It was one of those meetings that extended way beyond just the athletic department, so TigerBlog saw a lot of people he doesn't usually see. One of them was Amy Campbell, a University assistant vice president.
If you've been reading lately - and of course you have - then you know that Amy Campbell was the one who gave TigerBlog the advice on how to diaper a baby boy. Or at least TB thought that it was Amy Campbell.
After all, this was almost 20 years ago. Maybe he had the wrong person?
On the other hand, if it hadn't been Amy Campbell, then who was it? And, even worse, would this mean that all of the stories that TigerBlog remembers either didn't really happen or happened in ways that varied from his memory?
If it that's how it actually went, then that would be crushing to TigerBlog. His whole daily blog is based on telling stories. What if they didn't really happen the way he thinks they did?
When he saw Amy yesterday, TB asked if she'd seen the blog. She hadn't emailed him after all, like she'd done many times in the past.
Oh, by the way, Amy - one of the absolute gems of Princeton University - was a senior associate athletic director when TB first started here, and then she went on to become the athletic director at Bryn Mawr College before returning to the administration here.
Or had she?
There was a lot riding on this conversation, TB decided. He asked Amy if she'd seen the blog, and she said no, she'd missed a few lately.
Then TB showed it to her. Then she smiled widely and laughed and said that she'd learned that from diapering her nephews.
And with that, the great cloud of doubt lifted off of TigerBlog. He had been right. His faith had been restored. Were he right about that, then certainly he's right about everything, no?
Another highlight from yesterday came when TB's colleague Warren Croxton came into his office to ask a question about last year's NCAA baseball regional. Warren is the baseball contact, but he had a family conflict a year ago and couldn't make the trip to Louisiana, which is how TB ended up there in the first place.
For some reason, Warren was wondering about the attendance for the Princeton game against UL-Lafayette in the first round. The game was delayed hours and hours by rain and didn't start until 9:41 Central time.
Attendance was listed as 3,569. Princeton led heading into the bottom of the seventh, and Warren, for some reason, asked how many people were left at that time. Had the building cleared out as the hour approached midnight?
TigerBlog's response was to call up a video that's actually still on his desktop. It's from the seventh-inning stretch, and it was the crowd as it sang not "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" but instead "Centerfield," the John Fogarty song from the late 1980s. It's the tradition there.
TigerBlog hadn't looked at the video in months. As soon as he did, it took him back to when he'd been there. He'd never seen anything like it a college sporting event. This was right around midnight after all. And it came just before the Ragin' Cajuns made their big rally.
He also told Warren that before the game, basically all of those people in the video had come up to TigerBlog and anyone else wearing "Princeton" stuff and said essentially: "we're going to kick your team's butts, but before we do ... come eat with us. We have some pretty good stuff here."
Perhaps Warren's interest in the regional from last year was inspired by the fact that Andrew Borders, who shares an office with Warren, is leaving tomorrow morning for the NCAA softball regional in Tallahassee, Florida.
Princeton plays Florida State Friday at 7 in a game on ESPNU. Andrew was trying to figure out if Princeton softball had ever been on TV before, and TB couldn't remember if the Women's College World Series had been televised when Princeton was in it in 1995 and 1996.
The Tigers left early this morning for Florida.
TigerBlog looked up yesterday to see how big the stadium is at Florida State, and he learned that the record for a single game is 1,712. Florida State has played four games this year with more than 2,000 people in attendance, twice at Florida and twice at Oregon.
FSU is 51-6-1 on the year, with three of those losses to Oregon and one each to North Carolina, Texas A&M and Florida. The tie came against Michigan.
Oh, and the question about the Women's College World Series for softball? TigerBlog asked David Rosenfeld, who was an intern back then, if he remembered. He didn't.
But he did say that it was a pretty good time for him. To quote him:
"That was a fun year for me...Great football season...went to Hawai'i...sat 3 feet from Goodrich passing the ball to Lewullis...then went to the women's NIT in Texas...then the WCWS. And it was all because of me."
Yes.
As in that was a fun year. Not as in it was all because of him.
On the other hand, maybe none of those things really happened. Maybe he's just remembering it that way.
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