "BRUUUUUUUUUUUUCE" that always greet him.
"Evenin', New Jersey," were the first words he said.
He began with a new song written especially for Giants Stadium entitled "Wrecking Ball" and ended more than three hours later with "Rosalita," a song written 36 years ago. It was vintage Springsteen, and TB and the rest of the 60,000 or so in attendance were left in amazement at how a person exactly one week past his 60th birthday could pull something like that off.
The sheer energy that comes from the singer and the band, most of whom were the same who played with him in his Jadwin Gym concert nearly 31 years ago, would be astonishing from people half their age. At the end, TB was left with the same sense as all the other times he's seen him in concert - that there is nothing else in the world that these people would rather do than play their songs, and TB can't really imagine that there's ever been anyone who does anything better than Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band put on a concert.
There were so many great moments in the concert, but the unquestioned highlight came in the middle, when he spoke about how the band was going to be playing one entire album during each of its three shows at the stadium this week.
"Friday night, we'll play 'Darkness on the Edge of Town.' Saturday, we'll play 'Born in the U.S.A.' Tonight? ..."
He had already given away what wasn't much of a secret anyway when he'd pulled out his harmonica moments earlier. He never finished his last sentence, never told the audience what it already knew, and he made it official when he took his harmonica and began to play "Thunder Road," the first song (on the first side, back when there were actual albums) of "Born To Run."
For TB, "Born To Run" is the greatest album of all time, and three of the eight songs are among the 10 best TB has ever heard: "Thunder Road," "Born to Run" and "Jungleland." He played all three at Jadwin in 1978, and he played all three again in 2009.
At points during the night, TigerBlog found himself looking around the old stadium, which is dwarfed by the new one nearly completed next to it. TB has been to Giants Stadium many times, including for Princeton football and most recently Princeton lacrosse in the "Big City Classic." The event is scheduled again for next year, and TigerBlog isn't 100% sure if it's in the old stadium, the new stadium or some other venue.
Anyway, TB was struck by the fact that this could be the last time he'd ever see an event at Giants Stadium and, quite possibly, could be the last time he ever went to a Springsteen concert.
At one point, Springsteen mentioned his hometown of Freehold, at which point much of the crowd cheered. Springsteen stopped what he was saying to ad lib that "that was more than the population of Freehold."
TigerBlog grew up next to Freehold, in the 1970s, and basically by requirement, everyone was a Springsteen fan. TB had one teacher in high school who had taught Springsteen, a math teacher who hopefully taught him how to count huge sums of money.
But Springsteen never seems to be about the money, and he never seems to have lost sight of where he comes from. He was completely at home on that stage, and it didn't look like he was having a great time because 60,000 people were loving everything he did.
No, it seemed like he would have been having the same great time had he and the band been the only ones in the building.
Somewhere in there is the sociology of E Street. That's for others to teach and learn, including at Princeton this semester.
For the rest of you, if you've never been to a Springsteen concert, get to one. He's 60, after all, and he can't keep doing it forever. Eventually, the E Street Band will shut it down, and much like the stadium last night, all that will be left will be the memories. For TigerBlog, they'll be memories of a man and a band who achieved perfection in what they did.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The New GoPrincetonTigers.Com
TigerBlog isn't sure exactly when "signs" was deemed no longer expressive enough and had to be replaced by "signage," or when "the flu" was upgraded to "flu-like symptoms." There's a whole list of phrases that are standard issue these days that nobody ever said a few years ago, and TB isn't sure why perfectly good phraseology that lasted ever since the first caveman carved an arrow on a stone to point the other cavemen away from the lions and mumbled "sign" is no longer acceptable.
As an aside, the dictionary defines "signage" as "signs considered as a group; the design or use of signs and symbols."
Another word that has come up everywhere these days is "branding." This is a great word to use in meetings when you're in too much of a rush to say "consistent messaging."
In case you haven't been there yet, the newly redesigned goprincetontigers.com launched today. We hear at TigerBlog HQ think that it looks pretty good (of course we do; we're the ones who designed it), and we hope that those who go to the site will agree with us.
GoPrincetonTigers.com turns 10 years old on Oct. 23, and TB is pretty sure this is the fifth different look for the site. The first athletics Website that Princeton had was called "Tiger Web Lockerroom" and had a URL of princeton.edu/athletics; it took many months of meetings to get the University to agree to have a site that ended in .com.
Through the years, the site has grown from very little content to where it is today, with any number of different ways to catch up on the Tigers. There are also four different sites that Princeton athletics now offers, and in the name of "branding," the redesign seeks to integrate those four as best as possible.
There is goprincetontigers.com, which is the home for traditional sports information content. There is goprincetontigers.tv, which is four weeks old and seems to be off to a good start as the home for all video. There is TigerBlog (TB's personal favorite). There is princetonvarsityclub.org.
The three "satellite" sites are now more than ever easy to find off of the main page. The redesign also includes embedded video, bigger pictures, easier navigation and other features, including links to what will be an expanded video store, tickets and multimedia options.
TigerBlog is a big believer that Websites don't need to be award-winning in their design; they need to be easy to navigate. Each redesign for goprincetontigers.com has focused on this, as well as making it less busy to the eye. It's not easy to accomplish this, as with 38 varsity sports, corporate sponsorship requirements, pictures, video and everything else, there is a need for a great deal of, well, stuff, on the page.
Anyway, hopefully the reviews for the new site will be positive, and our efforts at "branding" will be successful. So far, all signage points in the right direction.
As an aside, the dictionary defines "signage" as "signs considered as a group; the design or use of signs and symbols."
Another word that has come up everywhere these days is "branding." This is a great word to use in meetings when you're in too much of a rush to say "consistent messaging."
In case you haven't been there yet, the newly redesigned goprincetontigers.com launched today. We hear at TigerBlog HQ think that it looks pretty good (of course we do; we're the ones who designed it), and we hope that those who go to the site will agree with us.
GoPrincetonTigers.com turns 10 years old on Oct. 23, and TB is pretty sure this is the fifth different look for the site. The first athletics Website that Princeton had was called "Tiger Web Lockerroom" and had a URL of princeton.edu/athletics; it took many months of meetings to get the University to agree to have a site that ended in .com.
Through the years, the site has grown from very little content to where it is today, with any number of different ways to catch up on the Tigers. There are also four different sites that Princeton athletics now offers, and in the name of "branding," the redesign seeks to integrate those four as best as possible.
There is goprincetontigers.com, which is the home for traditional sports information content. There is goprincetontigers.tv, which is four weeks old and seems to be off to a good start as the home for all video. There is TigerBlog (TB's personal favorite). There is princetonvarsityclub.org.
The three "satellite" sites are now more than ever easy to find off of the main page. The redesign also includes embedded video, bigger pictures, easier navigation and other features, including links to what will be an expanded video store, tickets and multimedia options.
TigerBlog is a big believer that Websites don't need to be award-winning in their design; they need to be easy to navigate. Each redesign for goprincetontigers.com has focused on this, as well as making it less busy to the eye. It's not easy to accomplish this, as with 38 varsity sports, corporate sponsorship requirements, pictures, video and everything else, there is a need for a great deal of, well, stuff, on the page.
Anyway, hopefully the reviews for the new site will be positive, and our efforts at "branding" will be successful. So far, all signage points in the right direction.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Uh, No, They're Not The Same Thing
TigerBlog was walking on the concourse at Goodman Stadium at Lehigh Saturday afternoon, wearing his bright orange "Princeton Athletics" dri-fit. As he stood next to the sausage sandwich stand, he was approached by a stranger who asked if he worked at Princeton.
This is the conversation that followed:
Stranger: "Let me ask you a question."
TigerBlog: "Okay."
Stranger: "What was the University's official position on the sideline behavior of your former lacrosse coach?"
TigerBlog: "I don't think there was an official position."
Stranger: "Okay, what was your position?"
TigerBlog: "Well, I think our former lacrosse coach would be the first person to tell you that he often regretted his sideline behavior. I think it's a shame that many people only know him from what they've seen of him on the sideline, because it's not what defines him as a person or a coach and it doesn't speak to all of the great things he's done for so many people."
Stranger (walking away): "That's a weak argument. It's like saying the guards at Buchenwald were nice to their families."
TigerBlog never had the chance to reply, and it's probably for the best. His response, however, is basically that, uh, no, it's not nearly the same thing.
Bill Tierney is a Hall of Fame lacrosse coach who lost his temper during the heat of games. Buchenwald's guards oversaw a forced labor camp during World War II at which 57,000 innocent people were killed.
So, no, they're not nearly the same. But it does show a great deal about what it means to be a college coach, especially a high-profile one.
College coaches basically do their jobs in public, with an audience there to judge basically every move they make. And, oh by the way, their jobs are judged on the most obvious of terms - winning and losing.
It's not an easy way to make a living, and it's why not many coaches are able to have sustained, long-term careers on the college level. It takes thick skin.
There have been dozens of times when TB has been at a game and watched it slip away for one team. At the end of the game, it's obvious that the losing coach wants to take all the chairs on the bench and hurl them all over the place while breaking everything else in sight.
Instead, he or she has to walk to the other bench, smile and congratulate the other coach. Imagine framing your own career in those terms, and then imagine having that play out game after game for years, all the time reliant on 18-22 year olds to enact your vision for your program.
Princeton has had its share of volatile coaches through the years. Tierney, of course, was one. Certainly Pete Carril was another.
TB often joked with Carril about where they first met, at the Palestra, while Carril coached and TB chanted "Sit Down Pete" with the rest of the University of West Philadelphia fans. If you'd ask TB back then what he thought of Carril, it's unlikely that the response would have been something like: "well, he's probably going to be one of the most fascinating people I ever meet once I get to meet him." No, it would have been something juvenile.
One of Carril's favorite stories is about the time he was on the train and the conductor came up to him and said something like: "I just wanted to let you know that I've watched you work and I'm a big fan." Carril's response was: "The same goes for me."
In typical Carril fashion, it was pretty funny. Humor, of course, is a big part of his personality. Just like Tierney, for that matter. They also share other qualities: modesty, strong work ethic, high standards and many others.
You just couldn't necessarily tell by watching them coach at Princeton. So when you're watching a game on TV or in person and your thought is either that the coach they're showing must be either a saint or a jerk, the reality is probably somewhere else.
Just not death-camp guard.
This is the conversation that followed:
Stranger: "Let me ask you a question."
TigerBlog: "Okay."
Stranger: "What was the University's official position on the sideline behavior of your former lacrosse coach?"
TigerBlog: "I don't think there was an official position."
Stranger: "Okay, what was your position?"
TigerBlog: "Well, I think our former lacrosse coach would be the first person to tell you that he often regretted his sideline behavior. I think it's a shame that many people only know him from what they've seen of him on the sideline, because it's not what defines him as a person or a coach and it doesn't speak to all of the great things he's done for so many people."
Stranger (walking away): "That's a weak argument. It's like saying the guards at Buchenwald were nice to their families."
TigerBlog never had the chance to reply, and it's probably for the best. His response, however, is basically that, uh, no, it's not nearly the same thing.
Bill Tierney is a Hall of Fame lacrosse coach who lost his temper during the heat of games. Buchenwald's guards oversaw a forced labor camp during World War II at which 57,000 innocent people were killed.
So, no, they're not nearly the same. But it does show a great deal about what it means to be a college coach, especially a high-profile one.
College coaches basically do their jobs in public, with an audience there to judge basically every move they make. And, oh by the way, their jobs are judged on the most obvious of terms - winning and losing.
It's not an easy way to make a living, and it's why not many coaches are able to have sustained, long-term careers on the college level. It takes thick skin.
There have been dozens of times when TB has been at a game and watched it slip away for one team. At the end of the game, it's obvious that the losing coach wants to take all the chairs on the bench and hurl them all over the place while breaking everything else in sight.
Instead, he or she has to walk to the other bench, smile and congratulate the other coach. Imagine framing your own career in those terms, and then imagine having that play out game after game for years, all the time reliant on 18-22 year olds to enact your vision for your program.
Princeton has had its share of volatile coaches through the years. Tierney, of course, was one. Certainly Pete Carril was another.
TB often joked with Carril about where they first met, at the Palestra, while Carril coached and TB chanted "Sit Down Pete" with the rest of the University of West Philadelphia fans. If you'd ask TB back then what he thought of Carril, it's unlikely that the response would have been something like: "well, he's probably going to be one of the most fascinating people I ever meet once I get to meet him." No, it would have been something juvenile.
One of Carril's favorite stories is about the time he was on the train and the conductor came up to him and said something like: "I just wanted to let you know that I've watched you work and I'm a big fan." Carril's response was: "The same goes for me."
In typical Carril fashion, it was pretty funny. Humor, of course, is a big part of his personality. Just like Tierney, for that matter. They also share other qualities: modesty, strong work ethic, high standards and many others.
You just couldn't necessarily tell by watching them coach at Princeton. So when you're watching a game on TV or in person and your thought is either that the coach they're showing must be either a saint or a jerk, the reality is probably somewhere else.
Just not death-camp guard.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sideline Pass
Back in the newspaper days of covering high school football games, TigerBlog would stand on the sideline rather than sit in the press box. It's a fairly standard practice, at least in these parts, for high school football coverage.
Maybe it's because the press boxes are too small. Maybe it's because the fields don't usually have hash marks between the yardlines, or maybe it's just because there's nobody keeping official stats, so the reporter has to do it. Whatever the reason, TB spent many Friday nights and Saturday afternoons on high school football sidelines from 1983-88.
TigerBlog used to choose which sideline to stand on based on a few factors: 1) would the sun be in his eyes?; 2) which sideline was more crowded; 3) was there someone on the other sideline he didn't feel like talking to for the entire game; 4) random. Of course, TB also remembers the frequent comments made to him about how he had chosen to stand on, say, Steinert's side of the field instead of Nottingham's because of his obvious Steinert bias (or Nottingham bias, if he'd stood on the other side).
Fast forwarding more than 20 years, TB was again on the sideline for a football game this past Saturday, this time at Goodman Stadium for the Princeton-Lehigh game. TB hasn't really spent much time on the sidelines for Princeton games, due to either radio, media relations, stat keeping and now public address responsibilities.
Still, there is no better place to watch a game from than the sidelines, and it took only a few moments Saturday to remember that.
The sideline for a football game is a wild place. Forget the sheer quantity of players or coaches. There's also doctors, athletic trainers, equipment managers, photographers, videographers, sideline reporters, security people and any other assorted people who managed to get a field pass.
As an aside, the game was 0-0 as Lehigh drove in the first quarter when Beverly Schaefer, the official photographer of TigerBlog HQ, said that Princeton was about to intercept a pass and run it back for a touchdown and that she would definitely get the picture. Two plays later, Steven Cody did just that, picking off a pass and returning it 77 yards, and she got the picture.
Princeton is committed to a broadbased athletic program, and as a result there are 38 varsity sports here. One of TB's favorite things about Princeton is that no sport is designated as more important than any other; the football game story cycled through goprincetontigers.com between water polo and tennis. Still, there really is nothing like a football game in the world of collegiate sports.
Lehigh's pregame information says that the school has been voted No. 1 in the Patriot League for gameday atmosphere, and it's easy to see why. The grass hill behind one end zone was filled with families and kids, and the hills beyond the stadium make it a great setting. To stand on the sideline and look up at it all made it even more impressive.
During the game itself, it's amazing to see just how fragmented a football team is, as the defense gathers to make adjustments while the offense plays and vice versa. Coaches and players on one side of the ball probably miss half of the plays the other side runs.
As for longsnappers, punters and kickers, they have their own space carved out to practice, practice, practice and stay loose, waiting for their turn. All of this happens inside the box designated for the team. Outside of that, there is the rest of the sideline crowd doing its own work.
Roger Hughes always says that the football season at Princeton is like a "10-round fight," with each week a different round. While that may sound like "coach-speak," there's a great deal of truth to it. Football, more than maybe any other sport, can separate out each individual game as its own mini-season, which is probably a result of the fact that there is more practice time per actual game in football than any other sport.
And so at the end, the level of satisfaction of winning is tremendous. TB has been in the winning lockerroom of Princeton teams late into non-championship seasons many times and seen how each individual win is savored.
Saturday afternoon at Lehigh, the Tigers held off a late Mountain Hawk rally to win 17-14. As TB was walking off the field, he went past the ambulance parked at the end of the Princeton sideline nearest the locker room and the exit to the parking lot.
TigerBlog looked in to find two paramedics, faces down, texting on their phones (hopefully not to each other). TB thought it was the perfect end to a day on the sidelines: a Princeton win, and no one needed to leave in the ambulance.
Maybe it's because the press boxes are too small. Maybe it's because the fields don't usually have hash marks between the yardlines, or maybe it's just because there's nobody keeping official stats, so the reporter has to do it. Whatever the reason, TB spent many Friday nights and Saturday afternoons on high school football sidelines from 1983-88.
TigerBlog used to choose which sideline to stand on based on a few factors: 1) would the sun be in his eyes?; 2) which sideline was more crowded; 3) was there someone on the other sideline he didn't feel like talking to for the entire game; 4) random. Of course, TB also remembers the frequent comments made to him about how he had chosen to stand on, say, Steinert's side of the field instead of Nottingham's because of his obvious Steinert bias (or Nottingham bias, if he'd stood on the other side).
Fast forwarding more than 20 years, TB was again on the sideline for a football game this past Saturday, this time at Goodman Stadium for the Princeton-Lehigh game. TB hasn't really spent much time on the sidelines for Princeton games, due to either radio, media relations, stat keeping and now public address responsibilities.
Still, there is no better place to watch a game from than the sidelines, and it took only a few moments Saturday to remember that.
The sideline for a football game is a wild place. Forget the sheer quantity of players or coaches. There's also doctors, athletic trainers, equipment managers, photographers, videographers, sideline reporters, security people and any other assorted people who managed to get a field pass.
As an aside, the game was 0-0 as Lehigh drove in the first quarter when Beverly Schaefer, the official photographer of TigerBlog HQ, said that Princeton was about to intercept a pass and run it back for a touchdown and that she would definitely get the picture. Two plays later, Steven Cody did just that, picking off a pass and returning it 77 yards, and she got the picture.
Princeton is committed to a broadbased athletic program, and as a result there are 38 varsity sports here. One of TB's favorite things about Princeton is that no sport is designated as more important than any other; the football game story cycled through goprincetontigers.com between water polo and tennis. Still, there really is nothing like a football game in the world of collegiate sports.
Lehigh's pregame information says that the school has been voted No. 1 in the Patriot League for gameday atmosphere, and it's easy to see why. The grass hill behind one end zone was filled with families and kids, and the hills beyond the stadium make it a great setting. To stand on the sideline and look up at it all made it even more impressive.
During the game itself, it's amazing to see just how fragmented a football team is, as the defense gathers to make adjustments while the offense plays and vice versa. Coaches and players on one side of the ball probably miss half of the plays the other side runs.
As for longsnappers, punters and kickers, they have their own space carved out to practice, practice, practice and stay loose, waiting for their turn. All of this happens inside the box designated for the team. Outside of that, there is the rest of the sideline crowd doing its own work.
Roger Hughes always says that the football season at Princeton is like a "10-round fight," with each week a different round. While that may sound like "coach-speak," there's a great deal of truth to it. Football, more than maybe any other sport, can separate out each individual game as its own mini-season, which is probably a result of the fact that there is more practice time per actual game in football than any other sport.
And so at the end, the level of satisfaction of winning is tremendous. TB has been in the winning lockerroom of Princeton teams late into non-championship seasons many times and seen how each individual win is savored.
Saturday afternoon at Lehigh, the Tigers held off a late Mountain Hawk rally to win 17-14. As TB was walking off the field, he went past the ambulance parked at the end of the Princeton sideline nearest the locker room and the exit to the parking lot.
TigerBlog looked in to find two paramedics, faces down, texting on their phones (hopefully not to each other). TB thought it was the perfect end to a day on the sidelines: a Princeton win, and no one needed to leave in the ambulance.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Write Or Wrong
Hal Feiveson is a Woodrow Wilson School professor who teaches a freshman seminar each year that has a connection to sports, media and society. TigerBlog has spoken at the class each of the last few years, and this semester will be no different.
In advance of TB's appearance, Hal sent along an email asking to forward two stories that TB had written lately. He asked for stories that "raised special problems in writing."
TigerBlog has spent a few days thinking about this, and he has taken it to mean problems presented related to what should or shouldn't be written about, not writing about problems themselves.
Here at TigerBlog HQ, we obviously directly represent the Department of Athletics. Our first priority, of course, is to document the achievements of our athletes and coaches in as positive a way as possible.
We're lucky, luckier than many in our profession, in that Princeton teams are for the most part traditionally successful. Perhaps more than that, the department is filled with athletes and coaches who 1) avoid getting into trouble and 2) have fascinating stories to tell beyond just their athletic experiences.
Back when TB first started working here, HQ was much more of a media relations office, and almost all of what was written was designed to assist (or steer) the media when they wrote their own stories. Regular TB readers know this full well.
The game notes were tailored completely for the media, because nobody else read them. It used to be a source of satisfaction when ESPN would use some interesting nugget someone here dug up.
Post-game stories (or press releases, as they were back then) were straightforward. Here's the first paragraph of the release that TB wrote about the 2000 Princeton-Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse game, which, by the way, was the first post-game story for men's lacrosse ever on goprincetontigers.com:
"Trevor Tierney made 22 saves in goal and Matt Striebel scored a career high four goals as the new-look Princeton Tigers opened the men's lacrosse season with a 15-11 win over Johns Hopkins in front of 6,292 at Homewood Field in Baltimore."
Back then, the Web was an unknown. Today? It's changed everything, and perhaps nothing more than who our audience is.
The 2000 lacrosse story was written so that any number of newspapers could take a paragraph or two and include it in their next edition. It was faxed out to a distribution list and then put online almost as an afterthought.
The 2009 Princeton-Hopkins postgame story was completely different, written for a completely different audience and with a completely different purpose. If no newspaper reproduced any of it, that was fine with TB, since 95% (or more) of those interested in reading about the game were going to do so online. TB preferred they come directly to goprincetontigers.com, but to do so, it was necessary to give more than just a few facts.
Here was the story from last spring:
"Bill Tierney began to talk about how hard it can be to play with a big lead. Then he paused and chuckled.
'The only thing harder,' said Princeton’s Hall-of-Fame men’s lacrosse coach, 'is to play with a huge deficit.'
Tierney saw both ends of the equation in his last two appearances in the Konica Minolta Face-Off Classic games against Johns Hopkins, and he liked the 2009 version much better.
Jack McBride scored four goals and Tyler Fiorito made 11 saves to lead Princeton to a 14-8 win over Johns Hopkins in the third annual Face-Off Classic at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. The game was almost a mirror image of the meeting between the teams in the same stadium 52 weeks earlier."
Whether it's well-written or not isn't the issue. The main point is that this is how TB would have written it for the newspaper back in the day.
Of course, the problem with writing like this is need to balance covering the game objectively with the responsibilities of being the athletic department's official state-run newspaper, as it were.
Stories written to be seen only by newspaper people are completely different than those written directly to the audience of fans, alums, parents, athletes, coaches, recruits and anyone else. So are game notes.
Princeton teams win on average two-thirds of their athletic contests in any given year, which means that with 600 events a year, there are about 200 times when the staff here at HQ is writing about a loss. How should we approach those stories? What about writing about the key mistake that a Princeton athlete made that led directly to the loss? What about someone who lost their head and got penalized for it? What should we write in the name of accurately portraying what happened, and what should we not write in the name of protecting our athletes and coaches?
And what about the notes themselves? If Princeton has won 15 straight and 16 straight is the school record, do we mention that? Not mention that? Are we jinxing them? What if we've beaten the other team the last 20 times we've played? Or lost to them the last 20? Are we providing motivation for the other team? Discouraging our team?
And headlines. Don't forget about them. What if we write "Princeton Optimistic For XX Game?" Is XX now getting fired up because of that? Say Princeton wins 15-1 or loses 15-1? Is a headline of "Princeton Defeats XX" or "XX defeats Princeton" good enough? Remember, we're trying to get readers to come to goprincetontigers.com first and foremost.
And forget just the stories that are written. What about readers who call or email with direct questions about athletes, games, coaches? What's our responsibility? TB has been bombarded with questions about Jonathan Meyers and his decision not to play football (for the record, he has decided to concentrate on lacrosse). Does TB email each one directly? Write a story for the Webpage about a personnel transaction, which is something we traditionally don't do?
Lastly, there's TigerBlog itself (the blog, not its human form). In the last two months, this blog has talked about health care reform, the last Presidential election, the Little League World Series, Bruce Springsteen, daytime television, youth sports, MapQuest, cartoons, ESPN's TV coverage and any number of other subjects, eventually relating them all back to Princeton athletics. Where does all this fit into the basic model of what a university athletic communications office does?
The answer is it doesn't, but it seems to be what the audience likes, so we've gone in that direction. And will continue to.
TigerBlog remembers the Princeton-Harvard women's soccer game in 2004 at Lourie-Love Field. Princeton hadn't scored a goal at home against Harvard since 1992, and TB had put that in the game notes.
Before the game, TB was approached (in the men's room, no less) by the father of one of the players, who told TB that if Princeton lost the game, it would be TB's fault, because the players would certainly be deflated by reading that note.
As it turned out, Princeton was shut out into the final minute before Emily Behncke scored with 25 seconds left in regulation to tie at 1-1. Esmeralda Negron scored in overtime to win it for Princeton, and that victory was the catalyst for the Tigers' unprecedented run to the Final Four. Behncke's goal is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in the history of the program.
Does that mean TB deserves the credit?
Anyway, Hal asked for two articles about problems in writing. TB will send this one, and probably the one he wrote about John McPhee in Spain, one where TB and McPhee talked for three hours in casual conversation and then had TB write much of it in his story. Oh yeah, that's another issue. Was it meant to be off-the-record?
In advance of TB's appearance, Hal sent along an email asking to forward two stories that TB had written lately. He asked for stories that "raised special problems in writing."
TigerBlog has spent a few days thinking about this, and he has taken it to mean problems presented related to what should or shouldn't be written about, not writing about problems themselves.
Here at TigerBlog HQ, we obviously directly represent the Department of Athletics. Our first priority, of course, is to document the achievements of our athletes and coaches in as positive a way as possible.
We're lucky, luckier than many in our profession, in that Princeton teams are for the most part traditionally successful. Perhaps more than that, the department is filled with athletes and coaches who 1) avoid getting into trouble and 2) have fascinating stories to tell beyond just their athletic experiences.
Back when TB first started working here, HQ was much more of a media relations office, and almost all of what was written was designed to assist (or steer) the media when they wrote their own stories. Regular TB readers know this full well.
The game notes were tailored completely for the media, because nobody else read them. It used to be a source of satisfaction when ESPN would use some interesting nugget someone here dug up.
Post-game stories (or press releases, as they were back then) were straightforward. Here's the first paragraph of the release that TB wrote about the 2000 Princeton-Johns Hopkins men's lacrosse game, which, by the way, was the first post-game story for men's lacrosse ever on goprincetontigers.com:
"Trevor Tierney made 22 saves in goal and Matt Striebel scored a career high four goals as the new-look Princeton Tigers opened the men's lacrosse season with a 15-11 win over Johns Hopkins in front of 6,292 at Homewood Field in Baltimore."
Back then, the Web was an unknown. Today? It's changed everything, and perhaps nothing more than who our audience is.
The 2000 lacrosse story was written so that any number of newspapers could take a paragraph or two and include it in their next edition. It was faxed out to a distribution list and then put online almost as an afterthought.
The 2009 Princeton-Hopkins postgame story was completely different, written for a completely different audience and with a completely different purpose. If no newspaper reproduced any of it, that was fine with TB, since 95% (or more) of those interested in reading about the game were going to do so online. TB preferred they come directly to goprincetontigers.com, but to do so, it was necessary to give more than just a few facts.
Here was the story from last spring:
"Bill Tierney began to talk about how hard it can be to play with a big lead. Then he paused and chuckled.
'The only thing harder,' said Princeton’s Hall-of-Fame men’s lacrosse coach, 'is to play with a huge deficit.'
Tierney saw both ends of the equation in his last two appearances in the Konica Minolta Face-Off Classic games against Johns Hopkins, and he liked the 2009 version much better.
Jack McBride scored four goals and Tyler Fiorito made 11 saves to lead Princeton to a 14-8 win over Johns Hopkins in the third annual Face-Off Classic at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. The game was almost a mirror image of the meeting between the teams in the same stadium 52 weeks earlier."
Whether it's well-written or not isn't the issue. The main point is that this is how TB would have written it for the newspaper back in the day.
Of course, the problem with writing like this is need to balance covering the game objectively with the responsibilities of being the athletic department's official state-run newspaper, as it were.
Stories written to be seen only by newspaper people are completely different than those written directly to the audience of fans, alums, parents, athletes, coaches, recruits and anyone else. So are game notes.
Princeton teams win on average two-thirds of their athletic contests in any given year, which means that with 600 events a year, there are about 200 times when the staff here at HQ is writing about a loss. How should we approach those stories? What about writing about the key mistake that a Princeton athlete made that led directly to the loss? What about someone who lost their head and got penalized for it? What should we write in the name of accurately portraying what happened, and what should we not write in the name of protecting our athletes and coaches?
And what about the notes themselves? If Princeton has won 15 straight and 16 straight is the school record, do we mention that? Not mention that? Are we jinxing them? What if we've beaten the other team the last 20 times we've played? Or lost to them the last 20? Are we providing motivation for the other team? Discouraging our team?
And headlines. Don't forget about them. What if we write "Princeton Optimistic For XX Game?" Is XX now getting fired up because of that? Say Princeton wins 15-1 or loses 15-1? Is a headline of "Princeton Defeats XX" or "XX defeats Princeton" good enough? Remember, we're trying to get readers to come to goprincetontigers.com first and foremost.
And forget just the stories that are written. What about readers who call or email with direct questions about athletes, games, coaches? What's our responsibility? TB has been bombarded with questions about Jonathan Meyers and his decision not to play football (for the record, he has decided to concentrate on lacrosse). Does TB email each one directly? Write a story for the Webpage about a personnel transaction, which is something we traditionally don't do?
Lastly, there's TigerBlog itself (the blog, not its human form). In the last two months, this blog has talked about health care reform, the last Presidential election, the Little League World Series, Bruce Springsteen, daytime television, youth sports, MapQuest, cartoons, ESPN's TV coverage and any number of other subjects, eventually relating them all back to Princeton athletics. Where does all this fit into the basic model of what a university athletic communications office does?
The answer is it doesn't, but it seems to be what the audience likes, so we've gone in that direction. And will continue to.
TigerBlog remembers the Princeton-Harvard women's soccer game in 2004 at Lourie-Love Field. Princeton hadn't scored a goal at home against Harvard since 1992, and TB had put that in the game notes.
Before the game, TB was approached (in the men's room, no less) by the father of one of the players, who told TB that if Princeton lost the game, it would be TB's fault, because the players would certainly be deflated by reading that note.
As it turned out, Princeton was shut out into the final minute before Emily Behncke scored with 25 seconds left in regulation to tie at 1-1. Esmeralda Negron scored in overtime to win it for Princeton, and that victory was the catalyst for the Tigers' unprecedented run to the Final Four. Behncke's goal is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in the history of the program.
Does that mean TB deserves the credit?
Anyway, Hal asked for two articles about problems in writing. TB will send this one, and probably the one he wrote about John McPhee in Spain, one where TB and McPhee talked for three hours in casual conversation and then had TB write much of it in his story. Oh yeah, that's another issue. Was it meant to be off-the-record?
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Make A Right At The Light, Keep Going Straight Until Night
TigerBlog had to go a school in the Neshaminy School District, a school he'd never been before. So what did he do? Of course. He went to MapQuest.
Unfortunately, MapQuest's directions didn't take him anywhere near where the school was. It was the second time this has happened to TB, when he reached the end of the directions and realized that he wasn't quite where he was supposed to be.
Recourse? None, other than to yell loudly. Of course, in both instances, TigerBlog didn't follow his instincts. The first time it happened, he was trying to get to what used to called the Garden State Arts Center, a place he'd been a ton of times back in the day. This time, he got lost.
As for yesterday, he knew the school was part of the Neshaminy district, in either Feasterville or Trevose. So why was he driving around Bensalem?
Why? Because something he read online said he should be. It wasn't quite like the time Michael drove into the lake with Dwight on "The Office," but it was close enough.
Back in the good old days in the newspaper business, TigerBlog often went to places he'd never been before. How'd he figure it out? Usually he'd actually pick up the phone and call and talk to a person.
Sometimes Harvey Yavener would chime in, as in this actual conversation before Princeton played in the 1994 NCAA men's lacrosse championships at the University of Maryland:
Yav: "Do you know how to go?"
TB: "Yes."
Yav: "I have a better way."
TB: "How do you know? You don't know my way. Maybe they're the same."
TigerBlog used to ride on the bus with the men's basketball team when he was a reporter, so paying attention to how to get places in the Ivy League wasn't that important back then. Interestingly, since TB began working at Princeton, he has almost never traveled on the bus, largely because he prefers to 1) keep to his own schedule and 2) eat where he wants, not where the bus stops.
The trips on the men's basketball bus in the early '90s remain some of his best memories of Princeton athletics. Those trips served as a great foundation to get to know the players, of course, and especially coaches Pete Carril and Bill Carmody (then the assistant).
The best trip was probably the one back from Dartmouth in 1991, after Princeton had finished off its first 14-0 Ivy League season in 15 years (there have been two more since). The entire trip consisted of the players singing songs mocking each other and Carril, and finally Carril as he wrote his own song about the players. The bus rolled into Princeton in what has to be a record-time of 4:40 (back then, Princeton owned its own buses and employed a full-time bus driver named Steve Gandy; Steve had a heavy foot) to chants of "Steve Is The Man; Steve Is The Man."
TB did ride with the basketball team on the bus to the airport for certain trips, including a 1995 ride to the Coors Light Classic in Fresno. Princeton's flight left Philadelphia Airport at 6 a.m. the morning after a home night game against Lafayette; TB remember setting his alarm clock for 2:30 a.m. Anyway, everyone was on the bus at the time we were supposed to leave (4 a.m., TB recalls) except for team captain Sydney Johnson (now the head coach) and reserve center Chris Anderson. As the two arrived late, Carril blasted Anderson for being late.
Ivy League travel is all done by bus, and the trips are so familiar now to TB after 20+ years that he can do them in his sleep, something that thankfully hasn't happened with all the middle-of-the-night rides home.
Going to Cornell offers two basic ways, either up the Pennsylvania Turnpike or up 206 and then through the Poconos. The biggest issues are always whether or not to take the Cross Bronx Expressway to 95 North on the way to Yale/Brown/Harvard/Dartmouth or go on the Merritt Parkway. TB has been drilled in traffic on 95 in Connecticut more times than he's liked, but the worst trip ever might have been a nine-hour ride to Brown the day the Pope spoke at a church right off the Cross County Parkway in Yonkers.
And, of course, there is Rein's Deli in Vernon, Connecticut. It's right off of I-84 at exit 65, and it's the focal point of any trip to or from Harvard. It used to include Dartmouth as well, which required going 20 minutes out of the way, until a second location opened on I-91 in Springfield. TigerBlog recommends the Boston Harbor sandwich, a mix of whitefish salad, lox, onion and tomato. It's perfect around 11 pm on the way back from a night game at Harvard.
TigerBlog isn't sure how many miles he's driven going to Ivy League events, but it has to be, what, 200,000? 300,000? Either way, it's a ton. Much of it has been late, late, late at night, and you haven't really lived until you've pulled out of Hanover, N.H., at around 10 p.m. to start the drive home.
Thankfully, TB figured out how to get all these places before MapQuest went online in 1999.
In two days, TigerBlog will drive up to Lehigh, a place he's been a ton of times, to watch the Tigers play football. TB knows how to get there, yet he feels compelled to print out the MapQuest directions.
Why? He's not sure.
Unfortunately, MapQuest's directions didn't take him anywhere near where the school was. It was the second time this has happened to TB, when he reached the end of the directions and realized that he wasn't quite where he was supposed to be.
Recourse? None, other than to yell loudly. Of course, in both instances, TigerBlog didn't follow his instincts. The first time it happened, he was trying to get to what used to called the Garden State Arts Center, a place he'd been a ton of times back in the day. This time, he got lost.
As for yesterday, he knew the school was part of the Neshaminy district, in either Feasterville or Trevose. So why was he driving around Bensalem?
Why? Because something he read online said he should be. It wasn't quite like the time Michael drove into the lake with Dwight on "The Office," but it was close enough.
Back in the good old days in the newspaper business, TigerBlog often went to places he'd never been before. How'd he figure it out? Usually he'd actually pick up the phone and call and talk to a person.
Sometimes Harvey Yavener would chime in, as in this actual conversation before Princeton played in the 1994 NCAA men's lacrosse championships at the University of Maryland:
Yav: "Do you know how to go?"
TB: "Yes."
Yav: "I have a better way."
TB: "How do you know? You don't know my way. Maybe they're the same."
TigerBlog used to ride on the bus with the men's basketball team when he was a reporter, so paying attention to how to get places in the Ivy League wasn't that important back then. Interestingly, since TB began working at Princeton, he has almost never traveled on the bus, largely because he prefers to 1) keep to his own schedule and 2) eat where he wants, not where the bus stops.
The trips on the men's basketball bus in the early '90s remain some of his best memories of Princeton athletics. Those trips served as a great foundation to get to know the players, of course, and especially coaches Pete Carril and Bill Carmody (then the assistant).
The best trip was probably the one back from Dartmouth in 1991, after Princeton had finished off its first 14-0 Ivy League season in 15 years (there have been two more since). The entire trip consisted of the players singing songs mocking each other and Carril, and finally Carril as he wrote his own song about the players. The bus rolled into Princeton in what has to be a record-time of 4:40 (back then, Princeton owned its own buses and employed a full-time bus driver named Steve Gandy; Steve had a heavy foot) to chants of "Steve Is The Man; Steve Is The Man."
TB did ride with the basketball team on the bus to the airport for certain trips, including a 1995 ride to the Coors Light Classic in Fresno. Princeton's flight left Philadelphia Airport at 6 a.m. the morning after a home night game against Lafayette; TB remember setting his alarm clock for 2:30 a.m. Anyway, everyone was on the bus at the time we were supposed to leave (4 a.m., TB recalls) except for team captain Sydney Johnson (now the head coach) and reserve center Chris Anderson. As the two arrived late, Carril blasted Anderson for being late.
Ivy League travel is all done by bus, and the trips are so familiar now to TB after 20+ years that he can do them in his sleep, something that thankfully hasn't happened with all the middle-of-the-night rides home.
Going to Cornell offers two basic ways, either up the Pennsylvania Turnpike or up 206 and then through the Poconos. The biggest issues are always whether or not to take the Cross Bronx Expressway to 95 North on the way to Yale/Brown/Harvard/Dartmouth or go on the Merritt Parkway. TB has been drilled in traffic on 95 in Connecticut more times than he's liked, but the worst trip ever might have been a nine-hour ride to Brown the day the Pope spoke at a church right off the Cross County Parkway in Yonkers.
And, of course, there is Rein's Deli in Vernon, Connecticut. It's right off of I-84 at exit 65, and it's the focal point of any trip to or from Harvard. It used to include Dartmouth as well, which required going 20 minutes out of the way, until a second location opened on I-91 in Springfield. TigerBlog recommends the Boston Harbor sandwich, a mix of whitefish salad, lox, onion and tomato. It's perfect around 11 pm on the way back from a night game at Harvard.
TigerBlog isn't sure how many miles he's driven going to Ivy League events, but it has to be, what, 200,000? 300,000? Either way, it's a ton. Much of it has been late, late, late at night, and you haven't really lived until you've pulled out of Hanover, N.H., at around 10 p.m. to start the drive home.
Thankfully, TB figured out how to get all these places before MapQuest went online in 1999.
In two days, TigerBlog will drive up to Lehigh, a place he's been a ton of times, to watch the Tigers play football. TB knows how to get there, yet he feels compelled to print out the MapQuest directions.
Why? He's not sure.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Princeton-Harvard, From The Inside Of Both
The Final Jeopardy category was "Word History," and the clue was basically this: "Named for a Roman arena, this six-letter word took on its modern meaning as a form of entertainment in the 1800s." TigerBlog drew a blank; TigerBlog Jr. looked over and said "circus." When Alex confirmed it, TBJ said "it's actually short for 'circus-maximus, but that was more than six letters.' " TigerBlog was so shaken up by being beaten by TBJ at Jeopardy that he couldn't put thoughts together today, so he has once again turned the forum over to a TigerBlog HQ alum, this one Chuck Sullivan of the Big East Conference. As an aside, when TigerBlog first began to work here at HQ, his knowledge of how to use the Macintosh computer was non-existent. It was Chuck Sullivan who taught TB, starting with how to turn it on, and TB has always been grateful.
Upon reading that TigerBlog was accepting guest submissions from former staffers from the Jadwin balcony, TigerBlog-North immediately offered to share his two cents. The offer was accepted in relatively short order, meaning that some 16 years after he first stepped foot on the Princeton campus, TB-North was again on deadline.
TB-North spent the better part of two years in Princeton, working as an intern in the athletic communications office from 1993-95. Since then, he’s worked at just about every level that exists in college athletics – from a Division III commuter school with a shoestring budget to his current gig at a BCS conference that distributes several million dollars to each of its member schools.
In between was a four-year run managing the athletic communications office at a fellow Ivy League school – the one that likely stands as Princeton’s toughest competitor in most athletic endeavors.
Aside from the obvious difference that Princeton is a suburban campus, while Harvard is engrained into two cities, the respective athletics departments are actually quite similar. Both schools’ directors of athletics were accomplished Ivy League student-athletes who are competitors at their cores. Both departments are firmly committed to providing the best possible experience for its student-athletes. And both embrace the value of education through athletics.
That said, TB-North believes that the Princeton-Harvard rivalry is the strongest in the Ivy League. Of course, both schools also count Yale as a natural foil – and in the Crimson’s case the Harvard-Yale rivalry has been the subject of a recent book and movie – but ask a student-athlete from either Princeton or Harvard – in any sport – and he or she will likely tell you that the road to an Ivy League championship runs through the other’s campus.
TB-North has seen many memorable encounters between Princeton and Harvard in a number of sports from both sides. The first one that comes to mind was a men’s soccer game in 1994 at Lourie-Love Field in the pouring rain. The referee was kind enough to let the Harvard coach use his umbrella – a gesture he later regretted when said umbrella was destroyed over the coach’s knee upon the issuance of a red card. The coach watched what he could of the rest of the match from the team bus, but no doubt enjoyed the end result as the Crimson effectively eliminated Princeton from the Ivy League race.
That winter brought a memorable trip to Cambridge – actually lower Allston – from the men’s hockey team, which was mired in a 15-year streak of futility in Harvard’s Bright Hockey Center. But TB-North remembers Ethan Early’s (the son of a Harvard alum, no less) exorcising the demons with a hat trick in a Tiger win. That game, as it turned out, was the first in a lengthy run of Princeton successes in Bright as Harvard was unable to defend its home ice against the Tigers for the better part of the next decade.
Two football games come to mind as well. One was in 2003, when Harvard backup quarterback Garrett Schires engineered a win against the Tigers at Harvard Stadium in the first overtime game in series history. Three years later, both teams came into Princeton Stadium undefeated, where the Tigers rode a gutsy performance by the great Jeff Terrell to a 31-28 win as part of their Ivy title run.
But the rivalry extends beyond the so-called marquee sports. Pick any Ivy sport, and there’s a reasonable chance that Princeton and Harvard – in no particular order – will be the two favorites. It’s almost a foregone conclusion that in both men’s and women’s swimming, one will win the league championship and the other will finish second. Rowing, squash, tennis, field hockey, baseball and softball are often no different.
Even in those sports where there might not be a tradition of success, the schools have been able to hire good coaches and make the steady climb toward the top. When TB-North was at Princeton, women’s soccer and men’s hockey were more often found at the bottom of the standings than the top and Harvard was the Ivy to beat in both sports. Princeton has been to five NCAA tournaments in the last nine years in women’s soccer, including the only Final Four run in Ivy history, while the men’s hockey team is now a national force. Harvard, meanwhile, has taken steps to improve its standing in Princeton’s traditional strongholds of men’s basketball and men’s lacrosse.
At the root of the rivalry is a keen understanding of what the other is doing, both on the administrative and coaching fronts. The annual football game between the schools usually involves some kind of reconnaissance mission by staff members of the visiting team to scope out any facility upgrades or clever marketing initiatives. When a Harvard contingent saw firsthand how Princeton was using its new scoreboard displays to promote upcoming events during recreational hours, it brought about more than one department meeting back in Massachusetts.
The schools recruit a great number of the same prospects, and if one happens to provide a different level of support than the other, things can get testy – both internally and externally. Phone lines burn if a star prospect is admitted to Harvard and denied by Princeton, or if Princeton’s financial aid package is more generous than Harvard’s.
At the end of the day, both programs are successful because they have terrific people working for them. TB-North worked directly with Harvard’s football program for four years and, with no exaggeration, was impressed by every single person he met within the team. To this day, TB-North could reel off the starting eleven for the 1993 Princeton men’s soccer team, which made an amazing run to the NCAA final four with the great Bob Bradley on the sideline. As an aside, TB-North recalls killing time before many a Princeton soccer game by kicking a ball around with precocious 5-year-old Michael Bradley – Bob’s son who is now a fixture on the U.S. national team.
As TB-North mentioned earlier, he now works outside the Ivy League, in a 16-team conference that doesn’t allow him to choose favorites. Kind of like the same thing that happens when Princeton plays Harvard, though he has to admit that sometimes sentiment comes into play.
Either way, as long as they both beat Yale, then everything is right in the world.
Upon reading that TigerBlog was accepting guest submissions from former staffers from the Jadwin balcony, TigerBlog-North immediately offered to share his two cents. The offer was accepted in relatively short order, meaning that some 16 years after he first stepped foot on the Princeton campus, TB-North was again on deadline.
TB-North spent the better part of two years in Princeton, working as an intern in the athletic communications office from 1993-95. Since then, he’s worked at just about every level that exists in college athletics – from a Division III commuter school with a shoestring budget to his current gig at a BCS conference that distributes several million dollars to each of its member schools.
In between was a four-year run managing the athletic communications office at a fellow Ivy League school – the one that likely stands as Princeton’s toughest competitor in most athletic endeavors.
Aside from the obvious difference that Princeton is a suburban campus, while Harvard is engrained into two cities, the respective athletics departments are actually quite similar. Both schools’ directors of athletics were accomplished Ivy League student-athletes who are competitors at their cores. Both departments are firmly committed to providing the best possible experience for its student-athletes. And both embrace the value of education through athletics.
That said, TB-North believes that the Princeton-Harvard rivalry is the strongest in the Ivy League. Of course, both schools also count Yale as a natural foil – and in the Crimson’s case the Harvard-Yale rivalry has been the subject of a recent book and movie – but ask a student-athlete from either Princeton or Harvard – in any sport – and he or she will likely tell you that the road to an Ivy League championship runs through the other’s campus.
TB-North has seen many memorable encounters between Princeton and Harvard in a number of sports from both sides. The first one that comes to mind was a men’s soccer game in 1994 at Lourie-Love Field in the pouring rain. The referee was kind enough to let the Harvard coach use his umbrella – a gesture he later regretted when said umbrella was destroyed over the coach’s knee upon the issuance of a red card. The coach watched what he could of the rest of the match from the team bus, but no doubt enjoyed the end result as the Crimson effectively eliminated Princeton from the Ivy League race.
That winter brought a memorable trip to Cambridge – actually lower Allston – from the men’s hockey team, which was mired in a 15-year streak of futility in Harvard’s Bright Hockey Center. But TB-North remembers Ethan Early’s (the son of a Harvard alum, no less) exorcising the demons with a hat trick in a Tiger win. That game, as it turned out, was the first in a lengthy run of Princeton successes in Bright as Harvard was unable to defend its home ice against the Tigers for the better part of the next decade.
Two football games come to mind as well. One was in 2003, when Harvard backup quarterback Garrett Schires engineered a win against the Tigers at Harvard Stadium in the first overtime game in series history. Three years later, both teams came into Princeton Stadium undefeated, where the Tigers rode a gutsy performance by the great Jeff Terrell to a 31-28 win as part of their Ivy title run.
But the rivalry extends beyond the so-called marquee sports. Pick any Ivy sport, and there’s a reasonable chance that Princeton and Harvard – in no particular order – will be the two favorites. It’s almost a foregone conclusion that in both men’s and women’s swimming, one will win the league championship and the other will finish second. Rowing, squash, tennis, field hockey, baseball and softball are often no different.
Even in those sports where there might not be a tradition of success, the schools have been able to hire good coaches and make the steady climb toward the top. When TB-North was at Princeton, women’s soccer and men’s hockey were more often found at the bottom of the standings than the top and Harvard was the Ivy to beat in both sports. Princeton has been to five NCAA tournaments in the last nine years in women’s soccer, including the only Final Four run in Ivy history, while the men’s hockey team is now a national force. Harvard, meanwhile, has taken steps to improve its standing in Princeton’s traditional strongholds of men’s basketball and men’s lacrosse.
At the root of the rivalry is a keen understanding of what the other is doing, both on the administrative and coaching fronts. The annual football game between the schools usually involves some kind of reconnaissance mission by staff members of the visiting team to scope out any facility upgrades or clever marketing initiatives. When a Harvard contingent saw firsthand how Princeton was using its new scoreboard displays to promote upcoming events during recreational hours, it brought about more than one department meeting back in Massachusetts.
The schools recruit a great number of the same prospects, and if one happens to provide a different level of support than the other, things can get testy – both internally and externally. Phone lines burn if a star prospect is admitted to Harvard and denied by Princeton, or if Princeton’s financial aid package is more generous than Harvard’s.
At the end of the day, both programs are successful because they have terrific people working for them. TB-North worked directly with Harvard’s football program for four years and, with no exaggeration, was impressed by every single person he met within the team. To this day, TB-North could reel off the starting eleven for the 1993 Princeton men’s soccer team, which made an amazing run to the NCAA final four with the great Bob Bradley on the sideline. As an aside, TB-North recalls killing time before many a Princeton soccer game by kicking a ball around with precocious 5-year-old Michael Bradley – Bob’s son who is now a fixture on the U.S. national team.
As TB-North mentioned earlier, he now works outside the Ivy League, in a 16-team conference that doesn’t allow him to choose favorites. Kind of like the same thing that happens when Princeton plays Harvard, though he has to admit that sometimes sentiment comes into play.
Either way, as long as they both beat Yale, then everything is right in the world.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Enough With The Jerry Jones Shots
TigerBlog really liked watching the Sunday night NFL game between the Giants (good) and the Cowboys (evil). He especially liked the end, when Eli Manning (whom TB has liked from Day 1 and likes even more now that he's won a Super Bowl) marched the Giants down the field and set up the game-winning field goal on the final play.
Still, TB can't help but wonder one thing about the telecast, and the telecasts of all Cowboys' games: Why the obsession on the part of the TV people with Dallas owner Jerry Jones?
TigerBlog counted the number of appearances Jones made on his TV screen and lost track around 15; a conservative guess would be that Jones was on 25-30 times. Why? Who could care about a shot of the owner? Other than fueling Jones' enormous ego, why show a picture of him, or any owner for that matter (Mark Cuban, etc.)?
It certainly doesn't enhance the broadcast. It's not as if even Dallas fans want to see shots of Jones. You watch the game to, uh, watch the game.
As an aside, TB once went to a Giants-Cowboys game at Giants Stadium to write a piece about then-backup quarterback and now Dallas offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, who Princeton fans know as the 1988 Ivy League Player of the Year. TigerBlog spoke to some of the high-profile Dallas players about Garrett, including Emmitt Smith, who found a $20 bill in his pocket as he was talking to TB and became as excited as anyone else would be to find a random double sawbuck, despite the fact that he had just signed a huge contract extension. TigerBlog has never been 100% sure what to make out of that, because $20 to Smith was like $.02 to anyone else.
Anyway, after talking to Garrett (a total class act) and the others, TB was getting ready to leave, when Jones came up to him and asked who he was and what he was writing about. When TB told him, Jones immediately started talking about Garrett and insisting that TB write down what he was saying. Again, TB still isn't sure what to make out of that, because it was either 1) a very nice gesture on his part or 2) freakishly narcissistic.
Let's get back to the endless cutaways to Jones, though. To TigerBlog, it is so unbelievably obvious that they add nothing to the game other than to generate extra animosity to the man that it's impossible for a TV producer not to realize this. Yet nearly 30 times Sunday night, someone in the truck said these words: "cut away to Jones."
What's the lesson? Maybe it's that some things are so obvious, but the people to whom it should be most obvious are too close to the situation to notice. By now it's a habit to show Jones (and Cuban) during games, or equally as bad, endless shots of parents, wives, fans, etc. It falls under the heading of "they do it; they must have a reason for doing it; we should do it; now we do it; now we're used to doing it; now we can't stop doing it."
Here at TigerBlog HQ, we're about 15 minutes away from our weekly event meeting. It's a meeting that has taken on many forms during TB's 15+ years of attending them, from a room jammed with people to a smaller group to any number of other permutations.
These meetings now have settled in Tuesday mornings at 10, and they feature representatives from marketing, communications, the ticket office, the business office, event management, intercollegiate programming, corporate sponsorship and more.
Their purpose is to figure out what Princeton events should look like, what should be important. Any area is open to discussion - parking, pregame music, the video board, programs, kids' events, security, promotions, everything. There have been heated arguments, endless debates on what could be considered non-sensical issues, long discussions on what changes could or should be made.
As an aside, TB remembers one his first meetings, when Hank Towns, the longtime equipment manager, was complaining that Pete Carril's practices were running long. It led to this exchange:
Hank: "Pete's practices are running forever, almost until 8."
Administrator: "That late? Where are the players eating dinner. The clubs stop serving before that."
Hank: "Who cares about their dinner? Let them eat at McDonald's. I'm worried about my dinner."
The people in the room are united in their desire to be progressive without shutting out the traditional elements and constituents, to figure out what's in the best interest of Princeton athletics, teams and fans. And what drives it? Are we beholden to the desires of the coaches and athletes, or do the needs and desires of the fans matter as much or more? And which group of fans? Families with kids? Alumni groups? Faculty and staff? Students?
Attendance at Princeton events has always fascinated TigerBlog. Even after all these years, TB isn't sure what the right answers are or if we're successful in drawing crowds here. There are some who feel that Princeton Stadium should be jammed every Saturday; there are others who recognize that that is not realistic. We had 8,000 fans here for the Citadel game Saturday. Is that a good crowd? Ask 10 different people, you'll get 10 different answers.
One question TB always asks himself is: Are we missing the obvious? He hopes that isn't that case, but how would he know? Is there something out there so simple that it has eluded us all these years and all these meetings?
In other words, are we showing our fans Jerry Jones, when all they want is to see the game?
Still, TB can't help but wonder one thing about the telecast, and the telecasts of all Cowboys' games: Why the obsession on the part of the TV people with Dallas owner Jerry Jones?
TigerBlog counted the number of appearances Jones made on his TV screen and lost track around 15; a conservative guess would be that Jones was on 25-30 times. Why? Who could care about a shot of the owner? Other than fueling Jones' enormous ego, why show a picture of him, or any owner for that matter (Mark Cuban, etc.)?
It certainly doesn't enhance the broadcast. It's not as if even Dallas fans want to see shots of Jones. You watch the game to, uh, watch the game.
As an aside, TB once went to a Giants-Cowboys game at Giants Stadium to write a piece about then-backup quarterback and now Dallas offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, who Princeton fans know as the 1988 Ivy League Player of the Year. TigerBlog spoke to some of the high-profile Dallas players about Garrett, including Emmitt Smith, who found a $20 bill in his pocket as he was talking to TB and became as excited as anyone else would be to find a random double sawbuck, despite the fact that he had just signed a huge contract extension. TigerBlog has never been 100% sure what to make out of that, because $20 to Smith was like $.02 to anyone else.
Anyway, after talking to Garrett (a total class act) and the others, TB was getting ready to leave, when Jones came up to him and asked who he was and what he was writing about. When TB told him, Jones immediately started talking about Garrett and insisting that TB write down what he was saying. Again, TB still isn't sure what to make out of that, because it was either 1) a very nice gesture on his part or 2) freakishly narcissistic.
Let's get back to the endless cutaways to Jones, though. To TigerBlog, it is so unbelievably obvious that they add nothing to the game other than to generate extra animosity to the man that it's impossible for a TV producer not to realize this. Yet nearly 30 times Sunday night, someone in the truck said these words: "cut away to Jones."
What's the lesson? Maybe it's that some things are so obvious, but the people to whom it should be most obvious are too close to the situation to notice. By now it's a habit to show Jones (and Cuban) during games, or equally as bad, endless shots of parents, wives, fans, etc. It falls under the heading of "they do it; they must have a reason for doing it; we should do it; now we do it; now we're used to doing it; now we can't stop doing it."
Here at TigerBlog HQ, we're about 15 minutes away from our weekly event meeting. It's a meeting that has taken on many forms during TB's 15+ years of attending them, from a room jammed with people to a smaller group to any number of other permutations.
These meetings now have settled in Tuesday mornings at 10, and they feature representatives from marketing, communications, the ticket office, the business office, event management, intercollegiate programming, corporate sponsorship and more.
Their purpose is to figure out what Princeton events should look like, what should be important. Any area is open to discussion - parking, pregame music, the video board, programs, kids' events, security, promotions, everything. There have been heated arguments, endless debates on what could be considered non-sensical issues, long discussions on what changes could or should be made.
As an aside, TB remembers one his first meetings, when Hank Towns, the longtime equipment manager, was complaining that Pete Carril's practices were running long. It led to this exchange:
Hank: "Pete's practices are running forever, almost until 8."
Administrator: "That late? Where are the players eating dinner. The clubs stop serving before that."
Hank: "Who cares about their dinner? Let them eat at McDonald's. I'm worried about my dinner."
The people in the room are united in their desire to be progressive without shutting out the traditional elements and constituents, to figure out what's in the best interest of Princeton athletics, teams and fans. And what drives it? Are we beholden to the desires of the coaches and athletes, or do the needs and desires of the fans matter as much or more? And which group of fans? Families with kids? Alumni groups? Faculty and staff? Students?
Attendance at Princeton events has always fascinated TigerBlog. Even after all these years, TB isn't sure what the right answers are or if we're successful in drawing crowds here. There are some who feel that Princeton Stadium should be jammed every Saturday; there are others who recognize that that is not realistic. We had 8,000 fans here for the Citadel game Saturday. Is that a good crowd? Ask 10 different people, you'll get 10 different answers.
One question TB always asks himself is: Are we missing the obvious? He hopes that isn't that case, but how would he know? Is there something out there so simple that it has eluded us all these years and all these meetings?
In other words, are we showing our fans Jerry Jones, when all they want is to see the game?
Monday, September 21, 2009
And Now, A Few Thoughts From A TigerBlog Alum
Note - TigerBlog has offered several of the alums from TigerBlog HQ the opportunity to have the floor for a day. One, TigerBlog-Baltimore, said he would be providing an entry; we wait here anxiously for his words (and the two tennis guides he still owes us). One alum did take us up on our offer, and he has filed this report from his experiences at the Florida-Tennessee football game this past Saturday. TigerBlog returns tomorrow, when he will rip Jerry Jones and relate it back to Princeton athletics.
As a former TigerBlog HQ intern, TigerBlog-Alum had many opportunities to be involved in the game-day operations of sports many people would find obscure. For example, as an undergrad at that Big Ten school in the middle of Pennsylvania, TB-Alum was never exposed to events like water polo, squash or women’s ice hockey unless he read about the results of the school’s club team in the student newspaper. TB-Alum’s alma mater definitely had a football team, but the concept of sprint football was totally foreign.
TB-Alum credits his experience in working with such sports at Princeton as a big factor in landing a full-time gig at the University of Florida after his time at HQ ended. TigerBlog-Alum spent a few great years in Gainesville before getting married and moving back north in 2002. Now living outside of Philadelphia and out of the sports information business, TigerBlog-Alum still likes to remain close to sports. You can find him sitting in the Princeton Stadium press box on home football Saturdays, typing away on the official statistics computer, still lending a helping hand to his former colleagues.
Not last Saturday, however. TigerBlog-Alum had the opportunity to head back to Florida for the Gators’ big game against Tennessee (with many thanks to Mrs. TigerBlog-Alum and Little TigerBlog-Alum for the cool Father’s Day gift). It was the first Gator football game TB-Alum had seen in person since the ’01 season. After staffing countless games, this was one of the rare opportunities he’s had had to watch a game as a fan (admittedly, it is quite a refreshing experience to vocalize during a game … remember, in the press box, cheering for either team will not be tolerated).
So, there was TB-Alum, with one of his best friends, Mike (himself the recipient of the same cool Father’s Day gift from his wife and daughters), sitting in section 34, Row, 33, Seats 19 and 20 at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at Florida Field. All the while, 956 miles north on I-95, Princeton was opening its season against The Citadel. It made TB-Alum ponder … aside from the game itself, what are there the differences between a football game day in the SEC and a game day in the Ivy League?
Clearly, economies of scale drive the bus when it comes to the size of everything. Princeton drew nearly 8,000 Saturday. Florida expanded its stadium in 2003 with a new press box, suites and club levels. Saturday’s game drew a record of 90,894 fans, mostly clad in blue shirts to support the Gators.
Princeton offers parking in its lots on a first-come, first-served basis for a small fee. Reserved spots take on a different theme at Florida. Those who provide the highest level of support to the Gator Booster Club are able to reserve the same spot for every game. While walking through the parking lot at Florida, TigerBlog-Alum passed George Steinbrenner’s own personal spot (it was empty as of 45 minutes before kickoff). TigerBlog-Alum doesn’t know the exact amount paid for that spot, but the odds of it being more than a couple bucks are pretty good.
Those who didn’t have reserved parking had to park off campus in a satellite lot and either walk or be shuttled to campus. Of course, there is always the opportunity to pay a local resident (or a fraternity) a nominal fee and park on their lawn. But TigerBlog-Alum decided against the damage waiver at the rental car counter, so he erred on the side of caution.
From a press coverage perspective, Princeton distributed about 70 credentials for the game against The Citadel, which itself traveled from South Carolina with its radio team, two reporters and its sports information director. The game was televised by Verizon Fios TV in the local area.
For the Florida vs. Tennessee game, CBS televised it to a national audience in high definition. There were approximately 600 credentials distributed, 40 of which went to newspapers and photographers from Tennessee. The Volunteer athletic department traveling party consisted of the athletic director, several of his direct-reports and three sports information staffers.
Typically during a Princeton game, TigerBlog HQ staff (including statisticians like TB-Alum) will take up four or five seats along the second row of the press box. In all, Princeton football SID Craig Sachson has about 10 people helping him with various duties throughout the day. The Princeton game-day stat crew sits close to the media and is available to answer questions when something comes up. To his credit, Sachson has his finger on the pulse of every game and knows exactly when any player is about to hit a milestone, so the crew can focus on its task at hand.
It’s slightly different at Florida. The seven-person statistics crew at Florida sits in its own suite and has to wear headphones to hear each other speak. It may sound excessive, but trust TB-Alum, with an open-air press box and the loudest crowd in college football, that sort of technology is a must. The rest of the 20-member sports information staff is scattered throughout the press level answering questions, running stats, researching game notes, preparing for postgame duties, etc. It is quite a production at both places and both sports information offices do a fantastic job of coordinating them.
Florida boasts 19 intercollegiate sports (women’s lacrosse debuts in the spring) to Princeton’s 38 varsity programs. As one could imagine, hosting a football game that draws more than 90,000 people to campus is a traffic-crippling concept. Thus, the days surrounding the big game are when other sports take the spotlight. Friday night was when the cross country teams’ hosted their only home meet of the season (the men finishing first of 18 teams and the women finished first of 23 teams), while the women’s soccer team hosted rival Florida State on Friday night, falling in overtime in a battle of Top 10 teams, and Eastern Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, a 5-1 Gator victory. Those were just the other varsity sporting events on campus that weekend. There were also club sports, plenty of tailgate opportunities to go with eating and drinking establishments that were open well in to the evening for fans to enjoy.
Yes, there are differences in the size of the productions of football games at Princeton and Florida. But no matter the announced attendance in the box score, the field is still 100 yards between goal lines, the ball is still a prolate spheroid, and coaches still run to set up the pass and pass to set up the run. No matter the scale, college football is a great American tradition played by student-athletes that love the competition. This is true whether you cheer for the Boys of Old Nassau or the Boys of Old Florida – and TigerBlog-Alum is proud to say that he’s a fan of both.
As a former TigerBlog HQ intern, TigerBlog-Alum had many opportunities to be involved in the game-day operations of sports many people would find obscure. For example, as an undergrad at that Big Ten school in the middle of Pennsylvania, TB-Alum was never exposed to events like water polo, squash or women’s ice hockey unless he read about the results of the school’s club team in the student newspaper. TB-Alum’s alma mater definitely had a football team, but the concept of sprint football was totally foreign.
TB-Alum credits his experience in working with such sports at Princeton as a big factor in landing a full-time gig at the University of Florida after his time at HQ ended. TigerBlog-Alum spent a few great years in Gainesville before getting married and moving back north in 2002. Now living outside of Philadelphia and out of the sports information business, TigerBlog-Alum still likes to remain close to sports. You can find him sitting in the Princeton Stadium press box on home football Saturdays, typing away on the official statistics computer, still lending a helping hand to his former colleagues.
Not last Saturday, however. TigerBlog-Alum had the opportunity to head back to Florida for the Gators’ big game against Tennessee (with many thanks to Mrs. TigerBlog-Alum and Little TigerBlog-Alum for the cool Father’s Day gift). It was the first Gator football game TB-Alum had seen in person since the ’01 season. After staffing countless games, this was one of the rare opportunities he’s had had to watch a game as a fan (admittedly, it is quite a refreshing experience to vocalize during a game … remember, in the press box, cheering for either team will not be tolerated).
So, there was TB-Alum, with one of his best friends, Mike (himself the recipient of the same cool Father’s Day gift from his wife and daughters), sitting in section 34, Row, 33, Seats 19 and 20 at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at Florida Field. All the while, 956 miles north on I-95, Princeton was opening its season against The Citadel. It made TB-Alum ponder … aside from the game itself, what are there the differences between a football game day in the SEC and a game day in the Ivy League?
Clearly, economies of scale drive the bus when it comes to the size of everything. Princeton drew nearly 8,000 Saturday. Florida expanded its stadium in 2003 with a new press box, suites and club levels. Saturday’s game drew a record of 90,894 fans, mostly clad in blue shirts to support the Gators.
Princeton offers parking in its lots on a first-come, first-served basis for a small fee. Reserved spots take on a different theme at Florida. Those who provide the highest level of support to the Gator Booster Club are able to reserve the same spot for every game. While walking through the parking lot at Florida, TigerBlog-Alum passed George Steinbrenner’s own personal spot (it was empty as of 45 minutes before kickoff). TigerBlog-Alum doesn’t know the exact amount paid for that spot, but the odds of it being more than a couple bucks are pretty good.
Those who didn’t have reserved parking had to park off campus in a satellite lot and either walk or be shuttled to campus. Of course, there is always the opportunity to pay a local resident (or a fraternity) a nominal fee and park on their lawn. But TigerBlog-Alum decided against the damage waiver at the rental car counter, so he erred on the side of caution.
From a press coverage perspective, Princeton distributed about 70 credentials for the game against The Citadel, which itself traveled from South Carolina with its radio team, two reporters and its sports information director. The game was televised by Verizon Fios TV in the local area.
For the Florida vs. Tennessee game, CBS televised it to a national audience in high definition. There were approximately 600 credentials distributed, 40 of which went to newspapers and photographers from Tennessee. The Volunteer athletic department traveling party consisted of the athletic director, several of his direct-reports and three sports information staffers.
Typically during a Princeton game, TigerBlog HQ staff (including statisticians like TB-Alum) will take up four or five seats along the second row of the press box. In all, Princeton football SID Craig Sachson has about 10 people helping him with various duties throughout the day. The Princeton game-day stat crew sits close to the media and is available to answer questions when something comes up. To his credit, Sachson has his finger on the pulse of every game and knows exactly when any player is about to hit a milestone, so the crew can focus on its task at hand.
It’s slightly different at Florida. The seven-person statistics crew at Florida sits in its own suite and has to wear headphones to hear each other speak. It may sound excessive, but trust TB-Alum, with an open-air press box and the loudest crowd in college football, that sort of technology is a must. The rest of the 20-member sports information staff is scattered throughout the press level answering questions, running stats, researching game notes, preparing for postgame duties, etc. It is quite a production at both places and both sports information offices do a fantastic job of coordinating them.
Florida boasts 19 intercollegiate sports (women’s lacrosse debuts in the spring) to Princeton’s 38 varsity programs. As one could imagine, hosting a football game that draws more than 90,000 people to campus is a traffic-crippling concept. Thus, the days surrounding the big game are when other sports take the spotlight. Friday night was when the cross country teams’ hosted their only home meet of the season (the men finishing first of 18 teams and the women finished first of 23 teams), while the women’s soccer team hosted rival Florida State on Friday night, falling in overtime in a battle of Top 10 teams, and Eastern Kentucky on Sunday afternoon, a 5-1 Gator victory. Those were just the other varsity sporting events on campus that weekend. There were also club sports, plenty of tailgate opportunities to go with eating and drinking establishments that were open well in to the evening for fans to enjoy.
Yes, there are differences in the size of the productions of football games at Princeton and Florida. But no matter the announced attendance in the box score, the field is still 100 yards between goal lines, the ball is still a prolate spheroid, and coaches still run to set up the pass and pass to set up the run. No matter the scale, college football is a great American tradition played by student-athletes that love the competition. This is true whether you cheer for the Boys of Old Nassau or the Boys of Old Florida – and TigerBlog-Alum is proud to say that he’s a fan of both.
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