Happy Thanksgiving, With A Side Of All-Ivy

As you know, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

TigerBlog has included these thoughts on the holiday almost every year, other than last year, for reasons he'll get to in a minute:

As holidays go, you can't do much better than Thanksgiving. It's got it all, really: a huge meal (with turkey, no less), football, family, history (dates back to 1621), start of a four-day weekend for most people, leftovers. It's even a secular holiday, so every American can dive right in, regardless of religion.
 
The Lions and the Cowboys, obviously, always play at home on Thanksgiving, and the NFL has now added a third game (maybe a little too much). Beyond watching football, how many out there have played their own Thanksgiving football games, all of which, by the way, are named "the Turkey Bowl?"

The holiday may lag behind Christmas in terms of great Hollywood movies, and "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" is no match for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Still, there are some great moments in movies and TV shows around Thanksgiving.

Rocky and Adrian had their first date on Thanksgiving – "To you it's Thanksgiving; to me it's Thursday," Rocky said romantically – as did Meadow and Jackie Jr. on "The Sopranos" (it didn't quite work out as well as it did for Rocky and Adrian). "Everybody Loves Raymond" had two pretty good Thanksgiving episodes, the one where Marie makes a low-fat dinner and the one where Debra makes fish instead of turkey. As an aside, TigerBlog's Aunt Regina once made Cornish game hens instead of turkey, so he knows how they all felt. And of course, there was the Thanksgiving episode of "Cheers," which has the big food fight at the end.

The Woody Allen movie "Hannah and Her Sisters" starts and ends on two different Thanksgivings. "Miracle on 34th Street" is a Christmas movie, but it does start with the Thanksgiving parade in New York City.

And of course, there is the best of all Thanksgiving movies: "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." It'll make you laugh a lot and cry a little, and it ends on Thanksgiving.

TB wishes everyone a great holiday and hopes that maybe you take a few minutes to think about what you really are thankful for these days.

Why didn't he post this last year? It's because he wrote about how he ran into James Johnson, who was a senior linebacker on the football team, and shared with Johnson the news that he had been named first-team All-Ivy League.

Even a year later, the memory of that moment makes TB smile. You can read it HERE.

The 2022 All-Ivy League football team was announced yesterday, and Princeton had 16 players who were honored, including seven on first-team. One of the first-team picks was sophomore linebacker Liam Johnson, who along with wide receiver Andrei Iosivas and offensive lineman Henry Byrd were unanimous picks. 

You can read the entire story HERE. TB is really happy for Dylan Classi, whom TB figured might not be first-team because of the presence of Iosivas at the same position.

Liam Johnson is the younger brother of James Johnson, and they're both younger brothers of Tom Johnson, who was also a first-team All-Ivy League linebacker (in both 2017 and 2018). Liam's selection marks the first time in Princeton football history that three brothers have all been first-team All-Ivy.

The closest any other brothers have come would be the Garretts in the 1980s. Judd and Jason were both first-team picks, and John was second-team.

Beyond football, the first siblings who popped into TB's mind were the Reinprecht sisters, Sarah, Julia and Katie. They took the "three siblings named first-team All-Ivy" to another level, with 11 selections between them (four each for Katie and Julia and three for Sarah). 

Elsewhere, TB also thought of the Behncke family, who had three first-team All-Ivy soccer players at Princeton (brothers Griff and Matt, sister Emily). 

Are there others? There must be. TB will give it more thought.

First, though, he'd like to wish everyone the happiest and healthiest of Thanksgivings, even to the men's basketball team, who is in England and will play Army at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon and then will play again Saturday against either Northeastern or Manhattan. 

In England, tomorrow is not Thanksgiving. In fact, there is no official Thanksgiving holiday in the U.K.

The men's basketball games won't be streamed, but you can listen to Derek Jones HERE.

Happy Thanksgiving, Tigers.