TigerBlog's introduction to sportswriting came in the form of numerous Fridays and Saturdays at high school games. He assumes this is how all the greats got started.
Not that TB is one of the greats, of course. Well, maybe he is. Depends whom you ask.
For instance, his grandmother Judy certainly thought he was one of the greats. Judy Roder was MotherBlog's mother. Standing roughly 4' 10", she was the taller of TB's two grandmothers, edging out FatherBlog's mother by about an inch or two.
Judy and her husband Joe ran a driving school, called Roder Auto School. It was on Lefferts Boulevard, in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, not far from Kennedy Airport.
Louis, the official toy poodle of TB's youth, used to spend his summers with Judy and Joe and would bark in his friendly way at the would-be drivers. When it came time for TB to learn to drive, Joe taught him how, just as he did TB's other cousins.
They were snowbirds, Judy and Joe, as they would spend much of their winters in Florida for years and years. Their apartment on the third floor at 8300 Talbot Street (TB thinks that was the address) was adorned with photos from their time in the Sunshine State, as well as every conceivable picture they could find of their two children (MotherBlog and her older brother Larry) and their four grandchildren.
Judy and Joe lived on Mountain time, or maybe even Pacific time. Up at 4. Breakfast at 5. Lunch at 10. Dinner at 4. In bed at 8, Joe always with his transistor radio.
To the visit with them was to eat, eat and eat. Until you couldn't eat anymore. Until you were so stuffed with chicken soup, brisket, deli, bagels and lox and whatever else she was serving - all washed down with YooHoo of course - that you couldn't eat another bite, something that when informed of she would always say the same thing: "What's the matter? You don't feel good?"
Joe passed away in 1991; Judy followed three years later. Both lived well into their 80s and were married for, as TB remembers it, 64 years.
TB is pretty sure the last time he had an extended stay in his grandparents apartment was when he covered the 1985 U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing Meadows, also not far from Kew Gardens.
TB spent two weeks with his grandparents. He covered matches all day and night and then returned to their apartment, where he'd be greeted by Judy and a late meal. This was late by any standards; by Judy's, it was probably closer to early than late.
The 1985 U.S. Open winners were Hana Mandlikova on the women's singles side and Ivan Lendl on the men's singles side. TigerBlog's biggest memories of the tournament were 1) sitting next to Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press in his pressbox seat and 2) the graciousness and class of women's runner-up Martina Navratilova, who became an instant TB favorite.
As for Albom, he would talk about how competitive the newspaper war in Detroit was between the Free Press and the News, and TB would try to get him to understand that the one between the Trenton Times and Trentonian was even wilder, given how much smaller Trenton is than Detroit.
The two Detroit papers merged in 1989. Amazingly, shockingly, both the Trenton Times and Trentonian continue to be published every day. In the world of newspapers, there is little than can match up to that, even if nobody outside this area could care less or even knows about it.
TigerBlog hasn't been back to the U.S. Open since. In fact, he isn't nearly into tennis as much as he used to be; these days he prefers his racket to be slightly smaller and the ball to be black and hardly bounce.
Because the Trenton Times and Trentonian are still publishing, he was able to see that Princeton women's tennis coach Laura Granville has been doing radio at the current Open in New York.
Though Granville has no previous radio or TV experience, she seems to be enjoying her debut.
And it has to be great for her to be back at the U.S. Open, a tournament in which she competed regularly when she was one of the top professionals in the world. Maybe not a top 10 player, but an established, successful pro tennis player.
Granville is entering Year 2 at Princeton. The college tennis season is a long one, with 24 separate dates of competition listed on the schedule for the fall alone.
Granville is as accomplished an athlete as any current Princeton coach.
She was a two-time NCAA champion at Stanford, and she then had her professional career before returning to Palo Alto to get her degree. Princeton is her first coaching stop, and her team went 12-7 overall and 4-3 in the league in her first season.
When the Open is over, she'll be back to getting ready for Season 2. In the meantime, she's definitely enjoying her time behind the mic.
TB has done enough radio to know that if you know your stuff and have some personality, then you can be pretty good on the radio. He hasn't heard Granville, but he assumes that she's pretty good.
TB hasn't had that many conversations with her in the last 12 years, but she's a very friendly, very funny person. She's got the kind of sharpness that translates well to broadcasting.
And to coaching.
Princeton women's tennis is in good hands.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Friday, August 30, 2013
Kicking Off
TigerBlog didn't make it anywhere close to the end of the Rutgers-Fresno State game last night.
He mostly forgot about the game until this morning, when he was checking out Twitter, which is a really frustrating way to figure out who won. Nobody ever posts the final score, at least TB's followers don't.
Take Eddie Timanus of USA Today and Patrick Stevens of #d1scourse, for instance. They keep TB updated in a very humorous way, except at the end, when they simply say things like "oh well" or "that's the game" or "goodnight Twitterverse."
TigerBlog had to go all the way to his Yahoo sports app to get the final score this morning.
And what a final it was. Fresno State 52, Rutgers 51 in overtime.
TigerBlog wanted to see Rutgers win. He knows a lot of RU alums and no Fresno State alums.
In addition, Rutgers tight end Paul Carrezola is the older brother of Bridget Carrezola, one of Miss TigerBlog's buddies and a field hockey and lacrosse teammate. There are actually four Carrezola children, each one a big-time athlete, with Bridget the youngest and possibly best of all of them.
Rutgers, playing in the AAC this year after the Big East last year and the Big 10 next year, combined with Fresno State for 114 passing attempts and nearly 1,100 yards of offense, of which 804 came through the air.
It was quite a start to the college football season, not just in the game but all around the country.
The Thursday before Labor Day is the first day of the college football season, and there were games galore. The marquee player was South Carolina's Jadeveon Clowney, who is probably going to be the No. 1 pick in next year's NFL draft.
TB can't hep but wonder if Clowney is that good or just happened to make about the biggest hit ever in a football game, something that is etched in everyone's mind and replayed a billion times - and possibly illegal this year by the next rules about hitting defenseless ballcarriers.
The schedule gets even more crowded as the weekend goes along, with some pretty good matchups along the way. There were 17 games yesterday, with eight more today and then 47 tomorrow, two Sunday and one Monday.
College football is back. And it should be back in a big way, what with the way that sport has driven all of the conference realignment that has left so many soccer players and field hokey players and yes, basketball players, left to sort through the carnage as they make insanely long trip after insanely long trip to play schools they have no natural connection to, while longtime rivals are doing the same.
As is the case every year, Princeton football is going through its earliest practices while the rest of the college football world is playing games.
TB is okay with it.
Princeton opens Sept. 21 - three weeks from tomorrow - at home against Lehigh. It's the start of the 10 games in 10 weeks sprint that is Ivy League football.
TigerBlog thinks the perfect schedule for an Ivy League team would be to start the season two weeks earlier than it does now, meaning next weekend. The teams would play six games, and then the entire league would take a week off, coming back the following week to play five more games, all within the league.
This adds an 11th game obviously, something that is pretty controversial within the league. And it pushes the start of preseason back two weeks, which adds significant expense.
Even if the possibility of an 11th game is unlikely, TB would love to see the season start a week earlier and have each Ivy team take that one week in the middle off.
It'd be good for resting and recovering from the pounding of an Ivy season, which is the No. 1 reason TB likes it.
It would also be good for recharging the season itself, with a big push for the second half, as each game is a league game and the season really starts to sort itself out.
Anyway, that's what TigerBlog would do.
In the meantime, there is a lot of college football to be watched, even if it's not yet September.
And of course the Princeton athletics season has its first games a week from today, with soccer, field hockey and volleyball kicking off as well.
So enjoy Labor Day weekend. Come Tuesday, it'll be gameweek for Princeton.
If TB's plan were enacted, it would apply to football as well.
He mostly forgot about the game until this morning, when he was checking out Twitter, which is a really frustrating way to figure out who won. Nobody ever posts the final score, at least TB's followers don't.
Take Eddie Timanus of USA Today and Patrick Stevens of #d1scourse, for instance. They keep TB updated in a very humorous way, except at the end, when they simply say things like "oh well" or "that's the game" or "goodnight Twitterverse."
TigerBlog had to go all the way to his Yahoo sports app to get the final score this morning.
And what a final it was. Fresno State 52, Rutgers 51 in overtime.
TigerBlog wanted to see Rutgers win. He knows a lot of RU alums and no Fresno State alums.
In addition, Rutgers tight end Paul Carrezola is the older brother of Bridget Carrezola, one of Miss TigerBlog's buddies and a field hockey and lacrosse teammate. There are actually four Carrezola children, each one a big-time athlete, with Bridget the youngest and possibly best of all of them.
Rutgers, playing in the AAC this year after the Big East last year and the Big 10 next year, combined with Fresno State for 114 passing attempts and nearly 1,100 yards of offense, of which 804 came through the air.
It was quite a start to the college football season, not just in the game but all around the country.
The Thursday before Labor Day is the first day of the college football season, and there were games galore. The marquee player was South Carolina's Jadeveon Clowney, who is probably going to be the No. 1 pick in next year's NFL draft.
TB can't hep but wonder if Clowney is that good or just happened to make about the biggest hit ever in a football game, something that is etched in everyone's mind and replayed a billion times - and possibly illegal this year by the next rules about hitting defenseless ballcarriers.
The schedule gets even more crowded as the weekend goes along, with some pretty good matchups along the way. There were 17 games yesterday, with eight more today and then 47 tomorrow, two Sunday and one Monday.
College football is back. And it should be back in a big way, what with the way that sport has driven all of the conference realignment that has left so many soccer players and field hokey players and yes, basketball players, left to sort through the carnage as they make insanely long trip after insanely long trip to play schools they have no natural connection to, while longtime rivals are doing the same.
As is the case every year, Princeton football is going through its earliest practices while the rest of the college football world is playing games.
TB is okay with it.
Princeton opens Sept. 21 - three weeks from tomorrow - at home against Lehigh. It's the start of the 10 games in 10 weeks sprint that is Ivy League football.
TigerBlog thinks the perfect schedule for an Ivy League team would be to start the season two weeks earlier than it does now, meaning next weekend. The teams would play six games, and then the entire league would take a week off, coming back the following week to play five more games, all within the league.
This adds an 11th game obviously, something that is pretty controversial within the league. And it pushes the start of preseason back two weeks, which adds significant expense.
Even if the possibility of an 11th game is unlikely, TB would love to see the season start a week earlier and have each Ivy team take that one week in the middle off.
It'd be good for resting and recovering from the pounding of an Ivy season, which is the No. 1 reason TB likes it.
It would also be good for recharging the season itself, with a big push for the second half, as each game is a league game and the season really starts to sort itself out.
Anyway, that's what TigerBlog would do.
In the meantime, there is a lot of college football to be watched, even if it's not yet September.
And of course the Princeton athletics season has its first games a week from today, with soccer, field hockey and volleyball kicking off as well.
So enjoy Labor Day weekend. Come Tuesday, it'll be gameweek for Princeton.
If TB's plan were enacted, it would apply to football as well.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
A Dope Nonetheless
So TigerBlog missed the big story the other day when Governor Christie was on WFAN's morning show.
That's okay. The story just keeps getting better. All the way to a quote yesterday from the Governor, as he was talking about Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News, who had his own appearance on WFAN yesterday, on the "Benigno and Roberts Show."
Maureen Dowd, of all people, apparently came to Mehta's defense in a column, one that TB can't find an actual link to, so he'll have to take the word of a bunch of other stories he read about it. Dowd actually was more taking shots at the Governor (not shocking) than she was defending Mehta, but still, here was Manish in a Maureen Dowd column.
Then Governor Christie responded as only he can, basically saying that he didn't care in the least what Maureen Dowd said. And then he did something that nobody else in politics would ever dream of, which is part of why Christie has such wide appeal.
Rather than doing what everyone else would have done, which is saying something along the lines of "I'd like to apologize to the reporter and to anyone else who might have been offended by my words," Christie instead said this about Manish:
"So, you know, I thought a particular reporter was a dope, I said so, and I heard him on the radio today … and he seems like a very nice young man, a dope nonetheless, but a nice young man.”
That's classic.
So yes, Manish may be a dope, but at least he's Princeton's dope. And one of TB's favorite people. But TB will get back to that shortly.
First there's the little matter of what everyone said about Manish. Forget the Governor. Let's go to Keith Olbermann, who is a way bigger dope than Manish ever has been at his dopiest and most assuredly not one of TB's favorite people.
The only reason that Olbermann is back on ESPN, TB surmises, is that there are still some people out there who don't completely hate him, so he's trying to reach them too. How else to explain it?
And here's a little background.
Manish covers the NFL for the New York Daily News and has spent as much time around the Jets as any other media member. The Jets, and particularly Rex Ryan, messed up a preseason game as much as a preseason game can be messed up last Saturday night.
Geno Smith, the rookie that the Jets were desperately hoping would be able to duplicate what the great rookie quarterbacks of last year were able to do in rejuvenating franchises like the Redskins, Colts and Seahawks, has shown that basically he's not ready to do that yet. His last chance to prove otherwise was Saturday's game against the Giants, and he came out and threw three interceptions while clearly showing he's not an NFL starting QB yet.
The Jets fallback plan is Mark Sanchez, who isn't exactly an elite NFL quarterback either but at least has some experience and isn't the national joke he's made out to be either. And if nothing else, right now, today, he's clearly better than Smith.
So what happens? Ryan puts Sanchez in the fourth quarter with the guys trying to make the team, and of course Sanchez hurts his shoulder, putting into question whether or not he'll even be ready for Week 1.
Manish then tweeted that Ryan SHOULD be fired for making that decision. Not WOULD be fired. SHOULD be fired.
Maybe that was strong, but it wasn't like he was referring to sources he'd heard in the organization saying that Ryan was on his way out because of this decision. Manish was simply saying that he SHOULD be fired for doing something that dumb.
Ryan then didn't help his cause in his press conference, which if you saw it you know how odd it was. Ryan's assertion that he put Sanchez in because the were competing and trying to win was even dumber than the actual move of putting Sanchez in, because who cares if the Jets won that game? What does the third preseason game mean? Nothing. Keeping your best QB option healthy is slightly bigger.
Then Manish wrote a column saying that the decision to put Sanchez in could ultimately lead to Ryan's firing. Not because someone in the organization said that, but because it's obvious.
Of course Olbermann jumped on Manish with an embarrassing rant in which he misrepresented everything about what Manish had done, suggesting that he had invented sources to make it seem like Ryan would be fired after the game or before the season started, something Manish never remotely said.
And Governor Christie was being, well, Governor Christie.
So what's come of it?
Well, Manish has been the subject of some ridiculous comments readers have made under a few of the stories that TB has read. At the same time, everybody has heard of Manish Mehta by now.
Around here, his name was hardly unknown.
Long before he was covering the Jets, Manish was an intern here in the Office of Athletic Communications.
He covered Princeton women's basketball during the Maggie Langlas/Kate Thirolf days and was the men's volleyball contact when the team went to the NCAA Final Four in Hawaii. When he looked at the video of where some of the men's volleyball alums are in their careers and saw that Scott Birdwell was the first one interviewed, TB's first thought was "that was Manish's favorite."
Despite sharing an alma mater with TigerBlog, Manish became a huge fan of Princeton men's basketball in the mid-to-late 1990s. He was a staple of lunchtime basketball at Jadwin during those years.
Among those who are huge fans of the guy are Gary Walters, Bill Carmody, Joe Scott and John Thompson, who would purposely call him "muh-NISH" instead of "muh-NEESH."
Former men's volleyball coach Glenn Nelson was a huge fan too. In fact, in one match, Nelson called a timeout - just so Manish could catch up after falling behind on stats.
And now Manish is in national headlines.
He's actually a thorough professional, one that the frauds on TV and the radio who rip this guy and rip that guy and then wouldn't have 1/100th of Manish's courage to go back into the lockerroom again the next day and go face-to-face with them could actually learn a lot from. In many ways, Manish is one the last reminders of what sportswriting used to be, when it was more important to develop sources through hard work and creating relationships than it was to sit in a studio and say whatever comes to mind - or read what people like Manish write in the newspaper and pretend that you came up with it.
As for Manish, he's not a dope.
Maybe a bit dopey at times, but not a dope.
That's okay. The story just keeps getting better. All the way to a quote yesterday from the Governor, as he was talking about Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News, who had his own appearance on WFAN yesterday, on the "Benigno and Roberts Show."
Maureen Dowd, of all people, apparently came to Mehta's defense in a column, one that TB can't find an actual link to, so he'll have to take the word of a bunch of other stories he read about it. Dowd actually was more taking shots at the Governor (not shocking) than she was defending Mehta, but still, here was Manish in a Maureen Dowd column.
Then Governor Christie responded as only he can, basically saying that he didn't care in the least what Maureen Dowd said. And then he did something that nobody else in politics would ever dream of, which is part of why Christie has such wide appeal.
Rather than doing what everyone else would have done, which is saying something along the lines of "I'd like to apologize to the reporter and to anyone else who might have been offended by my words," Christie instead said this about Manish:
"So, you know, I thought a particular reporter was a dope, I said so, and I heard him on the radio today … and he seems like a very nice young man, a dope nonetheless, but a nice young man.”
That's classic.
So yes, Manish may be a dope, but at least he's Princeton's dope. And one of TB's favorite people. But TB will get back to that shortly.
First there's the little matter of what everyone said about Manish. Forget the Governor. Let's go to Keith Olbermann, who is a way bigger dope than Manish ever has been at his dopiest and most assuredly not one of TB's favorite people.
The only reason that Olbermann is back on ESPN, TB surmises, is that there are still some people out there who don't completely hate him, so he's trying to reach them too. How else to explain it?
And here's a little background.
Manish covers the NFL for the New York Daily News and has spent as much time around the Jets as any other media member. The Jets, and particularly Rex Ryan, messed up a preseason game as much as a preseason game can be messed up last Saturday night.
Geno Smith, the rookie that the Jets were desperately hoping would be able to duplicate what the great rookie quarterbacks of last year were able to do in rejuvenating franchises like the Redskins, Colts and Seahawks, has shown that basically he's not ready to do that yet. His last chance to prove otherwise was Saturday's game against the Giants, and he came out and threw three interceptions while clearly showing he's not an NFL starting QB yet.
The Jets fallback plan is Mark Sanchez, who isn't exactly an elite NFL quarterback either but at least has some experience and isn't the national joke he's made out to be either. And if nothing else, right now, today, he's clearly better than Smith.
So what happens? Ryan puts Sanchez in the fourth quarter with the guys trying to make the team, and of course Sanchez hurts his shoulder, putting into question whether or not he'll even be ready for Week 1.
Manish then tweeted that Ryan SHOULD be fired for making that decision. Not WOULD be fired. SHOULD be fired.
Maybe that was strong, but it wasn't like he was referring to sources he'd heard in the organization saying that Ryan was on his way out because of this decision. Manish was simply saying that he SHOULD be fired for doing something that dumb.
Ryan then didn't help his cause in his press conference, which if you saw it you know how odd it was. Ryan's assertion that he put Sanchez in because the were competing and trying to win was even dumber than the actual move of putting Sanchez in, because who cares if the Jets won that game? What does the third preseason game mean? Nothing. Keeping your best QB option healthy is slightly bigger.
Then Manish wrote a column saying that the decision to put Sanchez in could ultimately lead to Ryan's firing. Not because someone in the organization said that, but because it's obvious.
Of course Olbermann jumped on Manish with an embarrassing rant in which he misrepresented everything about what Manish had done, suggesting that he had invented sources to make it seem like Ryan would be fired after the game or before the season started, something Manish never remotely said.
And Governor Christie was being, well, Governor Christie.
So what's come of it?
Well, Manish has been the subject of some ridiculous comments readers have made under a few of the stories that TB has read. At the same time, everybody has heard of Manish Mehta by now.
Around here, his name was hardly unknown.
Long before he was covering the Jets, Manish was an intern here in the Office of Athletic Communications.
He covered Princeton women's basketball during the Maggie Langlas/Kate Thirolf days and was the men's volleyball contact when the team went to the NCAA Final Four in Hawaii. When he looked at the video of where some of the men's volleyball alums are in their careers and saw that Scott Birdwell was the first one interviewed, TB's first thought was "that was Manish's favorite."
Despite sharing an alma mater with TigerBlog, Manish became a huge fan of Princeton men's basketball in the mid-to-late 1990s. He was a staple of lunchtime basketball at Jadwin during those years.
Among those who are huge fans of the guy are Gary Walters, Bill Carmody, Joe Scott and John Thompson, who would purposely call him "muh-NISH" instead of "muh-NEESH."
Former men's volleyball coach Glenn Nelson was a huge fan too. In fact, in one match, Nelson called a timeout - just so Manish could catch up after falling behind on stats.
And now Manish is in national headlines.
He's actually a thorough professional, one that the frauds on TV and the radio who rip this guy and rip that guy and then wouldn't have 1/100th of Manish's courage to go back into the lockerroom again the next day and go face-to-face with them could actually learn a lot from. In many ways, Manish is one the last reminders of what sportswriting used to be, when it was more important to develop sources through hard work and creating relationships than it was to sit in a studio and say whatever comes to mind - or read what people like Manish write in the newspaper and pretend that you came up with it.
As for Manish, he's not a dope.
Maybe a bit dopey at times, but not a dope.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
But By The Content Of Their Character
TigerBlog spent the last 30 minutes talking to Princeton head football coach Bob Surace, mostly about his experiences when he coached with the Cincinnati Bengals and it came time to cut players.
TB, obviously, had seen "Hard Knocks" the night before, and the show ended with the first round of cuts. It was fascinating to hear Surace's perspective on it.
Additionally, the first games for the 2013-14 academic year are just nine days away, and fall sports teams are deep into the preseason routines. There has been an endless parade of teams who have come through to get their head shots for the webpage, which is always a humorous event to watch.
There are new coaches, preseason polls, alumni accomplishments, and any number of other subjects to write about.
And that doesn't even touch on the fact that TB missed the lede when he wrote about Governor Christie the other day.
Today, though, isn't for any of that.
No, today is about the 50th anniversary of one of the signature moments in all of American history.
It was 50 years ago today that Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington, in what is one of the two greatest orations in this country's history, along with Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address."
TigerBlog was an American history major at Penn, and he took several classes in which the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King himself were key components.
The speech itself was longer than scheduled, and Dr. King improvised much of the last few minutes. When he was over, he gave the original version to George Raveling, a basketball player at Villanova who would go on to be a long-time college basketball coach. Raveling still has the type-written paper that Dr. King gave him.
TigerBlog wrote the following about Martin Luther King back in 2012, on the January holiday that honors him:
When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
The United States has 10 officially recognized federal holidays.
They are:
New Year's Day
The Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.
Washington's Birthday
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Columbus Day
Veterans' Day
Thanksgiving
Christmas
According to the official government website, the official name of "Presidents Day" is really "Washington's Birthday," and it offers this explanation:
This holiday is designated as "Washington's Birthday" in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees. Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law.
In other words, only one federal holiday is named after a person who was born in the United States of America.
That's a fairly large group of people, a group that has accomplished some of the singularly greatest moments in the history of mankind, in every single area of human existence (science, religion, government, athletics, women's equality, economics, discovery and on and on and on).
Only one, Martin Luther King Jr., has ever been honored by a federal holiday in his name.
Dr. King was the driving force in the civil rights movement, and his non-violent approach helped achieve monumental successes in a struggle that had begun with an entire race of people literally in chains.
The major civil rights legislation that grew out of Dr. King's movement - with, by the way, considerable help from Princeton's John Doar - was 100 years after the end of the Civil War, which presumably was fought (at the cost of 600,000 American lives) to achieve many of the end results that would take another 10 decades.
And while the major victories of the movement weren't exactly bloodless, they had a much less violent path than anyone could have ever expected.
Ironically, Dr. King himself, a man of non-violence, saw his life cut short on April 4, 1968, when he was assassinated in Memphis in most violent fashion. His role in the movement, as its centerpiece, made him an inevitable target.
Meanwhile, back in August 2013, race is a huge issue in this country, even five years into the administration of its first black President. The news is filled with racially divisive stories, one after the next.
TigerBlog has read and reread the speech so many times. It is above all else a courageous speech, one that put Dr. King at conflict with whites who were threatened by his movement and by blacks who disapproved of a non-violent approach to effect change.
Ultimately, he became too big of a target, and it caught up to him less than five years later.
Before his death, though, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became the landmark legislations of their time. It is not a coincidence that they were passed within two years of his speech.
The complete text of the "I Have A Dream" speech is here.
Read it. Think about the courage it took to deliver it, and the man who had the courage to stand up and say those words.
Think about what it still means, today, 50 years to the day.
TB, obviously, had seen "Hard Knocks" the night before, and the show ended with the first round of cuts. It was fascinating to hear Surace's perspective on it.
Additionally, the first games for the 2013-14 academic year are just nine days away, and fall sports teams are deep into the preseason routines. There has been an endless parade of teams who have come through to get their head shots for the webpage, which is always a humorous event to watch.
There are new coaches, preseason polls, alumni accomplishments, and any number of other subjects to write about.
And that doesn't even touch on the fact that TB missed the lede when he wrote about Governor Christie the other day.
Today, though, isn't for any of that.
No, today is about the 50th anniversary of one of the signature moments in all of American history.
It was 50 years ago today that Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington, in what is one of the two greatest orations in this country's history, along with Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address."
TigerBlog was an American history major at Penn, and he took several classes in which the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King himself were key components.
The speech itself was longer than scheduled, and Dr. King improvised much of the last few minutes. When he was over, he gave the original version to George Raveling, a basketball player at Villanova who would go on to be a long-time college basketball coach. Raveling still has the type-written paper that Dr. King gave him.
TigerBlog wrote the following about Martin Luther King back in 2012, on the January holiday that honors him:
When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
The United States has 10 officially recognized federal holidays.
They are:
New Year's Day
The Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.
Washington's Birthday
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Columbus Day
Veterans' Day
Thanksgiving
Christmas
According to the official government website, the official name of "Presidents Day" is really "Washington's Birthday," and it offers this explanation:
This holiday is designated as "Washington's Birthday" in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees. Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law.
In other words, only one federal holiday is named after a person who was born in the United States of America.
That's a fairly large group of people, a group that has accomplished some of the singularly greatest moments in the history of mankind, in every single area of human existence (science, religion, government, athletics, women's equality, economics, discovery and on and on and on).
Only one, Martin Luther King Jr., has ever been honored by a federal holiday in his name.
Dr. King was the driving force in the civil rights movement, and his non-violent approach helped achieve monumental successes in a struggle that had begun with an entire race of people literally in chains.
The major civil rights legislation that grew out of Dr. King's movement - with, by the way, considerable help from Princeton's John Doar - was 100 years after the end of the Civil War, which presumably was fought (at the cost of 600,000 American lives) to achieve many of the end results that would take another 10 decades.
And while the major victories of the movement weren't exactly bloodless, they had a much less violent path than anyone could have ever expected.
Ironically, Dr. King himself, a man of non-violence, saw his life cut short on April 4, 1968, when he was assassinated in Memphis in most violent fashion. His role in the movement, as its centerpiece, made him an inevitable target.
Meanwhile, back in August 2013, race is a huge issue in this country, even five years into the administration of its first black President. The news is filled with racially divisive stories, one after the next.
TigerBlog has read and reread the speech so many times. It is above all else a courageous speech, one that put Dr. King at conflict with whites who were threatened by his movement and by blacks who disapproved of a non-violent approach to effect change.
Ultimately, he became too big of a target, and it caught up to him less than five years later.
Before his death, though, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became the landmark legislations of their time. It is not a coincidence that they were passed within two years of his speech.
The complete text of the "I Have A Dream" speech is here.
Read it. Think about the courage it took to deliver it, and the man who had the courage to stand up and say those words.
Think about what it still means, today, 50 years to the day.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Orange And Black Clashes With Red And Blue
TigerBlog spent 11 glorious years working in the newspaper business.
Back then, it was a nearly perfect job for him. He went to games. Wrote about them. Worked late. Slept late. What could be better when you're in your 20s, right?
Being in the newspaper business taught TB an important lesson about life, too.
In newspapers, you can never get more than a day behind. Get today's paper out and then worry about tomorrow's. Life is sort of like that too.
Almost all of TB's time in the business was spent writing, the first six years about high school sports and the last five about college sports. It was in those last five years that he first started to learn his way around the Princeton campus and athletic department.
TB did have to spend some nights working on the desk, which wasn't quite his favorite thing to do, though looking back on it there were some big time laughs with some great people.
Mostly what the desk is about is proofreading (something TigerBlog is awful at) and headline writing (something TB loved to do).
Proofreading is hard for a lot of reasons, at least to TB. For starters, there's the balance between correcting errors and rewriting stories, and TB was never a fan of having his own stuff redone.
Then there's the whole concentration part. There are few things more frustrating than reading through a story, finding nothing wrong with it and then picking up the paper the next morning and having some dumb mistake instantly jump out at you.
Headline writing, though. Now that was fun. And it's also the biggest misconception people had about newspapers. TB can't tell you how many times someone mentioned the headline, not realizing that the person who wrote the story never writes the headline.
TigerBlog has touched on this before, with some of the great headlines he wrote in the newspaper business:
"Dykstra's Appendix Out At Home" - the story was about how Lenny Dykstra had to fly back from a road trip for an appendicitis
"Eagles Kicking Circus Auditions Two New Clowns" - this one was about how the Eagles couldn't find a kicker, brought in two mid-week and then didn't sign either one
There were also the two legendary headlines that lived on forever in the newsroom lore. TigerBlog, for the record, saw both in the paper so he can verify that they were true, though he didn't write either one:
"Irish Girls Are Loose" - preview story of a big Notre Dame High girls basketball game
"Vazquez Rides Miss Wyoming To Victory" - self-explanatory, sort of
TigerBlog's favorite goprincetontigers.com headline that he's written? "Final 0:04," written after Ryan Boyle's goal with four seconds left sent Princeton to the 2004 NCAA men's lacrosse Final Four.
Get it? Final 0:04?
TigerBlog received an email last week from a Penn alum he'd never met, and on the bottom of the email, he said that he'd love to see a headline one day that read "Orange and Black Clashes With Red and Blue."
TB could not for the life of him figure out how he'd ever missed that one before.
The colors clash with each other as color schemes, and the teams are huge rivals. What a perfect headline.
Maybe TB will use that one this coming men's lacrosse season.
Earlier in the email he said he'd always wondered how someone could turn his back on his alma mater and embrace his rival school.
The answer?
It was hard at first. Very conflicting. TigerBlog could never have imagined when he was in college that there would be a day where he would actually want Princeton to beat Penn in men's basketball.
Then it got easier. Then it got to be second nature.
It's mostly about the people, after all, more than the schools themselves. TB didn't know anyone at Princeton at one point. Once he got to know the people, the place wasn't as important.
And so now he's no longer about the Red and Blue, at least when it's clashing with his favorite colors, Orange and Black.
Back then, it was a nearly perfect job for him. He went to games. Wrote about them. Worked late. Slept late. What could be better when you're in your 20s, right?
Being in the newspaper business taught TB an important lesson about life, too.
In newspapers, you can never get more than a day behind. Get today's paper out and then worry about tomorrow's. Life is sort of like that too.
Almost all of TB's time in the business was spent writing, the first six years about high school sports and the last five about college sports. It was in those last five years that he first started to learn his way around the Princeton campus and athletic department.
TB did have to spend some nights working on the desk, which wasn't quite his favorite thing to do, though looking back on it there were some big time laughs with some great people.
Mostly what the desk is about is proofreading (something TigerBlog is awful at) and headline writing (something TB loved to do).
Proofreading is hard for a lot of reasons, at least to TB. For starters, there's the balance between correcting errors and rewriting stories, and TB was never a fan of having his own stuff redone.
Then there's the whole concentration part. There are few things more frustrating than reading through a story, finding nothing wrong with it and then picking up the paper the next morning and having some dumb mistake instantly jump out at you.
Headline writing, though. Now that was fun. And it's also the biggest misconception people had about newspapers. TB can't tell you how many times someone mentioned the headline, not realizing that the person who wrote the story never writes the headline.
TigerBlog has touched on this before, with some of the great headlines he wrote in the newspaper business:
"Dykstra's Appendix Out At Home" - the story was about how Lenny Dykstra had to fly back from a road trip for an appendicitis
"Eagles Kicking Circus Auditions Two New Clowns" - this one was about how the Eagles couldn't find a kicker, brought in two mid-week and then didn't sign either one
There were also the two legendary headlines that lived on forever in the newsroom lore. TigerBlog, for the record, saw both in the paper so he can verify that they were true, though he didn't write either one:
"Irish Girls Are Loose" - preview story of a big Notre Dame High girls basketball game
"Vazquez Rides Miss Wyoming To Victory" - self-explanatory, sort of
TigerBlog's favorite goprincetontigers.com headline that he's written? "Final 0:04," written after Ryan Boyle's goal with four seconds left sent Princeton to the 2004 NCAA men's lacrosse Final Four.
Get it? Final 0:04?
TigerBlog received an email last week from a Penn alum he'd never met, and on the bottom of the email, he said that he'd love to see a headline one day that read "Orange and Black Clashes With Red and Blue."
TB could not for the life of him figure out how he'd ever missed that one before.
The colors clash with each other as color schemes, and the teams are huge rivals. What a perfect headline.
Maybe TB will use that one this coming men's lacrosse season.
Earlier in the email he said he'd always wondered how someone could turn his back on his alma mater and embrace his rival school.
The answer?
It was hard at first. Very conflicting. TigerBlog could never have imagined when he was in college that there would be a day where he would actually want Princeton to beat Penn in men's basketball.
Then it got easier. Then it got to be second nature.
It's mostly about the people, after all, more than the schools themselves. TB didn't know anyone at Princeton at one point. Once he got to know the people, the place wasn't as important.
And so now he's no longer about the Red and Blue, at least when it's clashing with his favorite colors, Orange and Black.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Reunited
TigerBlog was driving to work today when he heard the unmistakable, instantly recognizable voice of the person who was guest-hosting the "Boomer and Carton Show" on WFAN.
It was none other than New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was filling in for Boomer, Esiason, that is.
So let's start off right off the bat by saying this is not something pretty much any other high profile, a-chance-to-be-the-next-President politician would even consider.
In the course of the 20 minutes or so that TB was listening, he heard Christie say he hates the Yankees, that the only team he hates more than the Yankees is the Phillies, that he loves the Jets, that a caller who thought that Rex Ryan should be fired immediately was out of his mind and that Geno Smith is definitely not ready to be a starting quarterback but that if he is, then the Jets need to cut Mark Sanchez.
Oh, and he also sang a duet with Carton of the Peaches and Herb sort-of classic "Reunited."
Any other politician would have been tap-dancing around each subject, for fear of the remotest chance of saying something that might possibly turn off one person who otherwise might vote for him/her. And the singing? Never.
This, of course, is precisely why Christie is a different politician, one who strikes fear into the establishment of both parties. And why you could make a case that Christie's approach - which is innate and can't simply be imitated - makes him so appealing to so many people.
Ah, but to paraphrase Rick in "Casablanca," your business is politics; TigerBlog's is running a saloon.
And so TB will stick to less political subjects. Like the MTV Video Music Awards, which presumably were on last night.
Governor Christie also talked about Justin Timberlake, who apparently hit a big home run with his performance with his old band, N'Sync, last night. TB knows no N'Sync songs and isn't troubled by that.
Timberlake comes across as a nice enough guy, so TB is fine with the accolades he was getting at the end of his performance.
Mercifully, TB wasn't watching. He learned all this from Twitter.
Because he wasn't watching, he didn't get to see the train wreck that is Miley Cyrus, who apparently humiliated herself to no end with her own performance, except that this is a country where nobody really ever stands up anymore and says that such behavior is humiliating.
Once upon a time, Miley Cyrus was one of TB's favorite kid show characters, the very watchable Hannah Montana. If you have an early teenage daughter now, then you get TB's point.
"Hannah Montana" was a perfectly wholesome 30 minutes, time that an adult parent could suffer through without wanting to gouge out an eyeball or two, unlike so many other shows that kids get addicted to and force their parents to see.
Yeah, if you went to school with Miley and couldn't figure out she was Hannah then you didn't exactly deserve to be on the honor roll, but that's nitpicking.
Now? TB can sum her up in one word: yuck.
Ashleigh Johnson's 19th birthday is a few weeks down the road, so TB thinks she's a little too old to have been a fan of Hannah. Maybe she caught the beginning before she grew out of it.
Whatever she watched as a kid, she herself is now very much worth watching herself. Maybe women's water polo flies under the radar a bit, but that doesn't change the fact that Johnson may very well be Princeton's best female athlete right now.
By the time she's done, it's possible that "right now" could be changed to "ever." At the very least she's in the discussion for the first and ultimately has to be for the second.
Johnson finished her summer vacation in Greece this past weekend by being named the outstanding goalie of the World Junior Championships and helping the U.S. to the gold medal.
It's not a bad performance for a young woman who is starting her sophomore year of college.
A year ago, Johnson led Princeton to the Eastern championship and a fifth-place national finish. Along the way, it seemed like every picture that was taken of her showed her doing something ridiculously athletic and spectacular.
If you don't think water polo requires an unbelievable amount of stamina, strength, tenacity and athleticism, try going and treading water for seven minutes at a time with nobody else in the pool. Then try it with a pool full of people who are trying to essentially beat you up.
Luis Nicolao has done a great job through the years coaching both the men's and women's programs.
He's also somewhat buddies with the New Jersey Governor, whom he met at a Bruce Springsteen concert, where the two looked like long-time buddies or even brothers in the picture they had taken together.
A picture like that is a great prize to have.
So is a goalie like Ashleigh Johnson. Make sure you see her this spring and the two that follow it.
You'll be looking at a rare, rare athlete.
It was none other than New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was filling in for Boomer, Esiason, that is.
So let's start off right off the bat by saying this is not something pretty much any other high profile, a-chance-to-be-the-next-President politician would even consider.
In the course of the 20 minutes or so that TB was listening, he heard Christie say he hates the Yankees, that the only team he hates more than the Yankees is the Phillies, that he loves the Jets, that a caller who thought that Rex Ryan should be fired immediately was out of his mind and that Geno Smith is definitely not ready to be a starting quarterback but that if he is, then the Jets need to cut Mark Sanchez.
Oh, and he also sang a duet with Carton of the Peaches and Herb sort-of classic "Reunited."
Any other politician would have been tap-dancing around each subject, for fear of the remotest chance of saying something that might possibly turn off one person who otherwise might vote for him/her. And the singing? Never.
This, of course, is precisely why Christie is a different politician, one who strikes fear into the establishment of both parties. And why you could make a case that Christie's approach - which is innate and can't simply be imitated - makes him so appealing to so many people.
Ah, but to paraphrase Rick in "Casablanca," your business is politics; TigerBlog's is running a saloon.
And so TB will stick to less political subjects. Like the MTV Video Music Awards, which presumably were on last night.
Governor Christie also talked about Justin Timberlake, who apparently hit a big home run with his performance with his old band, N'Sync, last night. TB knows no N'Sync songs and isn't troubled by that.
Timberlake comes across as a nice enough guy, so TB is fine with the accolades he was getting at the end of his performance.
Mercifully, TB wasn't watching. He learned all this from Twitter.
Because he wasn't watching, he didn't get to see the train wreck that is Miley Cyrus, who apparently humiliated herself to no end with her own performance, except that this is a country where nobody really ever stands up anymore and says that such behavior is humiliating.
Once upon a time, Miley Cyrus was one of TB's favorite kid show characters, the very watchable Hannah Montana. If you have an early teenage daughter now, then you get TB's point.
"Hannah Montana" was a perfectly wholesome 30 minutes, time that an adult parent could suffer through without wanting to gouge out an eyeball or two, unlike so many other shows that kids get addicted to and force their parents to see.
Yeah, if you went to school with Miley and couldn't figure out she was Hannah then you didn't exactly deserve to be on the honor roll, but that's nitpicking.
Now? TB can sum her up in one word: yuck.
Ashleigh Johnson's 19th birthday is a few weeks down the road, so TB thinks she's a little too old to have been a fan of Hannah. Maybe she caught the beginning before she grew out of it.
Whatever she watched as a kid, she herself is now very much worth watching herself. Maybe women's water polo flies under the radar a bit, but that doesn't change the fact that Johnson may very well be Princeton's best female athlete right now.
By the time she's done, it's possible that "right now" could be changed to "ever." At the very least she's in the discussion for the first and ultimately has to be for the second.
Johnson finished her summer vacation in Greece this past weekend by being named the outstanding goalie of the World Junior Championships and helping the U.S. to the gold medal.
It's not a bad performance for a young woman who is starting her sophomore year of college.
A year ago, Johnson led Princeton to the Eastern championship and a fifth-place national finish. Along the way, it seemed like every picture that was taken of her showed her doing something ridiculously athletic and spectacular.
If you don't think water polo requires an unbelievable amount of stamina, strength, tenacity and athleticism, try going and treading water for seven minutes at a time with nobody else in the pool. Then try it with a pool full of people who are trying to essentially beat you up.
Luis Nicolao has done a great job through the years coaching both the men's and women's programs.
He's also somewhat buddies with the New Jersey Governor, whom he met at a Bruce Springsteen concert, where the two looked like long-time buddies or even brothers in the picture they had taken together.
A picture like that is a great prize to have.
So is a goalie like Ashleigh Johnson. Make sure you see her this spring and the two that follow it.
You'll be looking at a rare, rare athlete.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Nice Guy
Remember back in May when TigerBlog said he was losing weight?
Well, now it's three months later, and he's still going strong.
He started out just short of 240 pounds. These days, he's under 210.
For all of the magical formulas out there about weight loss, the reality is that it's simply about better diet and more exercise. While it might not be fun, that's just how it works.
At least in TB's case.
Sadly, it's been a lonely five months or so without an M&M. Or ice cream. His birthday, and those of both of his kids, have come and gone without so much as a nibble on a cake.
There's a candy dish on the desk of a co-worker, the one whose desk is closest to TB's, that is currently filled with mini Kit Kat bars, Hershey's miniatures and those little Dove bar milk chocolate eggs. Not that long ago, TB would have polished off the entire jar.
These days? Nothing. TB's own desk has two bananas on it.
TigerBlog looked out at the dessert table last night at Bob Surace's house and made a heavy sigh. There were donuts, cookies, cakes, giant orange and black Oreos.
And TB had none of it.
When TB goes out to eat these days, he likes to compare what he actually orders with what he would have ordered a year ago. Hey, there's a reason he was sniffing 240 not that long ago.
The occasion last night was Surace's annual pre-beginning-of-practice barbeque. Surace, if you don't know, is the head football coach at Princeton.
He has this event each year at his house, and each year it seems that it pours either before or during. This year, it was before, and the skies had cleared fully about an hour before it started.
There was almost as much water on his lawn as in the pool, but that didn't stop the fun.
TB told a few people who work at other schools that he was going to the BBQ at the head football coach's house, and they were a bit jealous that they didn't have that same kind of dynamic.
In truth it just speaks volumes about the kind of people Surace and his wife Lisa (a former Princeton women's soccer player who has a Ph.D. in psychology and who is the Lower School Head at Princeton Day School) are. They're just nice, friendly people, and they opened their house up to co-workers and friends before the serious business of another football season begins.
TigerBlog has seen enough big-time coaches to know that they are a lot like politicians. They can be the friendliest people in the world when they need to be or when it suits them, but it's usually phony.
TB will never forget the time that Princeton played basketball at a Big 10 school and then had travel issues getting home. The opposing head coach was at a post-game reception that also included Princeton's coaches, and the head of his booster group came up to the coach with Pete Carril and Bill Carmody by his side.
Very nicely, the booster guy asked the coach if it would be okay if he allowed Princeton to use their vans to get to an airport, and the coach said almost word-for-word "Do you know who this is? This is Coach Carril. You get him whatever he needs."
Then, about a half-hour later, TB was standing next to the booster guy when the coach came over and said this almost word-for-word: "I don't care how they get out here. How many times do I have to tell you not to bother me with this stuff?" Except every other word was a bad one. The f-dash-dash-dash one, as Ralphie said in "A Christmas Story."
What does this have to do with Surace?
He's the most down-to-Earth guy you'll ever meet. When TB, TigerBlog Jr. and Miss TigerBlog arrived at his house, he was the first one to greet them, and he asked both of them questions about their summer, when school starts, how they were doing.
Then he repeated this with everyone who was at his house.
He's just genuine, that's all. He makes it so easy to root for him.
The desserts followed dinner, a buffet with pulled pork, chicken, cheesesteaks, pasta with broccoli, corn on the cob, salad, hot dogs and probably a few other things TB can't remember.
It was just a nice, calm evening, one that is now followed by a highly stressful, highly intense three months of Princeton football. Practice starts next week.
Then it'll be 10 games in 10 weeks. It's an exciting time for the Tigers, who turned the corner from 1-9 and 1-9 to go 5-5 a year ago.
This year and beyond? Who knows. TB is optimistic.
After all, the head coach is very competitive.
It's just that Bob Surace shows that you can be that without having to be a jerk.
So root for him. If you've never met him, take TB's word. It's easy to do.
And if you have, you know what TB means.
Well, now it's three months later, and he's still going strong.
He started out just short of 240 pounds. These days, he's under 210.
For all of the magical formulas out there about weight loss, the reality is that it's simply about better diet and more exercise. While it might not be fun, that's just how it works.
At least in TB's case.
Sadly, it's been a lonely five months or so without an M&M. Or ice cream. His birthday, and those of both of his kids, have come and gone without so much as a nibble on a cake.
There's a candy dish on the desk of a co-worker, the one whose desk is closest to TB's, that is currently filled with mini Kit Kat bars, Hershey's miniatures and those little Dove bar milk chocolate eggs. Not that long ago, TB would have polished off the entire jar.
These days? Nothing. TB's own desk has two bananas on it.
TigerBlog looked out at the dessert table last night at Bob Surace's house and made a heavy sigh. There were donuts, cookies, cakes, giant orange and black Oreos.
And TB had none of it.
When TB goes out to eat these days, he likes to compare what he actually orders with what he would have ordered a year ago. Hey, there's a reason he was sniffing 240 not that long ago.
The occasion last night was Surace's annual pre-beginning-of-practice barbeque. Surace, if you don't know, is the head football coach at Princeton.
He has this event each year at his house, and each year it seems that it pours either before or during. This year, it was before, and the skies had cleared fully about an hour before it started.
There was almost as much water on his lawn as in the pool, but that didn't stop the fun.
TB told a few people who work at other schools that he was going to the BBQ at the head football coach's house, and they were a bit jealous that they didn't have that same kind of dynamic.
In truth it just speaks volumes about the kind of people Surace and his wife Lisa (a former Princeton women's soccer player who has a Ph.D. in psychology and who is the Lower School Head at Princeton Day School) are. They're just nice, friendly people, and they opened their house up to co-workers and friends before the serious business of another football season begins.
TigerBlog has seen enough big-time coaches to know that they are a lot like politicians. They can be the friendliest people in the world when they need to be or when it suits them, but it's usually phony.
TB will never forget the time that Princeton played basketball at a Big 10 school and then had travel issues getting home. The opposing head coach was at a post-game reception that also included Princeton's coaches, and the head of his booster group came up to the coach with Pete Carril and Bill Carmody by his side.
Very nicely, the booster guy asked the coach if it would be okay if he allowed Princeton to use their vans to get to an airport, and the coach said almost word-for-word "Do you know who this is? This is Coach Carril. You get him whatever he needs."
Then, about a half-hour later, TB was standing next to the booster guy when the coach came over and said this almost word-for-word: "I don't care how they get out here. How many times do I have to tell you not to bother me with this stuff?" Except every other word was a bad one. The f-dash-dash-dash one, as Ralphie said in "A Christmas Story."
What does this have to do with Surace?
He's the most down-to-Earth guy you'll ever meet. When TB, TigerBlog Jr. and Miss TigerBlog arrived at his house, he was the first one to greet them, and he asked both of them questions about their summer, when school starts, how they were doing.
Then he repeated this with everyone who was at his house.
He's just genuine, that's all. He makes it so easy to root for him.
The desserts followed dinner, a buffet with pulled pork, chicken, cheesesteaks, pasta with broccoli, corn on the cob, salad, hot dogs and probably a few other things TB can't remember.
It was just a nice, calm evening, one that is now followed by a highly stressful, highly intense three months of Princeton football. Practice starts next week.
Then it'll be 10 games in 10 weeks. It's an exciting time for the Tigers, who turned the corner from 1-9 and 1-9 to go 5-5 a year ago.
This year and beyond? Who knows. TB is optimistic.
After all, the head coach is very competitive.
It's just that Bob Surace shows that you can be that without having to be a jerk.
So root for him. If you've never met him, take TB's word. It's easy to do.
And if you have, you know what TB means.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
The 99ers
A week ago, TigerBlog said that he didn't intend to write about the Mary Decker/Zola Budd documentary.
Next week he'll probably say that he didn't intend to write about the last one in the series, as, of course, he writes about it.
Today, he starts out by saying that it wasn't his intention to write about the documentary for this week, "The 99ers," about the 1999 U.S. women's soccer team and its experience in the World Cup that summer.
And now he'll write about it.
Director Erin Leyden opens the show by saying that the story is so well known that it was hard to come up with a new angle to explore. And then Julie Foudy, one of the captains of the team, came to her with a ton of video that she had shot during that summer with what the viewer quickly realizes was her ever-present camera, and Leyden had her angle.
The documentary is centered around eight members of the team who reunite at the Rose Bowl, the sight of the famous championship game, which the U.S. won in penalty kicks over China in front of 90,000 live fans and 40 million TV viewers, both records that still stand for a women's sporting event in this country.
The signature moment, of course, was when Brandi Chastain scored the decisive PK and ripped off her jersey, showing her sports bra to the world.
The eight team members - including Foudy, Chastain, Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers - tell old stories, laugh, reminisce and do what it is that teammates do 14 years after accomplishing something huge, the way they did.
It's hard to overstate the significance of what they accomplished together, for the future of women's athletics in this country and for the influence they had on so many young girls who watched their success and decided to grow into the current generation of women's athletes in all sports.
It took a huge confluence of events to make it happen - they had to have marketable stars (especially Hamm), those stars had to be attractive (no offense to anyone, but it's true), the general sporting public had to respond to them, they had to play in the United States and they had to win.
The fact that their summer took them across the country - their journey began in Giants Stadium, included a stop in Chicago and ended in California - brought them up close to so many people everywhere they went.
They were also perfect ambassadors, with their girl-next-door persona that was easy to market.
There are, in TigerBlog's opinion, two huge moments in the history of women's athletics in this country, two that stand above anything else that happened, two that inspired millions of little girls to pursue sports and all of the good things that go along with them. One was Billie Jean King's win over Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome in 1973; the other was the 1999 World Cup.
And yes, Leyden was right. The story is so familiar, and not that old, that it was hard to come up with a new angle. Foudy's footage (she also narrates) was a great touch.
So if you haven't seen it, make sure you do. It's a great one.
One of the little girls who undoubtedly watched and probably had a Mia Hamm jersey was Jen Hoy, who was eight years old that summer of 1999. TB can't imagine that she wasn't glued to the TV for each U.S. team game.
Hoy went on to be one of the all-time greats in Ivy League women's soccer history. She graduated last year after helping Princeton to the 2012 Ivy League championship with a perfect 7-0-0 league record, and the Tigers won at West Virginia in the opening round of the NCAA tournament before falling against Marquette in Utah to end a 14-4-1 year.
By any account, it was the second-best season in program history, after the 2004 team that went to the NCAA Final Four. And Princeton last year did something that the 2004 team, or any other team in program history, had not done, which was win an NCAA game on the road.
Hoy just finished her first season with the Chicago Red Stars of the National Women's Soccer League, and she did so in style, scoring both of her team's goals in a 2-1 win over FC Kansas City to earn league Player of the Week honors.
Hoy was actually the second straight Princeton player to earn Player of the Week in the NWSL, after Diana Matheson did so the week before. Matheson was one of the key members of the 2004 team and has been a longtime member of the Canadian national team, the highlight of which has been her goal last year that gave Canada the bronze medal at the London Olympics.
The 2013 women's soccer season is just two weeks and one day away, as the Tigers host Richmond on Sept. 6. Once again, if you've never been to Roberts Stadium, the home of Princeton soccer, get there.
Princeton figures to be strong again this year and one of the top contenders in the league once again, even without the strong Class of 2013 that just graduated.
When Princeton plays Richmond, it will be Game 1 for the Tigers and Game 5 for the Spiders, who play two games this weekend and two more next weekend before coming to New Jersey. It's just how it works in the Ivy League, where the start date is later.
Still, Princeton under head coach Julie Shackford has usually been able to overcome that little hurdle. Shackford is 189-103-22 at Princeton and 231-124-26 overall in her career, and those 189 wins are by far the most by any men's or women's soccer coach in Princeton history. She is also coached Princeton to two of the five 7-0-0 seasons in Ivy women's soccer history, and she has that 2004 Final Four on her resume, something no other women's coach in the Ivy League has ever had.
Shackford's own playing career predated the explosion of women's soccer in this country by just a few years. Had the Women's World Cup started not in 1991 but four years earlier, Shackford, a three-time All-America at William & Mary, would have been a good bet for the U.S. team.
Women's soccer today in this country is huge, with millions of girls who play as little kids, a highly competitive club system for older girls, great opportunities at more than 300 Division I colleges and hundreds of other DII and DIII schools and ultimately a professional league and national team that is always among the best in the world.
The 99ers talk about their roles as pioneers, which they sort of downplay a little. But they shouldn't.
What they accomplished in their own right was extraordinary.
Their real legacy, though, is what they've done for so many others who found inspiration in that perfect summer of 1999.
Next week he'll probably say that he didn't intend to write about the last one in the series, as, of course, he writes about it.
Today, he starts out by saying that it wasn't his intention to write about the documentary for this week, "The 99ers," about the 1999 U.S. women's soccer team and its experience in the World Cup that summer.
And now he'll write about it.
Director Erin Leyden opens the show by saying that the story is so well known that it was hard to come up with a new angle to explore. And then Julie Foudy, one of the captains of the team, came to her with a ton of video that she had shot during that summer with what the viewer quickly realizes was her ever-present camera, and Leyden had her angle.
The documentary is centered around eight members of the team who reunite at the Rose Bowl, the sight of the famous championship game, which the U.S. won in penalty kicks over China in front of 90,000 live fans and 40 million TV viewers, both records that still stand for a women's sporting event in this country.
The signature moment, of course, was when Brandi Chastain scored the decisive PK and ripped off her jersey, showing her sports bra to the world.
The eight team members - including Foudy, Chastain, Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers - tell old stories, laugh, reminisce and do what it is that teammates do 14 years after accomplishing something huge, the way they did.
It's hard to overstate the significance of what they accomplished together, for the future of women's athletics in this country and for the influence they had on so many young girls who watched their success and decided to grow into the current generation of women's athletes in all sports.
It took a huge confluence of events to make it happen - they had to have marketable stars (especially Hamm), those stars had to be attractive (no offense to anyone, but it's true), the general sporting public had to respond to them, they had to play in the United States and they had to win.
The fact that their summer took them across the country - their journey began in Giants Stadium, included a stop in Chicago and ended in California - brought them up close to so many people everywhere they went.
They were also perfect ambassadors, with their girl-next-door persona that was easy to market.
There are, in TigerBlog's opinion, two huge moments in the history of women's athletics in this country, two that stand above anything else that happened, two that inspired millions of little girls to pursue sports and all of the good things that go along with them. One was Billie Jean King's win over Bobby Riggs in the Astrodome in 1973; the other was the 1999 World Cup.
And yes, Leyden was right. The story is so familiar, and not that old, that it was hard to come up with a new angle. Foudy's footage (she also narrates) was a great touch.
So if you haven't seen it, make sure you do. It's a great one.
One of the little girls who undoubtedly watched and probably had a Mia Hamm jersey was Jen Hoy, who was eight years old that summer of 1999. TB can't imagine that she wasn't glued to the TV for each U.S. team game.
Hoy went on to be one of the all-time greats in Ivy League women's soccer history. She graduated last year after helping Princeton to the 2012 Ivy League championship with a perfect 7-0-0 league record, and the Tigers won at West Virginia in the opening round of the NCAA tournament before falling against Marquette in Utah to end a 14-4-1 year.
By any account, it was the second-best season in program history, after the 2004 team that went to the NCAA Final Four. And Princeton last year did something that the 2004 team, or any other team in program history, had not done, which was win an NCAA game on the road.
Hoy just finished her first season with the Chicago Red Stars of the National Women's Soccer League, and she did so in style, scoring both of her team's goals in a 2-1 win over FC Kansas City to earn league Player of the Week honors.
Hoy was actually the second straight Princeton player to earn Player of the Week in the NWSL, after Diana Matheson did so the week before. Matheson was one of the key members of the 2004 team and has been a longtime member of the Canadian national team, the highlight of which has been her goal last year that gave Canada the bronze medal at the London Olympics.
The 2013 women's soccer season is just two weeks and one day away, as the Tigers host Richmond on Sept. 6. Once again, if you've never been to Roberts Stadium, the home of Princeton soccer, get there.
Princeton figures to be strong again this year and one of the top contenders in the league once again, even without the strong Class of 2013 that just graduated.
When Princeton plays Richmond, it will be Game 1 for the Tigers and Game 5 for the Spiders, who play two games this weekend and two more next weekend before coming to New Jersey. It's just how it works in the Ivy League, where the start date is later.
Still, Princeton under head coach Julie Shackford has usually been able to overcome that little hurdle. Shackford is 189-103-22 at Princeton and 231-124-26 overall in her career, and those 189 wins are by far the most by any men's or women's soccer coach in Princeton history. She is also coached Princeton to two of the five 7-0-0 seasons in Ivy women's soccer history, and she has that 2004 Final Four on her resume, something no other women's coach in the Ivy League has ever had.
Shackford's own playing career predated the explosion of women's soccer in this country by just a few years. Had the Women's World Cup started not in 1991 but four years earlier, Shackford, a three-time All-America at William & Mary, would have been a good bet for the U.S. team.
Women's soccer today in this country is huge, with millions of girls who play as little kids, a highly competitive club system for older girls, great opportunities at more than 300 Division I colleges and hundreds of other DII and DIII schools and ultimately a professional league and national team that is always among the best in the world.
The 99ers talk about their roles as pioneers, which they sort of downplay a little. But they shouldn't.
What they accomplished in their own right was extraordinary.
Their real legacy, though, is what they've done for so many others who found inspiration in that perfect summer of 1999.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Defending Champs
TigerBlog is struggling with that little fact. Ever since Day 1, all any father of a daughter hears is "wait until she's a teenager."
Well, she is now.
TigerBlog has a picture of MTB and her friend Wiki, taken at a Princeton women's basketball game in Jan. 2012. He has another one of the same two girls taken just about a year later, prior to the big middle school formal dance.
Granted, in the first picture, they are wearing sweatpants at a basketball game. And in the second one, they are wearing formal dresses for the dance.
Still, in the first picture they look like little girls. In the second they look like, well, they look like what every father of a daughter can't believe has happened so quickly.
Then there is the whole "I hate you phase" that all teenager girls apparently go through, no?
TB isn't trying to stereotype boys and girls here. Still, TigerBlog Jr. is halfway through his teens, and the drama has been kept to a minimum.
Of course, there hasn't been any teenage drama yet from MTB either, though it'd been less than a week.
And what did she want for her 13th birthday? A new field hockey stick, what else?
TB took her the other day to a place that specializes in girls' athletic equipment. The field hockey equipment was upstairs, so up the steps father and daughter went.
Before the two ever reached the top, they heard the unmistakable sound of field hockey ball meeting stick. At the top of the stars, the near wall was covered with field hockey sticks, of all the leading brands.
In the back of the room was an area that had mats on either side, about 10 yards apart, so the girls could practice hitting the ball off the wall or back and forth with someone else to get a feel for which one they wanted.
Miss TigerBlog has many, many great qualities, but her ability to make a quick decision is not among them. Knowing this, TigerBlog walked over to check out the rest of the field hockey section of the store.
The walls were decorated with jerseys of national team players and posters with entire national teams on them.
Off to the side was a bulletin board with Olympic team players on it, and TB couldn't help but notice four Princeton players were represented.
Note to the NCAA and Princeton's compliance staff and everyone else - they were not endorsing anything. It was just a picture of each Olympian, sort of like a baseball card. Everything was perfectly legit.
Two of the Princeton players graduated last year, after leading Princeton to the 2012 NCAA championship. Those two - Katie Reinprect and Kathleen Sharkey - were on the right side of the board.
The other two were Michelle Cesan and Julia Reinprecht, who are both back this year for the title defense. Princeton actually has a fifth member of the national team, Teresa Benvenuti.
Princeton became the first non-ACC team to win the Division I field hockey title in 12 years, ending a series of wins by Wake Forest, North Carolina and Maryland.
The Tigers, even without Sharkey and Katie Reinprecht, are ready to make a serious run at a repeat.
Princeton opens its season at home two weeks from Friday, as the summer continues to wind down.
The home of Princeton field hockey is Bedford Field, which is currently undergoing additional renovations, including the permanent stands and a rebuilt Class of 1952 Stadium press box that now faces in both directions.
As for MTB, she finally picked out a stick.
Then it was off to the nearby diner for matching turkey club sandwiches.
It was a pretty serene start to her teenage years. Hopefully it's a precursor for the next few years.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
The Eligibility Of Sgt. Rhodes
Even if you're the most anti-Middle Tennessee State fan out there, you're still going to have to root for Steven Rhodes this fall, right?
Actually, are there anti-MTSU people out there?
There must be, right? For every school, there has to be someone who is a fan of its biggest rival and therefore hates that school, no?
For instance, TigerBlog is reasonably sure that people hate Princeton, despite the fact that there's no easier school in the country to actually root for than Princeton. Well, at least from TB's perspective.
Google "Middle Tennessee State arch-rival" and you find that the top three stories that come up list three different schools as MTSU's "arch-rival." The three, by the way, are Western Kentucky, Troy and Tennessee Tech.
Of course, TigerBlog has asked the question for years of who is Princeton's arch-rival.
Is it Harvard and Yale, as in the H-Y-P rivalry? Or is it Penn, fueled by decades of men's basketball dominance between the two, as well as physical proximity?
Is it someone else, depending on the sport? In men's lacrosse, for instance, Princeton's traditional rival in the league has been Cornell. If you were to ask a men's lacrosse alum who Princeton's arch-rival was, he'd be tempted to say Cornell, no?
If you asked someone who knows Princeton hockey who Princeton's biggest rival is, you'd get back Yale, or possibly Cornell. Even in football, it's not completely cut-and-dried. Some would say Harvard. Some would say Penn. Some would say Yale.
So is that how it works at other schools?
Auburn is Alabama's big rival, no? But right, in football, it's LSU.
Are there sports at North Carolina or Duke where the other isn't the biggest game of the year? How about UCLA-USC? Or, egads, Army-Navy?
Anyway, where were we? Oh year. Steven Rhodes.
If you missed the story, Rhodes is the 24 year old who spent the last five years in the Marine Corps. He is now a freshman at MTSU, a 6-3, 240-pound freshman at that. One who can play tight end or linebacker.
Except his eligibility became an issue, because he had played in what the NCAA considers to be an organized league while in the Corps. And because athletes who don't enroll in college directly out of high school are docked a year of eligibility for each year they play in an organized league, well, Rhodes was looking at missing two years of eligibility for what he described as "intramural" type games.
Originally, the NCAA said only one year of eligibility would be lost, even though the games stretched across two academic years.
Then came the public outcry, which was predictable.
Here was the big bad NCAA, picking on someone who had served his country. Did the NCAA not have a soul?
This morning, the NCAA changed its mind and allowed Rhodes to be immediately eligible and retain all four years of eligibility.
Once again, the NCAA is in a no-win situation.
The NCAA rulebook is massive, and not one of those rules came from the NCAA organization itself. They all come from NCAA members.
And why do these rules get made?
Because someone somewhere saw something that wasn't a rule and tried to exploit it. The only way to stop it was to make yet another rule that anticipates some ridiculous situation that someone else will try to take advantage of.
It doesn't matter what it is. Someone somewhere in college athletics is out there now trying to figure out a way around it.
That's why the rulebook can't be simplified.
Oh, and TB is sick of hearing about paying athletes, especially those who are on full or partial scholarships. Perhaps those athletes who feel they should be paid should ask the average kid who graduates from their school what it's like to have student loan debt.
Anyway, the NCAA made the right decision in this particular case. Maybe the organization did it because of the public backlash. That's probably what happened.
And what happens? The NCAA gets ripped anyway for not doing so in the first place.
Still, the NCAA is the adult. The coaches out there trying to exploit every possible advantage are the children.
It's not always easy to be the parent.
As for Sgt. Rhodes, it's a great story. Hopefully he makes a real impact at MTSU and has a great four years and then graduates. The man served his country honorably during a time when it was difficult to do so, and he has earned the right to play football and pursue a college degree.
TB will be rooting for MTSU. No offense to its arch-rival.
Whoever that may be.
Actually, are there anti-MTSU people out there?
There must be, right? For every school, there has to be someone who is a fan of its biggest rival and therefore hates that school, no?
For instance, TigerBlog is reasonably sure that people hate Princeton, despite the fact that there's no easier school in the country to actually root for than Princeton. Well, at least from TB's perspective.
Google "Middle Tennessee State arch-rival" and you find that the top three stories that come up list three different schools as MTSU's "arch-rival." The three, by the way, are Western Kentucky, Troy and Tennessee Tech.
Of course, TigerBlog has asked the question for years of who is Princeton's arch-rival.
Is it Harvard and Yale, as in the H-Y-P rivalry? Or is it Penn, fueled by decades of men's basketball dominance between the two, as well as physical proximity?
Is it someone else, depending on the sport? In men's lacrosse, for instance, Princeton's traditional rival in the league has been Cornell. If you were to ask a men's lacrosse alum who Princeton's arch-rival was, he'd be tempted to say Cornell, no?
If you asked someone who knows Princeton hockey who Princeton's biggest rival is, you'd get back Yale, or possibly Cornell. Even in football, it's not completely cut-and-dried. Some would say Harvard. Some would say Penn. Some would say Yale.
So is that how it works at other schools?
Auburn is Alabama's big rival, no? But right, in football, it's LSU.
Are there sports at North Carolina or Duke where the other isn't the biggest game of the year? How about UCLA-USC? Or, egads, Army-Navy?
Anyway, where were we? Oh year. Steven Rhodes.
If you missed the story, Rhodes is the 24 year old who spent the last five years in the Marine Corps. He is now a freshman at MTSU, a 6-3, 240-pound freshman at that. One who can play tight end or linebacker.
Except his eligibility became an issue, because he had played in what the NCAA considers to be an organized league while in the Corps. And because athletes who don't enroll in college directly out of high school are docked a year of eligibility for each year they play in an organized league, well, Rhodes was looking at missing two years of eligibility for what he described as "intramural" type games.
Originally, the NCAA said only one year of eligibility would be lost, even though the games stretched across two academic years.
Then came the public outcry, which was predictable.
This morning, the NCAA changed its mind and allowed Rhodes to be immediately eligible and retain all four years of eligibility.
Once again, the NCAA is in a no-win situation.
The NCAA rulebook is massive, and not one of those rules came from the NCAA organization itself. They all come from NCAA members.
And why do these rules get made?
Because someone somewhere saw something that wasn't a rule and tried to exploit it. The only way to stop it was to make yet another rule that anticipates some ridiculous situation that someone else will try to take advantage of.
It doesn't matter what it is. Someone somewhere in college athletics is out there now trying to figure out a way around it.
That's why the rulebook can't be simplified.
Oh, and TB is sick of hearing about paying athletes, especially those who are on full or partial scholarships. Perhaps those athletes who feel they should be paid should ask the average kid who graduates from their school what it's like to have student loan debt.
Anyway, the NCAA made the right decision in this particular case. Maybe the organization did it because of the public backlash. That's probably what happened.
And what happens? The NCAA gets ripped anyway for not doing so in the first place.
Still, the NCAA is the adult. The coaches out there trying to exploit every possible advantage are the children.
It's not always easy to be the parent.
As for Sgt. Rhodes, it's a great story. Hopefully he makes a real impact at MTSU and has a great four years and then graduates. The man served his country honorably during a time when it was difficult to do so, and he has earned the right to play football and pursue a college degree.
TB will be rooting for MTSU. No offense to its arch-rival.
Whoever that may be.
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