Talk To Me Goose

Wait, there's a "Top Gun" sequel?

How come TigerBlog didn't know this until he saw the trailer yesterday?

This is either going to be awesome or awful. There is nobody who will see it who will say "eh, it was okay."

TigerBlog saw the original in the movie theater in 1986. He's also seen it about a thousand times since on TV. Well, maybe not a thousand times, but enough times that he can essentially recite it.

In case you're wondering why Tom Cruise is one of the top movie stars ever, consider that the original "Top Gun" cost $15 million to produce and then earned $358 million. That's what Cruise can do to a movie.

The sequel, by the way, cost 10 times as much to make, at $150 million. That's a lot for a movie these days.

The release date for the sequel, officially entitled "Top Gun: Maverick," was supposed to be today, June 26. Instead, it's been pushed back to December because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What will movies be like post-pandemic? Will people go back to sitting in crowded theaters? Will this movie be released directly to Netflix or Amazon.

Anyway, Cruise was perfect as Maverick. He got ripped off for the Best Actor Academy Award that year, which went to Paul Newman for "The Color of Money." That was sort of a lifetime achievement award, so it's hard to get too mad at that.

Of course, Cruise wasn't even nominated. Nor was the movie, except in one category: Best Original Song, for "Take My Breath Away," which it at least won.

You know what other movie from 1986 didn't get much respect at the Academy Awards? How about "Hoosiers," which was not nominated for Best Picture and didn't get a nomination for Gene Hackman for Best Actor.

Should these be like drafts in the NFL and NBA, where someone goes back a few years later and says what should have gotten nominated, or who should have been chosen where?

TB, for one, is now excited to see "Top Gun: Maverick." Of course it'll be predictable, and the trailer confirms that. But it'll be the good kind of predictable.

The only question: Will Cruise at some point say "talk to me Goose?"

So while the subject is the year 1986, what was going with Princeton Athletics back in 1986?

The Tigers won eight Ivy League championships in the 1985-86 academic year, six on the men's side and two on the women's side. The Ivy champs that year:

men's golf, men's lightweight rowing, men's indoor track and field, men's outdoor track and field, men's swimming and diving, wrestling, softball and women's volleyball.

The 1985 football season was a tough one for Princeton, who came very close to taking the Ivy League championship.

Penn was the 1985 champ at 6-1, followed by a second-place tie between Princeton and Harvard at 5-2. The Tigers defeated Harvard by the rather interesting score of 11-6, a score so bizarre that it got TB thinking he needed to investigate this a little more.

How do you get to 11? Three field goals and a safety? A touchdown, two-point conversion and field goal?

Give TB a second to look this up...

... okay, he's back. It was a lot wilder than TB would have guessed.

In fact, every point in the game came on special teams. Harvard led 6-3 (two field goals to one) late into the fourth quarter, when a bad snap on a Crimson punt looked like it might give the Tigers the ball inside the 10. Instead, the Harvard punter decided to knock it through the end zone for a safety, which was a pretty heads up play considering the score and time (only four-plus minutes to go on a day when the offenses had done little and Doug Butler, one of the Ivy's all-time best quarterbacks, struggled to a 12 for 36 day for 121 yards).

As it turned out, the ball barely made it out of the end zone, as Princeton almost fell on it for a touchdown. Instead, it was now 6-5 Harvard.

All the Crimson had to do was free kick the ball away and play defense one more time. After Harvard chose to kick off a tee instead of punt, Princeton's Rob Urquhart scooped up the ball and took it back 75 yards for the winning touchdown.

Pretty wild stuff, right?

Unfortunately for Princeton, the Tigers had lost 17-0 to Brown earlier in the season and then lost 31-21 in a showdown against Penn the Saturday after the Harvard game. Princeton had led that game 21-0 in the second quarter.

TB remembers it well; he covered that game while still in the newspaper business. That was 35 years ago this fall.

He did not cover the Harvard game that year, which was in Cambridge. He didn't realize it was that crazy until just now.