Minor Sports

TigerBlog is pretty sure Dan Day has heard the "has no grade point average" line before.

It's part of what happens when you share your name with one of the better characters in arguably the funniest movie ever made.

You remember "Animal House," correct? Daniel Simpson Day? D-Day? The guy on the motorcycle?

When the Delta Tau Chi members get summoned to Dean Wormer's office and the Dean goes through their GPAs, he mentions that Daniel Simpson Day "has no grade point average. All classes incomplete."

At the end of the movie, when it is revealed what has happened to each of the main characters, it mentions "Daniel Simpson Day, whereabouts unknown."

D-Day, by the way, grew up to become Sheriff Farley from "My Cousin Vinnie."

As for the other Dan Day, he is currently the Acting Director of Communications and Director of News and Editorial Services for Princeton University. His background is in newspapers, mostly with the Associated Press.

This Dan Day graduated from Holy Cross, and TigerBlog is guessing that he actually had a GPA.

A few days ago, TigerBlog received an email from Day with a subject line of "blog fodder." The email included a link to an archive of Princeton information, much of it about athletics, from the early 1900s.

TB has an old book called "Athletics At Princeton" that traces the intercollegiate athletic history of Princeton from when it first began until right around 1900. The link that Dan sent was something of a continuation of the book.

It was right around the year 1900 that Princeton began to add a bunch of varsity teams. The link from Day labeled these as "Minor Sports."

Included in these "Minor Sports?" Basketball and hockey.

As it turned out, those sports are hardly minor in the intercollegiate athletic landscape.

TigerBlog can't remember where he read this one story about the problem with the end game for basketball, which has become almost tedious for any game closer than 10 points. In that case, the last minute or 90 seconds have become an epidemic of fouls and timeouts, timeouts and fouls.

Go ahead and time how long it takes to play the last minute or so of a close game. It's interminable.

TB has seen a few stories about this of late. One suggested playing games to a certain score, like having NBA games end when the first team gets to 100.

The one TB read yesterday suggested playing college games the way they are now until the under-four media timeout of the second half and then having the game end when the team in the lead scores seven more points. In other words, if Princeton is playing Team X and leads 65-60 at the first dead ball under four minutes, the game ends when the first team reaches 72.

Every game, in this format, would end with a game-winner, and there could be no running out the clock. The story TB read did some research on all of the fouling that goes on at the end of games and found that the team doing the fouling almost never ends up winning and almost always ends up losing by more than it trailed by when it started fouling.

The problem with this format is that, TB assumes, the team that gets to the under-four timeout ahead probably wins an extraordinary amount of the time anyway.

TB would make one suggestion to improve the end of basketball - no coach can call timeout after the final media timeout. Let the players play. Let the game happen.

Of course, TB doesn't get to the make the rules, so he's stuck with the current format.

It'll be on display tomorrow afternoon at Jadwin Gym for a basketball doubleheader, as the unbeaten Princeton women take on Georgetown at 2, followed by the men's game against Stony Brook at 4:30.

As for the other minor sport, Princeton hosts Harvard tonight and Dartmouth tomorrow night at Baker Rink.

Next weekend, Princeton is off to Minnesota State-Mankato for two games. TB figured the temperature there would hover below zero or so, but it's supposed to be in the 40s when the Tigers are there.

Princeton is then off until Dec. 27 and 28, when it plays home-and-home with Quinnipiac. The Tigers next ECAC weekend isn't until 2015, when the Tigers host Union and RPI on Jan. 9 and 10.

Harvard comes to Baker Rink tonight off to a great start at 7-1-2 overall and 3-1-2 in the ECAC. Dartmouth is 2-3-1 in the league; Princeton is 1-5-0.

There is also a home track and field meet Sunday at Jadwin.