A B Roll Stroll

Chris Sailer will be on "The Today Show" next week.

It's possible that TigerBlog will be as well. Chris is a definite. TB? He may "end up on the cutting room floor," as he was told by the segment's producer, Lauren Dunn.

Wouldn't that be a shame? 

TB feels like he really got all he could out of his role, which was technically "B Roll," as in a staged shot to be used to supplement a feature. TB's job was to walk with Sailer and have a casual conversation while pretending not to realize they were being filmed by the cameraman named Pete Kavanaugh, who was about five feet away.

Kavanaugh, by the way, is Australian, and an amiable Australian at that. He's never seen lacrosse, but he has been a competitive field hockey player in his home country and was very interested in the American college game. TB invited him to come to a Princeton game this fall, and he was excited about that idea. 

This whole adventure started last week, when NBC sent an email about interviewing Sailer at Sherrerd Field as part of a piece for the show that would focus on the growth of women's lacrosse and the increasing speed and physicality, and therefore risk for injury, that the sport has seen in recent years. 

Because his colleague Chas Dorman was away, TB stepped up to be the Princeton contact. And so it was that he was at Sherrerd Field yesterday morning at 8:30, waiting for the NBC crew to arrive and set up.

The original idea was to set up on the field, except that was kayoed by two things. First, there was the air quality due to the Canadian fires. Second, there is a new artificial turf field that is being installed on the adjacent Bedford Field, and so the field would be hazy and noisy.

Instead, the group — Lauren, Pete and a sound man named Ricardo — set up inside the team room at the far end of the facility. It was enclosed and quiet which made it perfect.

Stephanie Gosk, the on-air personality who would interview Sailer, arrived around 10:30 or so. It turns out she was a Phillips Andover grad, and so she knew a few former Princeton athletes, including former men's lacrosse player Jon Malkiel and women's ice hockey and lacrosse player Whitney Rogers, who is married to Jon.

When Chris arrived, they had about a 30-minute conversation, which presumably will be part of a much smaller piece. After the interview was over, there was the matter of the B Roll. 

Stephanie and Chris walked on the field, and then the producer asked TB if he would walk with Chris as well, on the concourse this time, so that the Princeton women's lacrosse banners could be seen behind them.

Talk about something, they were told. And so they talked about the coming rules changes to both men's and women's lacrosse.

This is TigerBlog's first year on the NCAA men's lacrosse rules committee, and the group held its annual meeting earlier this week. If you know TB at all, you already know how much he enjoyed spending three days talking about pretty much every area of the men's lacrosse rule book.

The rules cycle is a two-year one, and this year was a non-change year for the men, but there were still great discussions and some new guidelines that were passed that would go into effect for this coming season.

Specifically, there are two. The first involves a slightly expanded use of replay. The second is a player safety issue in which a player whose helmet comes off has to leave the field.

This is a rules change year for the women, though, and there are some major proposals on the table. First and foremost is that women's lacrosse is looking to go from a 12-person game to an 11-person game, with 6v6 below the restraining line.

There are also increases in time-serving penalties and what equipment might be worn, as well as some other recommendations. 

The way the process works is that the rules that are submitted by the rules committee then go to the NCAA's Playing Rules Oversight Committee, which has to formally approve them. The lacrosse meetings for PROP are on July 19.

So that's what TB and Sailer talked about on their B Roll stroll. Maybe TB ends up on the cutting room floor. 

Or maybe, just maybe, he steals the whole show.