How Was The Fourth?

How was your Fourth of July?

TigerBlog hopes you had a good one.

There are a lot of staples of the Fourth of July, including one that happens on Coney Island each year.

Princeton University has 37 varsity teams. One team that Princeton does not have is competitive eating, which is a good thing, because TB doesn't see the sport in it.

Joey Chestnut won the Nathan's contest for the 12th time when he downed 71 hot dogs in 10 minutes yesterday. That's hot dogs and buns. How in the world is that possible?

TigerBlog can't even imagine how sick he would get if he tried that. He also can't imagine how this ever got to be considered sport.

TigerBlog's two favorite things about the Fourth of July are the song "Fourth of July Asbury Park" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and the movie "Yankee Doodle Dandy." How many people love both?

The song is something that TB can listen to all year round. The movie only really works on the Fourth of July.

The movie stars James Cagney as George M. Cohan. Cagney, if you're TB's age or older, was probably known more for his roles as a gangster in the 1930s and 1940s, which are classics, and yet he also was able to mix in a role like the one as Cohan, which was all singing and dancing and lighthearted comedy.

TB has written about this movie before, including this:
It's hard to say if James Cagney was better in all of those gangster movies or in "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Either way, he's an A+ in both. For wholesomeness? It's hard to beat Cagney as he sings and dances his way through one breezy show tune after another, all while reaffirming his patriotism and love of country in a time of World War.

Here. Watch THIS.

Yeah. That's great stuff.

Or do you like THIS better?

As for the most recent Fourth of July, did you see fireworks? Everyone likes fireworks, especially the big finale.

TigerBlog likes the big finale as well. He'd actually prefer it if the entire show was much shorter but consisted solely of a few big finales.

Come see the fireworks. It's only five minutes, but it's five minutes of all grand finales.

The Fourth of July this year fell on a Thursday. Perhaps it should be moved to be a Monday holiday? Just kidding.

Even though it was a Thursday, it felt all day like it was a Saturday, didn't it? And because this Monday is the Princeton Football Association golf outing, TB kept thinking he had to play golf in two days.

TigerBlog has played in the Friends of Lacrosse outing the last two years. Before that, he hadn't played golf in 20 years or so.

He was absolutely horrific two years ago, and then, without practicing at all in between, he improved his game so much that someone told him that he "wasn't completely horrible." Maybe he'll be even better this year.

The Fourth of July is pretty early in the summer. Football season, though, isn't really all that far away.

TigerBlog is excited for this Princeton football season. It'll be a much different one for him than the last, oh, 17.

TB's introduction to Princeton football came when he did the 1984 Princeton-Penn game from Palmer Stadium for Penn student radio. It was five years later that he started to cover the team during his sportswriter days, back when the team's center was Bob Surace, who is now the head coach.

When TB came to Princeton in 1994, he was the football athletic communications contact, among other things, and was from 1994 through the 2001 season.

Then, for the 2002 season, his former colleague Craig Sachson came in to cover football. Two years later, TB became the PA announcer at Princeton Stadium, and that's what he's done for football since.

Now that Craig has left, TigerBlog will be back as the football contact. Has anyone in athletic communications history ever done this? Eight seasons as the football contact, 17 seasons not as the contact and then back again?

Being the football contact will be fun, TB suspects. Certainly Surace and the coaches and staff are great to work with, and this is even more special since it's the 150th anniversary of the birth of the sport, with the Princeton-Rutgers game from 1869 as the starting point.

Mostly, though, it's been a long time since TB knew any of the football players well. He's looking forward to getting to know them beyond just announcing who carried the ball or who made the tackle.

That's always been the best part of being in college athletics and working with teams. Getting to know the athletes and learning about them beyond just what you see when they compete.

So it's the Fifth of July. Opening kickoff is the 21st of September, at home against Butler.

TB is looking forward to it already.