The Cookie, The Records, The Videos

Cody Chrusciel, TigerBlog's Office of Athletic Communications colleague and the voice of among other things Princeton football on the radio, brought TigerBlog back a souvenir from his trip to Brown this past weekend.

If you've ever covered a sporting event at Brown University, you know that its press boxes are famous for their giant chocolate chip cookies. Cody texted TB a picture of a large stack of them Saturday, and then yesterday he delivered one to him.

Gary Walters, the Ford Family Director of Athletics emeritus, saw the cookie and speculated that it has 1,000 calories. TigerBlog isn't sure, but hey, he's seen salads that have 1,200 or more calories, so, you know, everything in moderation.

Besides, TB won't be back at Brown until lacrosse season, so why not eat one cookie now?

Ah, but as he went to do so, he kept hearing Gary's voice ... "1,000 calories. 1,000 calories." So he gave it to Maya, the very amiable young woman at the Jadwin desk as TB was leaving. Her response was "Free Cookie. Yay."

As TB said, Cody is the voice of Princeton football - and a lot of other things. He does men's lacrosse on the radio as well, and he fills in on the broadcasts of any number of other sports for the Ivy League Network.

He also does the voiceovers for numerous videos that he and John Bullis produce. His voice is the one narrating the Jesper Horsted video that Cody produced last week.

Didn't see it? It's right HERE.

The Horsted video is a good one. He's a two-sport athlete here, with pro potential in both baseball and football. He won Ivy League titles in both before his sophomore year was over.

Horsted is the leading receiver on the Princeton football team. Actually he's the leading receiver in the Ivy League and the fifth leading receiver in the FCS.

Horsted is on pace for 84 receptions this season, which would be four shy of the school single-season record. He only had seven last Saturday against Brown, largely because on the lopsided nature of the 53-0 win over Brown. This weekend, at Harvard, figures to be much more competitive.

By the way, that's a 7:30 pm kickoff Friday night at Harvard, on NBC Sports Network. TigerBlog is reasonably sure this will be the first Princeton-Harvard night football game, though maybe he's wrong.

Speaking of Princeton in the national leaders, Chad Kanoff ranks first in the FCS with a 73.9 completion percentage. The record for a single-season at Princeton is 68.2 percent, held by Jason Garrett, the current head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

TigerBlog, by the way, hasn't seen too many people who could throw a football as naturally and perfectly as Jason Garrett.

The FCS record for completion percentage in a season is 75.2 percent, set by Eric Sanders of Northern Iowa 10 years ago. The Ivy record is 70.5 percent, set by Penn's Gavin Hoffman.

In addition, Kanoff's career completion percentage is 62.4, which would tie him for seventh best all time in the Ivy League. Garrett, at 66.5 percent, is the Ivy and obviously Princeton record holder.

Kanoff actually leads the Ivy League in completion percentage, passing efficiency, passing touchdowns and passing yards. That's not too bad.

Anyway, the whole point of this was to talk about the video about Horsted.

TigerBlog thinks videos like that are the perfect way to tell stories about Princeton athletes. Horsted has a good story. The video captures who he is. It showcases Princeton's coaches well. It's the right length.

Another kind of video that TigerBlog likes is the mic'd up series. The most recent example is when Courtney Banghart, the women's basketball coach, was mic'd up.

You can see that one HERE.

The OAC is constantly looking for new and better ways to tell stories, across as many mediums as possible. Video. Written word. Social media. All of it.

It's a challenge, but it's also fun. It's interesting to see what works and what doesn't, what can be better, all of it.

John Bullis made a series of "All-Access" pieces a few years ago that were great, but they were also a little long at 15-20 minutes. There were videos a year ago that were 30-45 seconds, which in some cases (social media) work well and in others aren't long enough.

TigerBlog has said it often, but he would never have been able to stay here as long as he has had it not been for the evolution of the profession. It's gone from helping the media to constantly attempting to find the best ways to be creative. It makes each day fun and challenging.

Remember, TigerBlog has been doing this since before there was a webpage and when the primary way of communicating with other schools was through mail.

Now?

As he said, each day is a different challenge.