Going Back - Opening Day

TigerBlog often will write that he has "covered" Princeton Athletics for more than 30 years. 

Actually, this is Year 32 for him with the Tigers. He can't imagine how many Princeton events he's seen in that time, but it's a lot. Maybe he can try to come up with some reasonable guess at some point.

The reason he uses the word "covered" when he talks about how long it's been is because of the fact that he's actually only on Year 27 of being employed by Princeton University. For the five years prior to that, he covered Princeton for the Trenton Times, back in the pre-internet days when getting information from the daily newspaper was a huge thing.

His introduction to Princeton Athletics came as a Penn student, when he logically thought that the Quakers were the good guys and the Tigers were the bad guys. It was during his five years at the newspaper when he first got to know the people at Princeton and realize how misinformed he'd been as an undergraduate.

It was also during those five years that he had the great opportunity to cover things like the men's basketball dynasty from 1989-92, the first two men's lacrosse NCAA championship teams and two Ivy League football titles (1989 and 1992) while also being introduced to women's athletics and the importance of equity. 

In addition, he met and saw compete some of the greatest athletes Princeton has had in so many sports. He even got to meet a women's soccer and hockey player who was a student worker in the Office of Athletic Communications - Mollie Marcoux.

He began his actual Princeton employment in the early summer of 1994, and so it was a few months before there were actually any games. His first game worked as a Princeton OAC staff member was the football game at Cornell on this day 26 years ago, Sept. 17, 1994.

As part of the "Going Back" series, here is what TigerBlog would have been for Tuesday, Sept. 20, 1994, since the Monday blog would have been mostly about the game, as opposed to TB's experience:

TigerBlog was wearing a tie Saturday. 

It was a first for him at a Princeton football game. Actually, for all of the Princeton events he's covered before, he'd only once worn a tie, and that was for the NCAA men's basketball game against Syracuse two years ago in Worcester.

He's been to a lot of Princeton events in the last five years. This time, though, it was much different. And not just because of the tie.

For the first time, TigerBlog was at a Princeton game as an actual employee of the University. It was certainly a much different feel for him.

He's been at Princeton for nearly three months now, but this was the first time he had a game to work. It has been a summer of getting familiar with the aspects of the job that were completely new to him, like how to operate a Macintosh computer. And to use PageMaker, the fancy desktop publishing software on the OAC Macs.

For that, by the way, he needs to thank his OAC colleague Chuck Sullivan, who spent some pretty frustrating moments teaching TB. The best part was when Chuck explained what "apple Z" did, which is to undo the most recent thing you did, only you have to do before you do anything else. As Chuck said "it's like an appeal play in baseball."

TB finished his first media guide - the football guide - and started on the next, for men's basketball. And yeah, he had a bad mistake on the media guide with a giant misidentified picture that he thought was captain Carl Teter, and he's pretty sorry about that one. If he works here for the next 25 years, he'll never forget the horrifying feeling he got when he opened the media guide after 2,500 of them were printed and saw that, no, it was not Teter on Page 1.

On the other hand, he can work here for the next 25 years and still have that be the worst mistake he ever made, so he got it out of the way quickly.

It's a very interesting dynamic to go from sportswriter to athletic communications contact. The people are all the same. The job is different. 

When you cover a team like Princeton, it's not like you're going to having an adversarial relationship with the coaches and athletes. Their stories are just too compelling for the most part.

It's just so much better to do so from the inside.

As for the game Saturday, the first two people TB saw in the Schoellkopf Field press box were Daily Princetonian writers - and OAC student workers - Nate Ewell and Grant Wahl. He jokingly, well, not really jokingly, half-jokingly maybe, asked them what he should be doing.

It was good to start with an away game. This coming Saturday (and the two after it) will feature home games at Palmer Stadium, beginning with Colgate and then with Bucknell and then Brown. TB has his first late-night experience last night with finishing a football game program.

Now he's looking forward to running the press box and all the little things that go along with it, as opposed to simply showing up for the game.

Oh, and one more thing from Saturday. The Cornell percussion made the spontaneous, and as it turned out dangerous, decision to pile on top of the Tiger mascot during the pregame performances, inadvertently injuring Blanch Rainwater, the Princeton student in the costume.

In fact, Rainwater had to be taken to the hospital, though she returned during the game. There were media requests to talk to her, and TB arranged them.

Again, he can work at Princeton for the next 25 years, make that the next 35 years, and he'd guess that it's unlikely that he'll be asked to set up in-game interviews with the mascot. 

But hey, you never know. It's all part of being the OAC contact.

For Day 1, he loved his new perspective. 

Maybe he'll stick it out for awhile.