More Than Half

TigerBlog was walking on the towpath the other day when he heard a familiar sound coming up behind him. 

It was a man on a bicycle. TB could sort of hear the sound of the wheels on the gravel, though it's not always clear at first if it's a bike on the path or a car on the road.

This time, he heard "on your left," which is the heads up call to move to the right. When TB heard it, he turned around, at which point the cyclist again yelled "on your left," to which TB pointed out that, as they were now facing each other, he was technically on his right. 

The man on the bike either didn't hear TB or didn't think it was funny. Either way, he just pedaled by. He could have at least chuckled. 

TB has no reason to share that story with you other than it's just a random Tuesday in late July. What else can he talk about? 

Oh wait. It's not a random Tuesday. It's a significant Tuesday. 

Want to hear something crazy? The first Princeton athletic event of the 2025-26 academic year is one month from today. 

How about that? 

It'll be a women's soccer game, Rutgers at Princeton, at 5. That'll be August 22. It'll be the start of somewhere around 700 events that will last all the way into June of 2026. 

For TigerBlog, this will be the start of his 37th year around Princeton Athletics and 32nd as an official Princeton employee. His first five years covering the Tigers were while he was at the Trenton Times, and that's when he first began to build relationships with the people in the Department of Athletics.

It dawned on him last week that he has now actually spent more than half of his life as a Princeton employee, and that's without counting the time at the newspaper. More than half his life. 

He's had 11 different titles in that time, starting with "Manager of Sports Media Relations" and working his way to "Senior Writer/Historian." When he officially interviewed at Princeton, one of the questions was "where do you see yourself in five years or 10 years?"

TB remembers how he answered: "Here." Yes, it's a standard question on interviews, but TB meant it. 

You know how many other places TB has interviewed since then? Zero, as you might have guessed.  

He was pretty sure that he'd found the right home for him even back then. Nothing that's happened since has changed his mind. 

Do most people spend more than half their life at the same company? It's an interesting question. 

TB knows a handful of people who have but way more who haven't. Moving around often equals moving up. For TB, he couldn't imagine having done anything else than writing about Princeton and its athletes and coaches. 

There are those whom he wrote about when they were at Princeton who have had kids who followed in their footsteps. TB always said that when that happened he'd actually start to feel old, but that really hasn't been the case. 

In fact, being on a college campus all these years has kept him young. He has no doubt about that. 

In some ways, he was very lucky to get the job in the first place. He had no experience in working for a school, only for a newspaper. He didn't know how to use a computer at all. 

He'll always be grateful to American Athletic Conference assistant commissioner Chuck Sullivan, then a Princeton intern, for teaching TB the basics of using a Mac. Included in the tutorial was the lesson of "Command-Z," which erases the most recent entry. 

These days, you can use "Command-Z" multiple times. Back then, on those tiny Macs, it only worked if you went to erase what you had just done, and Chuck said that it "like an appeal play in baseball. It has to be done before anything else."

Then there was the whole no-AD at the time piece. Bob Myslik had left Princeton. Gary Walters had been hired as his replacement but hadn't started yet. As such, there was no AD to sign off on TB's hire, which was made by then Director of Athletic Communications Kurt Kehl. 

It took a few years before Gary came around. At first, he was adamant that he'd never hire a "Penn guy" to work at Princeton.  

And now, as Princeton is one month away from the start of another athletic year, TB is still excited for what is to come. He has Sept. 5 circled as his own opening day, when the field hockey season begins. 

That excitement has never gone away. That's how he's known he's been in the right place. 

You don't spend more than half your life doing something otherwise.