To be exact, it's a 40-pound yellowtail amberjack. He's the only one in the picture who isn't smiling, as you might have noticed.
The fisherman would be Matthew Anderson, who definitely is smiling. Matthew and TigerBlog Jr. grew up together, they both spent quite a few years working together as ballboys for Princeton basketball.
Oh, those were the days. When there was a home game during the week, TB would leave Princeton in the afternoon, drive about 30 minutes to pick them up, drive them back to Princeton and then drive them home after the game.
Matthew went on to play lacrosse at Chestnut Hill College, and he's also helped coach the junior varsity team at his old high school, Pennsbury, whose colors just happen to be orange and black and who gets a lot of use out of an orange "P" as a logo.
If you're wondering, that fish was caught somewhere off the California coast the other day. For his part, TB can take no credit for helping, as he was 3,000 miles away at the time, though he did give Matthew that "Princeton Lacrosse" pullover.
TigerBlog has never caught a fish anywhere near that large. He has caught a bunch of small ones, mostly shad in the Delaware River with John McPhee.
In fact, the first time he caught a shad, he fought it all the way onto the boat and figured it had to weigh at least 40 pounds. Actually, it was two pounds, but hey, fish tails, right? That's the ticket.
And speaking of tickets (how's that for a segue)?
If you've been on goprincetontigers.com in the last two days, you might have noticed that there has been a story about Princeton (the University as a whole, including Athletics) and its new ticketing system. It's called "vivenu," and you can read about it HERE.
This is from the story:
Princeton University and Princeton Athletics have announced a partnership with vivenu, a leading technology provider in global event ticketing, to further modernize and create a simplified ticket purchasing process for Tiger fans and supporters. Through new technological advancements including a fully-refreshed ticketing website and purchase flow at goprincetotigers.com/tickets, streamlined mobile ticket downloads with season ticket passes, and easier venue entry, vivenu will assist Princeton fans in experiencing a more intuitive and efficient process during their customer journey with the Tigers.
If you have an account on file, you're going to need to follow the steps to create a new one in the new system. It's very easy to do.
Right now, football season tickets are available. Opening day? That would be Sept. 20, when San Diego will be at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium for the first of five home games, along with Columbia (Oct. 3), Mercer (Oct. 11), Harvard (Oct. 25) and Yale (Nov. 15).
If you're planning ahead, Princeton is also at Lafayette (Sept. 27), Brown (Oct. 18), Cornell (Nov. 1), Dartmouth (Nov. 8) and Penn (Nov. 15).
Next up will be men's and women's hockey season tickets, which go on sale July 21. Beyond that will be tickets for men's and women's basketball and wrestling, with men's lacrosse tickets still to come beyond that.
The new ticketing system makes it easy to transfer tickets from one person to another or to donate tickets to non-profit groups. If you're ticket is saved to your device will automatically update if the start time changes.
There was a time when collecting ticket stubs was something pretty much everyone did, especially for big games and concerts. When TB first started working at Princeton, designing Princeton's tickets was a big thing, with an emphasis on making them look as artistic as possible.
Those days are gone. Now it's about convenience and the ability to simply download them to your device.
Princeton's new "vivenu" system does all of that and more.