Who Are These Guys?

TigerBlog's original title at Princeton was Manager of Sports Media Relations.

He's had a lot of titles since then. In fact he wishes he could research the Princeton University record for most titles in one career. He has to be among the all-time leaders.

In fact, he's had nine titles at Princeton:

* Manager of Sports Media Relations
* Assistant Director of Athletic Public Relations For Media Relations
* Assistant Director of Athletic Communications
* Interim Director of Athletic Communications
* Director of Athletic Communications
* Assistant Director of Athletics for Communications
* Associate Director of Athletics for Communications
* Senior Associate Director of Athletics for Communications
* Senior Communications Director/Historian

That's pretty good. Maybe he needs one more. After all, how many Princeton employees have ever reached double figures? 

Interestingly, none of his titles has ever included the words "sports information." 

Before he came to Princeton, there had been others who had been the traditional sports information director. That title disappeared in the 1980s. 

TB has always had a love/hate relationship with the title "sports information director." On the one hand, he's very much in the business of sports information, and he's been in that business for several decades, back to a time when almost everyone in the business had that title. 

On the other hand, he's always felt that the term "sports information director" is a bit outdated, a throwback to a time when sports information meant preparing game notes, writing releases, doing media guides and setting up interviews, as opposed to creating all of the original content that is now the staple of athletic communications.

This has been especially true during the pandemic, by the way, since that content has done so much to maintain the connections that Princeton Athletes has created and had continued to show just how important the athletic experience has been and continues to be. 

As he has said many, many times, the shift in the athletic communications business away from being a media relations organization to a media relations outfit completely changed everything in this business. It also kept TB in it and in fact the challenge to constantly evolve creatively made every year a new adventure. 

Had things never changed, it's highly unlikely that TB would have gotten past two titles, let alone all the way to nine .

Having the word "historian" in your title is somewhat unique, TB supposes. There aren't too many historians out there.

TB was an American history major in college. The other American history majors all became lawyers, he assumes. He became an actual historian.

As the historian, TB often receives fairly random emails either asking really interesting historical questions (some he can answer, some he can't) or sending along historical information that he either already knows or didn't know and usually finds fascinating.

Each week, he receives emails that fall into one of those two categories.

For instance, someone sent him a team picture of the 1922 football team, the national championship "Team Of Destiny," a nickname given to those Tigers by famed sportswriter Grantland Rice. Here is the photo:

The question was whether or not TigerBlog could be any help in identifying the players in the picture.

By the way, if you're not familiar with the 1922 Team of Destiny, the Tigers went 8-0 that year under head coach Bill Roper. The big game was the 21-18 win over Amos Alonzo Stagg's University of Chicago team, who had been heavily favored not only to win that game but also the national title. 

Princeton won that game on a goal-line stand in the final seconds. One of the biggest plays was made by a player named Don Griffin. 

After his playing career at Princeton, Griffin would go on to be one of Princeton's most loyal alums, and in fact he was the one credited with starting the alumni association.

His son Jim would play soccer and baseball at Princeton and graduate in the Class of 1955. Don Griffin's granddaughter Cynthia Griffin (now Cynthia Griffin Ferris) was in the Class of 1986.

Cynthia was a three-sport letterwinner at Princeton, one of 17 women who have won three letters. Her sports were field hockey, hockey and lacrosse. Her uniform number in all three was No. 8.

To answer the original question of who is who in the picture, TB reached out to Griffin Ferris to see if she knows. He'll let you know what he finds out.

Hey, it's just another day for the historian.