Sprint Football Coach Sean Morey

Okay, indulge TigerBlog for two more minutes as he talks weather and the Super Bowl.

TigerBlog can attest to the fact that for the last four weeks, it has either snowed around here or been below 20 degrees basically the entire time, except for one 48-hour stretch this past weekend when it was in the 50s during the day and basically pleasant at night.

And that just so happened to overlap with the first ever outdoor cold weather Super Bowl.

The four weeks before it featured some of the coldest weather this area has ever seen. The 24 hours after it featured about eight inches of snow. The game itself? Not a problem at all.

In fact, there have been many more World Series games played on colder nights than the Super Bowl was. It's likely that there will be another outdoor cold weather game in the future, largely because of how much the weather cooperated for this one.

It's really insane to think about how bad the weather has been this winter, and this could be the worst week of all. The eight inches that fell Monday were to be followed up by today's mess of snow and then ice. And all that is to be followed up Sunday by another storm, which TB hears may bring more than two feet of snow somewhere around here, though possibly a little north or south.

The winter two years ago featured no measurable snowfall. In fact it was pretty warm out the entire time, and as TB recalls, he only wore his really, really heavy Princeton Athletics winter coat once.

This year he's needed that coat basically every day. And he's had to shovel and shovel and shovel again.

It's actually a great way to spend time with your neighbors. Ordinarily, it's just a wave or something. When you're out shoveling at the same time, it does promote neighborly socialization.

Of course, TB would prefer the waving and not having to shovel.

And still he can't get over the whole Super Bowl weather deal, with its small window of nice weather in the middle of a wild five weeks of winter. Is this a fluke, or does the NFL actually control the weather?

There is one person who works in the Department of Athletics who has a Super Bowl ring, and that is Sean Morey. In fact, Morey played in two Super Bowls, winning one with the Steelers and losing one with the Cardinals. He also went to a Pro Bowl as a special teams player.

Going way back, Morey was one of the great wide receivers in Ivy League history, back when he wan an undergrad at Brown. He also has the distinction of scoring the first touchdown in Princeton Stadium history.

He was the 1997 Ivy League Player of the Year, and his career totals at Brown were 251 receptions for an Ivy-record 3,850 yards and 40 touchdowns.

Morey then carved out a nice pro career for a decade, not as a wide receiver but as a fearless special teams weapon. He caught 11 passes as a pro, and he made his living busting wedges, making big hits on kick coverages, blocking those who tried to make big hits on his own guys.

He also blocked a punt in overtime for a touchdown, something unique in NFL history. That came for the Cardinals, against the Cowboys.

Morey was in the news twice this week.

The first was for a story that ran on npr.org about Morey's struggles with the after-effects of his time in the NFL.

TB didn't have to read the story to know that Morey has his struggles. Morey has told TB about them many times, about how he had more than 20 concussions, how there are days when he can't function due to the migraines.

Here's the key quote from Morey:
Sean says there's no question these symptoms are related to brain trauma sustained playing football. "You cannot have that kind of pain and have it not be related to brain damage," he says. "The dysfunction, the pain, the misery, the confusion, the desperation, the depression. ... There were instances in my life that would never have existed had I not damaged my brain."

It's heart-wrenching stuff, and it's something that's not common to Morey about his peers. Morey is involved with the players' association, working with former players, looking into the effects and possible treatment of all the years of getting pounded.

Morey was also on the main athletics website yesterday, accepting the position as head coach of the sprint football team.

The Princeton sprint football team hasn't won a CSFL game in more than a decade, with a losing streak that has passed 80 games. TB has seen coaches with different backgrounds and different philosophies come to coach the team, and that elusive win has not been there to be had.

Now it's Sean Morey's turn. Can he win a game with the program?

If he doesn't, it won't be for a lack of optimism.

As he deals with all of what he's dealing with, Sean Morey hasn't lost one bit of his positive attitude. He's one of those people who is always upbeat, always willing to help, always wanting to be of assistance, no task too small.

Before taking the sprint position, Morey has worked at Princeton for two years in general athletic administration. During that time, he's been dealing with the effects of his football career, and yet he always, always seems to be in a good mood.

Now he'll be coaching the sprint team. TB has been to a bunch of sprint games through the years, hoping to see a win, wanting to see the reaction. They're come close a few times and not close at all many many more times.

It'll be interesting to see what Morey can do with them.

As is the case every Tuesday, TB went to the event meeting yesterday. As he sat there, waiting for it to start, someone came up behind him and tapped him on the arm.

When he turned around, he saw Sean Morey, with his omnipresent smile and another friendly, heartfelt greeting.

Yes, he is battling things that TB can't even imagine.

While he does it, though, he remains a marvel of positivity.

If attitude means anything, he'll be fine in the long run.

TB hopes it does.

After all, Sean Morey is one of the good guys. It's always good to have guys like that around.

Mrs. Guacamole

TigerBlog was at Miss TigerBlog Back To School Night last night.

It was standard middle school stuff, going through her schedule, with abbreviated 12-minute periods to meet each teacher, hear what they'll be doing for the school year, that sort of thing.

The highlight of the night was clearly when MTB's science teacher, Mrs. Giacomelli, said that when her name is entered on an iPhone, it autocorrects to "guacamole." She pointed out that this was ironic, as she doesn't like guacamole.

TigerBlog does. He's a big fan of the avocado.

Anyway, TB had to scramble to get there on time, because he was doing freshman men's lacrosse head shots and bios. TB always likes meeting the freshmen for the first time, putting faces to the names he's heard so much about through the recruiting process.

The bio process always goes basically the same way, with the same basic questions. How many letters in lacrosse? Other sports? Team championships? Individual honors? Stats? Club team? Academic honors? Community service?

What's your date of birth? Parents names. Alma maters. Were they athletes? Siblings?

Then, at the end, TB always says the same thing: "Anything else you'd want to include? Jumped out of an airplane? Climbed a mountain? Caught a 400-pound fish? Sang with the church choir in China?"

And after all the years of doing this, finally, yesterday, someone answered yes to one of those. Freshman men's lacrosse player Jack O'Brien jumped out of a plane this summer while in Cape Cod.

And then there was another first, when freshman Sam Gravitte, asked about what his mother does, responded that she was a Tony Award-winner, for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, for her performance in "Jerome Robbins' Broadway." Sam? He played Jean Valjean in a high school production of "Les Miserables."

Then there was the part when TB realized that these freshman were born for the most part after he'd already started working here. That means as they've gone from babies to Princeton lacrosse players, TB has been right here.

When TB first started covering college sports, he wasn't that much older than the people he was writing about. Eventually, the dates of birth were after he'd graduated high school, after he'd graduated college. And now? They're covering his entire tenure at Princeton.

This, by the way, ends the week of nostalgia, the one that included TigerBlog Jr.'s driving Monday and TB's realization yesterday that it's been 30 years of doing this. 

Just as he has for every September since these freshmen were born, TB is looking forward to a pretty big athletic weekend involving Princeton teams.

Fall weekends are not quite like winter or spring ones, simply because there aren't as many teams. And those weekends are nothing compared to the crossovers between seasons.

Still, it's a busy one for Princeton Athletics, with 18 events on the schedule between today and Sunday.

The football team is at Georgetown, where it will be homecoming for the Hoyas. Georgetown football isn't quite like Georgetown basketball, but the Tigers and Hoyas had a pretty entertaining game last year. This time around, it'd be great for Princeton to be 1-1 heading into the Ivy League opener next Saturday against Columbia.

The field hockey team hosts Yale tonight at 7, and the official Bedford Field dedication will be held at halftime. Don't look for the namesake to be there though; Paul Bedford was in the Class of 1897.

The sprint football team is back after having to forfeit last weekend. The Tigers play at Post, and the team came within one scramble off of a fumble in overtime of winning that game.

There are three soccer games at Roberts Stadium this weekend, as the men host Florida International (7) and Florida Gulf Coast (4) tonight and Sunday and the women play Yale tomorrow (4). The Princeton-FGCU soccer game is on ESPNU Sunday.

Florida-Gulf Coast is, of course, the team that came from nowhere to the Sweet 16 in men's basketball last year. The soccer program was also an NCAA tournament team last year.

The women's volleyball team hosts Penn tonight in its Ivy opener.

There's nothing else on campus this weekend - unless you count the men's lacrosse alumni game tomorrow at 1:45.

TB loves the busy home weekends, when there are a ton of events, sandwiched around home football.

This weekend isn't quite on that level, but it's still a good one.

A Fall To Remember

What? No Twinkies? How will life go on?

No Twinkies? No soft yellow cake with the creamy inside? Possibly vanishing from America?

It seemed like a sure thing when TigerBlog read about it over the weekend. Now it appears that there might be hope for one of the most famous snack foods ever created, a 150-calorie, 4.5-fat-gram piece of heaven.

TigerBlog has probably eaten 100 Yodels for every Twinkie he's eaten in his life and probably 50,000 M&Ms for every Twinkie.

Hey, it's not all bad: He's probably eaten 1,000 apples for every Twinkie.

Twinkies to TigerBlog are sort of like the NHL.

He knows millions of people love the NHL and he respects those who do. And TB likes it when he pays attention to it.

At the same time, he doesn't exactly miss the NHL now that it's on strike, and while he definitely likes them, if he goes the rest of his life without eating another Twinkie, he'll figure out a way to get by.

Besides, he'd take the trade-off between no Twinkies for the rest of his life for the fall that Princeton Athletics recently completed.

Princeton has nine teams that compete in the fall as their primary season. Of those nine, seven play in the Ivy League - sprint football and men's water polo are not official Ivy sports.

Of the seven who compete in the Ivy League, three finished in first place, two finished in second and two finished in third.

Their combined Ivy League record? How about 31-9-2.

For the record, the three Ivy League champions were the field hockey team, the women's soccer team and the men's cross country team. Women's cross country and women's volleyball were second, and men's soccer and football were third (and so, for that matter, was men's water polo, who finished third at Easterns).

Looking beyond those two finishes, the men's soccer team still went 4-1-2 in the league, and it's only because of how strong Ivy men's soccer is that one league loss added up to a third-place finish.

And the football team? It went from 1-9 and 1-9 to 5-5 overall and went from 1-13 in the league the last two years to 4-3. The Tigers also beat Harvard in one of the greatest Ivy football games of all time and earned a bonfire by defeating Yale.

Even the sprint football team, which went winless again, had a very, very competitive fall, with almost no blowout losses and with a legitimate chance to win a few games. In fact, the sprint team was left feeling frustrated that it let a few get away, not to mention the heartbreak of falling in overtime to Post.

Princeton has a 13-point lead in the Ivy League's unofficial all-sports points championship standings. A year ago, Princeton was in fifth place after the fall, 5.5 points out of first.

When the final horn sounded at field hockey Sunday, Princeton had extended its streak of having at least one team or individual national champion to 42 straight years. This was the first time in that streak that Princeton produced a national champion in the fall.

The three highlights of the fall came from the league champions.

The men's cross country team came past the finish line the first time at the Heps championships in a bunched field that looked like it would be tough to sort out at the end. When the runners came back around for the final time, it was all Orange and Black, led by individual champion Chris Bendtsen.

The result was a huge party on Princeton's West Windsor Fields, on a day where the women's second-place finish was a strong accomplishment as well. The men went on to an 11th place finish at the NCAA championships for the program's best finish ever.

Then there were the two teams that had perfect Ivy seasons.

The women's soccer team went 7-0-0 in the league, outscoring its opponents 20-7 in the seven games. Princeton, led by Ivy Player of the Year Jen Hoy, had a 12-game winning streak after a 2-3-1 start, with the 12th win by a 2-1 count at West Virginia in the opening round of the NCAA tournament before the run ended in Utah against Marquette.

For head coach Julie Shackford, it was the second-best team in her 18 seasons here, behind only the 2004 Final Four team - and this one was close. It was a perfect blend of a star, some other frontline players, the great depth that was necessary after six players went out with injuries and overwhelming intangibles like great team chemistry and determination.

As for field hockey, what else can be said?

Princeton entered the year with a chance to win the first NCAA championship in program history and did just that, earning it in dramatic fashion this past weekend with wins over Maryland and North Carolina, from (for now) the ACC, which had produced the previous 11 NCAA champs.

The field hockey championship would fittingly be the final event of the fall of 2012 for Princeton Athletics.

It's really hard to ask for much more than Princeton's teams produced.

All In

The conversation this morning turned to Franklin Pierce, and Gary Walters asked TigerBlog if he knew what year he was elected President of the United States. The answer, of course, is 1852.

TB, who was an American history major, can name all of the Presidents in order, and the easiest way to remember is by the year they were elected.

James K. Polk is one of TB's favorite Presidents. Hey, he did a heckuva job in the Mexican War and all, right?

Polk was elected in 1844, and he chose not to run again in 1848. In fact, he was sort of the Bear Bryant of American Presidents, as Polk died 103 days after leaving office.

Zachary Taylor won in 1848, but he died in 1850 and was succeeded by Millard Fillmore, who in turn was ditched by the Whigs for the election of 1852. This in turn opened the door for the election of Franklin Pierce, who did nothing to prevent the coming Civil War and generally is thought to be one of the least accomplished Presidents of all time.

TigerBlog's opinion of Franklin Pierce could be further affected by what happens this Friday night.

Oh, TB is sure that the people at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire are very nice, and they certainly have to be happy with their first season of sprint football.

It's just that this Friday night, the Ravens will be on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium, where one way or another, history of sorts will be made. And TB doesn't want to be on the wrong side of it - especially after last Friday night.

Franklin Pierce is 0-2 in sprint, with a 26-21 loss to Cornell and a 24-20 loss to Penn. The roster has 37 players on it, 28 of whom are freshmen.

Should FPU win, it would be the first in program history.

Princeton has 33 players, 16 of whom are seniors. None of them have ever won a game - in fact, Princeton hasn't won a CSFL game since 1999.

But oh did the Tigers come close Friday night.

Princeton was playing Post, a team that defeated Princeton 33-18 in its first year two years ago and then 48-0 last year.

This time, the game was a classic, and ultimately a classic heartbreaker for the Tigers.

TB was in the press box at Princeton Stadium, and he was texting with Jon Kurian of the business office. When TB texted this:

"Post lining up for a potential game-winning field goal, 11 seconds left," the response he got from Kurian was this:

"I'm on one knee, holding my wife's hand in prayer."

That particular one was answered, as the kick was blocked, sending the game to overtime.

Princeton would get three on its possession, going up 29-26. A stop would mean that the long losing streak would finally be over.

Somewhere along the way (maybe through Twitter?), a big student turnout appeared. Suddenly, there was genuine electricity in the building, far beyond a normal sprint game.

Here's how it went on Post's possession:

Post ball, at the Princeton 25. First and 10. No gain.

Second down, rolling right, throwing back to the left, complete to the two. The crowd now stunned.

First and goal. And then wait. The snap is fumbled. A huge pileup.

And now time stopped and the moment was right there. There was absolutely no way to tell who had the ball, and as the refs began to sort it all out, the realization hung over everyone in the stadium that if they pointed towards Princeton, the game would be over and the Tigers would have won.

And so the seconds went by agonizingly. The Princeton bench was ready to rush the field. So were the students.

And then the ref held up two fingers, signally second down for Post. And then it ended on the next play.

Princeton's players were crushed. The student section was crushed. Post was elated.

This hasn't been a typical Princeton sprint football season.

The Tigers are 0-4, yes, but the losses to Mansfield and Cornell were by seven points each. Even the 62-13 loss to Navy was different than usual, as Navy had only 264 yards of offense and scored four touchdowns on returns.

Princeton scored 29 points against Post Friday night. The Tigers scored 28 all of last year combined.

All of which leads to this Friday night.

Princeton is at Penn, which has a four-point win over FPU and a three-point win over Mansfield, not to mention a six-OT loss to Cornell, so far this season, and then a game at Army.

Clearly, the best chance for a win is against the first-year Ravens.

When the game ended Friday, the Princeton players were able to peel themselves off the Powers Field turf and go through the handshakes, and then they retreated to the far end zone.

They were there for a few minutes, talking no doubt about the disappointment of what had just happened. TB, from his vantage point walking down the stands, saw it not as a gesture of resignation but of refocus and of desire to make this coming game different, when the team that hasn't won since any of these players were in elementary school takes on a team that has never won.

There will be a big celebration Friday in Princeton Stadium. The only question is whether it'll be the Tigers or the Ravens.

Meanwhile, the meeting in the end zone after the Post loss ended with a group huddle and then a chant.

"All In," the Tigers yelled.

Toes On The Tape

There's a corner of TigerBlog's office that is used to take head shots of athletes.

The backdrop that hangs on the wall looks like - and may originally have been - a blanket from a hotel room somewhere. There is a piece of tape on the floor that goes on an angle, and if you're getting your picture taken, you put your toes on the tape and square your shoulders.

As TB understands it, this eliminates the shadow in the background.

The person getting the picture doesn't realize the tape is on the floor and always stands directly against the backdrop, leading to the instruction of "toes on the tape." Once, TB saw a Princeton athlete who he believes had a perfect SAT score respond to "toes on the tape" by putting his toes on the tape - and face the backdrop, with the back of his head to the camera.

The actual picture-taking process is always fairly similar.

Whichever team it is has already designated whether it's going to be jerseys, pullovers, jackets/ties - whatever look brings uniformity. Then they bring one or two of those and constantly change, one after the other.

When TB first started working here, head shots were taken with a little office camera that included an obsolete thing called "film," which then had to be taken to a place called a "dark room" to be "developed."

Now, it's all done digitally, which means that the result of the picture is immediately available.

Not to be sexist or anything, but TB would say that about 70% of the women's athletes and about 5% of the men's athletes ask to see the picture after it's taken and/or ask to delete that one and take another one.

These head shots used to be used mostly for media guides and sometimes game programs. Now they're for the webpage.

TB has spent the last week taking men's lacrosse head shots.

For all of the years that TB has been here, the men's lacrosse shots have been taken with jerseys, and the only issue is the white one or the black one. This required going to the equipment room to get two jerseys, which the players would use regardless of what their actual number was.

Recently, the men's lacrosse upperclassmen didn't always want to get a new picture, since their old one was fine.

This year, TB and men's lacrosse coach Chris Bates thought it'd be a good idea to go with jackets and ties, and this has led to the somewhat hilarious sight of having players come in 5-10 at a time and share the same tie, and sometimes the same shirt.

Or, in the case of one, TB had to give a brief tutorial on the art of tying a tie.

The men's lacrosse team is playing in the Play For Parkinson's event at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., tomorrow. TB would love to go watch that, as the Tigers play Georgetown (noon) and Virginia (2).

Of course, there are other events closer to home this weekend.

There's the soccer doubleheader against Brown here (women at 4, men at 7). There's home sprint football, women's volleyball, field hockey and men's water polo as well this weekend.

The women's volleyball team looks to build on its 3-0 league start when it hosts Columbia and Cornell tonight and tomorrow at Dillon Gym.

The field hockey team hosts American Sunday.

Sprint football is home tonight against Post and then next Friday against first-year team Franklin Pierce. Men's water polo hosts Bucknell tomorrow night.

It's all on the all-sports schedule.

And of course, that doesn't count the football game at Lafayette tomorrow at 6.

There are all kinds of choices.

That's what Ivy League athletic weekends are all about.

Talking Football

Here's TigerBlog's one-word review of the first episode of Season 2 of "Homeland," which aired last night:

Wow.

If you don't have Showtime, stop what you're doing and order it. If you have to skip lunch a few times a month to afford it, too bad.

That's how good "Homeland" is. Season 1 was insane. Season 2's first episode had no letdown, and the coming attractions made TB want to immediately watch every other episode on demand, just like he did for Season 1, when he watched 12 episodes in three days.

And now we can talk about football.

Before we get to Princeton football, did you see the quarterback stats from the West Virginia-Baylor game? Baylor's Nick Florence went 29 for 47 for 581 yards and five touchdowns - and he had by far the worse game of the two QBs.

West Virginia's Geno Smith was 45 for 51 for 656 yards and eight touchdowns. That's a lot of, well, everything, except incompletions. Smith's season numbers, by the way, are 141 for 169 for 1,728 yards, 20 touchdowns and no interceptions.

Special bonus stats from the game: WVU's Stedman Bailey caught 13 passes for 303 yards and five touchdowns, and the teams combined for 1,507 yards of offense.

West Virginia won the game 70-63, which looks like a basketball score, not a football score. TB's theory is that the teams got together last week and decided that they'd play no defense at all in hopes of getting an otherwise nothing game to become national news.

If they did, it worked really, really well.

Then there was Princeton sprint football.

Before Princeton's game at Cornell Friday, TB checked the scores for Franklin Pierce, the first-year program. As it turned out, the Ravens had played one game, a 26-21 loss to Cornell, so TB figured that there'd be something to be learned by the final score of the game Friday night, which was 22-15 Cornell.

Do what you will with those scores. And this one: Penn 24, Franklin Pierce 20. Princeton hosts Post this Friday and then Franklin Pierce a week from Friday.

In the quarter-century that TB has been involved with Princeton Athletics, he's never really figured out the right segue for going from talking about the sprint team to the "other" football team.

Are they the heavyweights? The real team? Just the football team?

It makes for a difficult transition.

Anyway, the football team defeated Columbia 33-6 Saturday afternoon in New York City in a game that the Tigers desperately needed.

It was a performance that gave Princeton exactly what it needed, and that was the ability to look at the result on the field and see progress, not just be told "hey, you're getting better."

Were you to be cynical, you could point out that the 2011 Tigers were 1-2 after three games, with losses to two Patriot League schools and a win over Columbia, and then went 0-7 the rest of the way.

While that's true, the 2012 Tigers are so much better than the 2011 Tigers, and the numbers back it up.

Princeton lost to Lehigh by 12 and Bucknell by 25 and then beat Columbia by three a year ago.

This year, Princeton lost to Lehigh by three and to Georgetown by one and then beat Columbia by 27.

Last year, Princeton was -34 in point differential in those games. This year, Princeton is +23.

That's a 57-point shift.

So now what? Where are the Tigers with seven games to go?

The goal for this year is to establish that the team is on the way back, that it is competitive. Seven more games like Lehigh and Georgetown would accomplish that, but not in a good way.

The high-end goal should be to get to .500 for the year. Winning two games over two years and then more than doubling that in the third year isn't an easy thing to do, though.

Remember, Princeton is doing this without Chuck Dibilio, the player that the rebuilding effort was supposed to be built around, the one who is out this year after his stroke.

Up next for Princeton is a game at Lafayette, whom Princeton defeated two years ago and didn't play last year. The Leopards are much-improved this year, and it should be a tight game Saturday night in Easton.

After that, it's the run of six straight league games.

After Week 2 two years ago, Princeton was 1-1 with a not-too-shabby loss to Lehigh and an OT win over Lafayette.

After Week 3 last year, Princeton was 1-2 after an Ivy-opening win over Columbia.

Both years ended 1-9.

Now Princeton is 1-2 again.

To TB, this year feels different.

Make Sure You Get Tuna

John Cornell was one of two people who ever held the position of "publications coordinator" here in the OAC.

The first was a young man named Mike Zulla, who started here as an intern and then became the first publications coordinator. When he left, Cornell came in from the Naval Academy to become the second.

After Cornell's tenure was up, TigerBlog changed the position, which was something of a luxury at the time, back to a more traditional athletic communications one. Now, looking at how few publications are still done around here, the thought of having a position devoted completely to printed pieces is something completely antiquated.

Zulla, who married former fencer and von Kienbusch Award winner Caitlin Rich, used to write on the dry erase board (which also no longer exists) what his whereabouts would be if he had to be out of the office. To this day, TB can still see "Z at dentist" written in huge letters across the white background.

As for Cornell, he came from Navy, as TB said, and spent his first week at Princeton simply walking around the office giving his opinion on basically any and all subject, though he managed to pull this off in a somewhat charming way, which is no easy feat.

At one point, Cornell did some diet where it was okay to eat three cheese dogs at Wawa and the chicken/cheese lunch at Fridays but not an apple. And, somewhat stunningly, TB remembers that he lost weight through the process.

One of TB's favorite emails of all time is the one that Cornell wrote nine years ago this month entitled "Back in the Day." It starts out with "You know you worked in OAC in 2001-2002 if..."

TB just reread it, and once again it is hilarious. Among the entries:

-You can order Friday's without the menu
-You know all about Navy
-You know the difference between Yasser El Hallaby and Yariv Amir
-You hate Yale but you like Steve Conn and Tim Bennett
-You get there early to make sure you get Tuna
-You're sure the record book is updated
-You love Luis
-You've actually talked about squash at the water cooler

There are a ton of others, all of which are inside jokes. Steve Conn and Tim Bennett, for instance, are universally loved Yale's sports information people. Getting tuna means getting there early at the football luncheon to get a tuna sandwich before they were all gone. Yariv Amir works in the OAC; Yasser El Halaby is the greatest college squash player ever.

As for the record book, well, let's just say that anyone who was asked if their sports were updated replied "yes," even if the answer was really "not for the last few years."

There was another one that said: -When someone asks about John Thompson, you don't think about Georgetown Basketball. This, of course, was before John Thompson left Princeton to go to Georgetown.

Before he was at Navy, Cornell used to work at Post in Connecticut, which has to make him the only person to work at three of the eight sprint football playing schools.

Two of those three, Princeton and Navy, meet Saturday on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium, with kickoff at 2.

It's a rare Saturday afternoon game for the sprint team, which almost always plays on Friday nights, something made impossible this week by the Princeton-Georgetown game, which will be Friday at 7 on ESPNU.

Princeton opened the season with a 23-16 loss to Mansfield Friday night. TB was at the men's soccer game and on his way to Princeton Stadium when Mansfield intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown to clinch it.

As for Navy, well, TB went back to some of the recent scores in the series and noticed an interesting stat, though not a very good one.

Princeton has not scored a point against Navy since 2004. The Tigers have been outscored 400-0 in that time.

Why bring this up?

Well, because the Tigers appear to be a bit more competitive. Maybe hoping for a win Saturday might be a bit much, but measuring improvement might be possible based on the final score, especially if it doesn't end in "-0."

TB gives Steve Everette and his team a great deal of credit, for the optimism if nothing else.

One day, the Tigers will get a win. Hopefully it'll be this year. Maybe it won't be.

But there's no denying the courage it takes to keep trying, every week, for this team.

Sprinting To Start The Weekend

Today is Orange and Black Friday.

Well, every Friday here is Orange and Black Friday, at least going back as far as Phyllis Chase used to wear orange and black to work every Friday.

This is Year 1 of the post-Phyllis Chase era, as she retired at the end of the last academic year after a long career as the travel coordinator for the athletic department.

Walking into the business office these days is a different dynamic, with the new faces of Brendan Van Ackeren and Jessica Guerriero now on board. Jon Kurian and his old face are still there as well.

As an aside, Jon Kurian was nicknamed "the new guy" when he first started here, and it stuck long after he wasn't the new guy, though very few people here remember when Kurian was called that. One of Phyllis' hobbies was making collages of pictures from each year's Christmas party, and the amount of turnover from one year or even a few years is drastic when looking at those pictures.

Meanwhile, Van Ackeren, the brother of former Princeton distance runner Trevor Van Ackeren, played football at Lehigh. Guerriero is a Seton Hall graduate.

As Princeton is opening the football season at Lehigh tomorrow, TigerBlog asked the natural question of Van Ackeren: Which team is he rooting for in the game?

TB has a long history of rooting against his alma mater, fond of it as he may be.

Will Van Ackeren root for Princeton or Lehigh tomorrow? He won't know until kickoff.

TigerBlog will be rooting for Princeton, though it's a tough task for the opener.

Lehigh is one of the top teams in Division IAA, and the Mountain Hawks are playing Game 3. Lehigh has defeated Monmouth and Central Connecticut, jumping out to 14-0 first quarter leads in both games.

Before that game kicks off tomorrow at 12:30 (at one of the great places to watch a game, Lehigh's Goodman Stadium), there's the matter of a few events on campus.

The Farnsworth/Princeton Invitational for men's tennis starts today and runs all weekend.

The men's soccer team hosts No. 12 Georgetown tonight in Game 4 of the team's five-game run through the Big East to start the season. Game 5 will be Sunday at Villanova.

The women's team, by the way, is at No. 3 UCLA for the first of its two games in California. And there are two home field hockey games this weekend, including the first Ivy event for Princeton this year, tomorrow's game against Dartmouth.

And then there's the start of sprint football season.

TigerBlog watched head coach Steve Everette's video on goprincetontigers.tv, and you have to give him credit for being an optimist.

Princeton hasn't won a CSFL game in 14 years, but Everette is encouraged by his team this preseason. Mansfield is one of the three newer teams in the league, along with Post and this year's addition, Franklin Pierce.

Each year brings with it the hope that the team will finally be able to break that losing streak, and yet it hasn't happened to date.

Who knows? Maybe it'll be tonight.

TB understands Everette's optimism. He's always wanted to be there for the one night that the team does win, and any game he's gone to, he's always thought that it was going to be the one.

Hey, those guys definitely deserve at least one.

Sprinting To Mansfield

TigerBlog listens to his iTunes all day, every day. It's the first thing he turns on in the morning when he gets to work, and it plays all day.

Back when he was in college, TB used to listen to music (on a record player, with a turntable and needle and all) while he studied, and it was probably from that experience that he developed the habit of not being able to work in total silence.

For that reason, iTunes is perfect for him.

While TigerBlog isn't sure how much money he spent annually on music from 1975 or so up until he discovered iTunes, he's pretty sure that he spends less per year now buying a song here or there from the iTunes store. His most recent purchase was the Soft Cell song "Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go," which was big in the early 1980s.

That song brought his total number of songs to 1,188, which could play for 3.4 days without repeating any song. It's quite a collection.

As TB is writing, Hall & Oates are singing "She's Gone." Who knows what'll be next. Isn't it fascinating? Oh wait. "She's Gone" has ended, and now Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes are singing "Next To You."

One of TB's favorite parts of iTunes is the play counter, which tells you how many times each song has played. The most recent version of "She's Gone" was the 68th; this is No. 141 for "Next To You."

TigerBlog has had 25 different songs play at least 160 times, of which 10 are by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

As an aside, the next song to come up was "Rags to Riches," by Tony Bennett. TigerBlog has no idea what to make of Bennett now that he made those ridiculous 9/11 comments to Howard Stern, but TB will give him pass because 1) he's a great singer and 2) he fought in World War II at the Battle of the Bulge, which earns him a lifetime exemption.

Meanwhile, of the 25 songs that have played at least 160 times, 24 of them were either recorded before TB graduated from college or are off of the Boss' newer albums. The only exception is "Just Friends," by Gavin DeGraw.

There are four songs that have played at least 180 times, with "Waiting on A Sunny Day" and "Land of Hope and Dreams" by Bruce trailing only the two songs tied for first at 185: "Don't Let Him Go," by REO Speedwagon and "Teenage Idol" by Ricky Nelson.

Now, as "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys comes on for the 147th time, TB can point out that iTunes was launched on Jan. 9, 2001.

In other words, the last Princeton sprint football win - other than against a club from VMI - predates the birth of iTunes.

This past weekend, Princeton opened the sprint football season under new head coach Stephen Everette with a 34-0 loss to Penn. If that seems lopsided, consider that the last game of last year was also against Penn, and that was a 70-0 loss.

Princeton's game against Mansfield a year ago was a 10-6 Tiger loss, and it was the closest Princeton has come to winning a CSFL game since its 12-7 win over Cornell in 1999.

In fact, since that game - and excluding the game against the VMI fraternity boys - Princeton has had only one game decided by fewer than seven points, and that was the one against Mansfield last year. TB has no way of knowing how many times in those 12 years that Princeton has been in the lead at any time.

For Princeton to win, the game figures to be along the same lines as last year's, when it was low-scoring. Against Penn, Princeton was outrushed 308 to minus-1, but Princeton did throw for nearly 200 yards.

("Ain't No Mountain High Enough," by Diana Ross and the Supremes, play No. 42).

There is no team that plays any sport anywhere that deserves to win one as much as Princeton sprint football. TigerBlog's theory has been that the win would come like the last one, against one of the established league teams that has an off night, takes the Tigers lightly, has some badly timed turnovers, gets behind and panics.

The new teams - Mansfield and Post, with Franklin Pierce on the way - are too focused on Princeton to let their guards down.

But hey, who knows. Princeton seems like it's improved. It's early in the year, so injuries and attrition haven't become a huge factor yet.

So go Tigers.

There are 18 athletic events this weekend at Princeton. TB is keeping a special eye on the one being played furthest from campus.

When he announces the scores of other Princeton events over the PA at football Saturday evening against Bucknell, he'd definitely love to throw a Princeton sprint football win out there.

Welcome, Franklin

TigerBlog was an American History major back at Penn.

It was a good fit for him, as he's always 1) been good at remembering what happened and on what day and 2) had an interest in the trivial. In many ways it was great preparation for what TB does now, and Princeton's athletic history and the dates of certain games and legacies of certain athletes or coaches have replaced wars and generals and political movements as the curriculum.

At some point, TB had memorized all of the U.S. Presidents in order, remembering them mostly by the years they were elected. For instance, William Henry Harrison was elected in 1840 but died shortly after inauguration, which led to John Tyler (Tippecanoe and Tyler Too) and then one of the most underrated Presidents, James K. Polk in 1844.

These days, TB can remember almost the entire list. Washington, Adams, Jefferson and then the first of the two Princetonians - James Madison, followed by Monroe, Van Buren and Andrew Jackson before getting into the 1840s.

If there are two eras where TB struggles, it's the group right before Abraham Lincoln and then in the 1880s through 1896. In both of those cases, there are some very bland Presidents.

As an aside, it'd be pretty interesting to know how history is going to remember the Presidents of TB's lifetime with the benefit of 100 years or so. Sadly, TB probably isn't going to live into his 150s or so and won't be able to find out.

As Presidents go, it doesn't get much blander than Franklin Pierce, who followed Millard Fillmore and preceded James Buchanan and was President from 1853-1857. In fact, according to the site that knows all, Pierce's biggest claim to fame is being consistently ranked among the worst Presidents of all time.

Pierce was the lone President to come from New Hampshire.

Today, in Rindge, in southern New Hampshire along the Vermont state line, sits Franklin Pierce College, a Division II school that plays in the Northeast-10 Conference.

The Ravens have a video intro to their webpage these days, one that trumpets the arrival of four new athletic programs on campus. One is women's hockey. Two of the others are men's and women's track and field/cross country.

And the fourth?

Sprint football.

Franklin Pierce will begin play in sprint football a year from now, when it will be the eighth team in the Collegiate Sprint Football League. The Ravens will join the five long-time members - Army, Navy, Princeton, Penn and Cornell - and the two newcomers - Post and Mansfield.

The obvious question is why would colleges add sprint football? The answers are simple: it costs a fraction of what traditional football does, and it attracts full-tuition-paying students to the school.

Princeton, as any Tiger fan knows, is struggling in sprint football. In fact, the Tigers' last win was in 2005 - against a club team from Virginia Military Institute. Princeton's last league win was in 1999, when the Tigers defeated Cornell 12-7 in their opener.

Since then there have been many more blowouts than there have been heartbreakers, and yet year after year, the Tigers keep showing up.

TigerBlog has watched at least one sprint football game each year basically every year, and the one thing that always stands out is the optimism of the team. Even after all of the tough nights, Princeton still approaches every game as if it's going to win.

The 2011 season marks Stephen Everette's first as the head coach for Princeton sprint football. Everette could not have made a better first impression on TB, with his organization, enthusiasm and drive.

Late last week, Everette had all of his players here at the OAC for head shots. Each of them wore a bright orange Princeton sprint football shirt, and they all were eager to get going.

TB is rooting hard for Everette and his team to get at least one win. It doesn't seem like much to ask, right?

Princeton came closest a year ago, with a 10-6 loss to Mansfield.

Maybe this is the year, for Everette and his team.

Fall Back

There is no more depressing time of the year than around 5:00 in the afternoon on the day the clocks are set back. Spring ahead, fall back, remember?

There it is, bright sunshine around 4, and then just an hour later, it's already getting dark. It's like being hit by a giant brick that says "you may have been going to the pool two months ago, but winter is just around the corner."

Of course, if you're the parent of a kid (or worse, multiple kids) under the age of 3 or 4 or so, then the morning after you set the clocks back could be worse. You know it's an hour earlier, even if your little angel(s) don't.

As an aside, Louise Gengler, the lovable-if-somewhat-absent-minded former longtime women's tennis coach at Princeton (who recently got married; mazel tov Louise), once came into TigerBlog's office and had this actual conversation:
LG: Is it 2 or 3?
TB: 2.
LG: Good. I have a meeting at 3, and I can't remember if I set my clock back or not.

The whole idea that you get an extra hour of sleep is ridiculous as well. All you do is get up an hour earlier.

It'd all be different if you could turn the clock back on Sunday night into Monday morning. How great would that be? Then you wouldn't have to be at school/work until an hour later than usual. Then you'd really get an extra hour of sleep.

Contrast it all with March 13, 2011, when Daylight Savings Time will begin. It'll be like being hit the face with the spray off the ocean, announcing that spring and summer are on the horizon after the long winter.

Anyway, let's turn back the clock to the past weekend at Princeton, especially for the five matchups against Penn.

Princeton and Penn met in five sports and went 2-2-1. Penn won football and sprint football, while Princeton won men's soccer and field hockey. Women's soccer finished in a tie, which sure felt like a loss for the Tigers.

The result of the five events? The winner of each either won a championship or put itself in position to do so, while the tie resulted in a championship.

The Penn sprint team tied Army for the CSFL championship after the Quakers beat Princeton 70-0 and Army edged Navy 32-30. Navy actually scored late to pull within two and had Army jump offsides on the two-point attempt, making it a 1.5-yard try to tie the game, one that came up about six inches short. Navy got the onsides kickoff back but couldn't get the winning score. TB knows all this because he was following the livestats for both games.

The sprint game was 10 touchdowns to zero, which was reversed in the first of the four games on Princeton's campus, at which the field hockey team defeated Penn 10 goals to zero. The result of that one was that Princeton completed the season with a perfect 7-0 record to take the Ivy title for the 16th time in 17 years. Princeton will find out its NCAA opponent and whether it's playing at home or on the road at tomorrow night's selection show.

Penn won the football game Saturday, scoring four first-quarter touchdowns on its way to a 52-10 final. The result is that Penn plays Harvard Saturday with first-place on the line, as the Quakers have no league losses while Harvard and Yale have one each.

A Harvard win, and then the Harvard-Yale game the following week becomes a co-championship game, provided Penn would come back to beat Cornell. A Penn win over Harvard would clinch at least a tie for the Quakers, who would be a huge favorite over Cornell the following week.

As for Princeton, the Tigers have games at Yale and then home against Dartmouth to end the year.

Then there was the soccer doubleheader at Roberts Stadium, which the biggest crowds that the facility has seen in its three-year history and the largest crowds for Princeton soccer on campus since the 2004 women's quarterfinal game against Washington at Lourie-Love Field.

The women's game began with Princeton in need of a win, while Penn merely needed a tie or a win to take the championship. The best chance - the haunting chance - for Princeton's women came in the final minute of the second overtime, when Caitlin Blosser's header that appeared to be going in was instead knocked away by Penn defender Colleen Barry, who was standing on the goal line.

As a result, the game ended at 0-0, which gave the league title to the Quakers. It's a helpless feeling, knowing that a tie was a loss and having the immediacy of the end of a season come up on you like that.

None of that applied to the men's game, where both teams were ranked in the Top 20 and assured of NCAA tournament spots regardless of who won the league. Still, for the Princeton men, it was as big a game as the program has had in a long time.

Princeton's last Ivy title was in 2001 - until Saturday. The Tigers got out on Penn 1-0 at the half and then 2-0 in the second before a late Quaker goal made Princeton sweat out the end.

Ultimately, 2-1 was the final, giving Princeton a program-record-tying 11th straight win, its second win over a Top 20 Ivy opponent, the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament - and no worse than a share of the league championship.

The Tigers finish the regular-season this Saturday at Yale (game time was moved from 4 to 3), and a win or tie or Penn tie or loss would mean the outright league title for Princeton.

If you feel good for anyone, it's Princeton head coach Jim Barlow, who endured a stretch of difficult seasons as Ivy League men's soccer grew into a minefield of national powerhouses all over the schedule. Rather than accepting the status quo, Barlow instead has turned his team into one that has now gone toe-to-toe with six league opponents - and beaten them all.

They've done it with a few stars at the top of the lineup, some great depth and a lot of toughness, and they are now what the men's hockey team was a few years ago - the team that reversed the tough times and became a must-see event.

After Saturday's win, they also became a championship team.

Of course, with the five Princeton-Penn matchups this weekend, being a championship team was not unique.

Tigers And Quakers x 5

If you, like TigerBlog, grew up in New Jersey and attended public school, then this was your favorite week of the academic year.

You'd have school on Monday and then be off on Tuesday for Election Day. Then it'd be back to school for Wednesday, followed by the New Jersey state teachers' convention, which would mean no school Thursday or Friday.

Factor in the two weekends, and it was two days of a school in a nine-day period. For a kid, what could be better?

TB always looked forward to the first week of November, knowing that it meant free days off.

Sadly, eventually everyone has to grow up, and so it is that the first week of November no longer means the same thing that it used to.

Actually, though, the first week of November is still a pretty cool time of year, since it means Princeton vs. Penn in all of the fall sports.

Yesterday, TB was trying to find the text he'd written about Princeton University last year for the NCAA water polo championship program. He started out with a search for any documents on his computer that had "water polo" or "NCAA" and then ultimately "Princeton," which of course brought up a bunch of files.

Among them was a certain video from a certain football play from four years ago:



Perhaps if you're a fan of Princeton - or Penn, for that matter - you remember the play?

If you don't remember the exact details, it was the second overtime of the 2006 Princeton-Penn game. The Tigers had fourth-and-goal at the Penn 1, and Rob Toresco tried to drive it in the through the middle. After two attempts at that, he realized he was going nowhere, and then, in one of the great heads-up moments of all-time, he turned and pitched the ball back to quarterback Jeff Terrell, who took it around the right side into the end zone.

It took Penn only one play to score a touchdown to make it 31-30, pending the extra point. There was a bad snap on the conversion, though, and the holder almost ran it in before being knocked out of bounds at about the 2, giving Princeton the win.

The play immediately became one of the most famous in Princeton football history, up there with the time the drunk fan jumped from the stands to join the Dartmouth line, the time where Bob Holly scored against Yale on the final play in 1981 to end a 14-year losing streak against the Bulldogs, the time Kevin Guthrie - or was it Derek Graham? - ran 95 yards for a touchdown after catching a short pass from Doug Butler in 1983 at Franklin Field.

The announcer, a nice young man named Keith, was so startled by what happened that all could he do was mutter that it was "one of the better plays" he'd ever seen, while his color man simply screamed.

As for TB, he was the public address announcer in the stadium, and he was on the phone with TB-Baltimore, who was covering soccer but wanted to get the details on the play. TB is pretty sure he said something like "Princeton just scored on the greatest play TB has ever seen."

A week later, Princeton rallied from two touchdowns back to beat Yale 34-31 as Terrell threw for 442 yards, and a week after that, Princeton zipped past Dartmouth to win the Ivy League championship.

The 2010 Princeton-Penn football game has championship implications for the Quakers and an opportunity for the Tigers to erase the frustrations of an entire season in one afternoon.

In all, Princeton and Penn will meet in five events in about 28 hours, four on this campus and one in West Philadelphia. Included in these events is a soccer doubleheader unprecedented in Ivy history:

Sprint football (tonight at 7 at Franklin Field) - Penn is looking for its 24th straight win over Princeton, though the fact that the series history is in Penn's favor by 55-41-2 gives an indication that Princeton was once a very good lightweight football team. Penn is in a three-way tie for first in the CSFL along with Army and Navy, who play each other tonight. A Penn win over Princeton would give Princeton its 70th straight CSFL loss and would give the Quakers a share of the title with the winner of the game between the academies.

Field hockey (tonight at 6 at Class of 1952 Stadium) - If you're a fan of national anthems, then this is the game for you. Princeton will honor its seniors by playing the anthems of each of their home nations, which means the U.S., Canadian and Dutch anthems will be played. As for the on-the-field situation, this is the end of the regular season, and Princeton has already clinched the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament (and could very well host the first two rounds next weekend). A win would give Princeton the outright Ivy title; a loss and a Yale win over Brown would mean a co-championship with Yale. Penn is 3-13 overall, 1-5 in the league.

Football (tomorrow at 3 on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium) - Penn is the only undefeated team in the league, ahead of Harvard, Yale and Brown, who have one loss each. The Quakers are home with Harvard next weekend in a game that could lead to a two- or three-way tie for the championship. As for Princeton, the Tigers are winless in the league with three to play, but there is still a lot to play for, including this game and then next week at Yale before finishing at home against Dartmouth.

Women's soccer (tomorrow at 4) - The first of the two Ivy League soccer championship games, the women's game is the simpler of the two as well. Either Princeton (with a win) or Penn (with a win or tie) will win the Ivy League's outright championship and the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament; the other six teams have all been mathematically eliminated. Julie Shackford has already led Princeton to five Ivy titles and seven NCAA tournament appearances, including a run to the 2004 NCAA Final Four.

Men's soccer (tomorrow at 7) - You can't really ask for much more than this game. Princeton and Penn are both 5-0-0 in the league, with more than double the points of the next-best team. Both are ranked in the Top 20 (Penn is 13th, Princeton is 16th); Princeton has won 10 straight. The only downsides of the game, if there are any, is that 1) both teams will get into the NCAA tournament regardless of who wins and 2) there's another week to the season. Still, the winner of the game clinches at least a share of the Ivy title and definitely gets the automatic bid. A tie means that next week will decide the final standings, as Princeton is at Yale and Penn is home with Harvard. And how about the job Jim Barlow has done in the last few years, going from 6-8-3 in both 2005 and 2006 to 5-10-2 in 2007 to 5-9-3 in 2008 to 9-6-3 and the NCAA tournament last year and now 11-3-1 right now.

Another Week, Another Chance

FatherBlog has talked about the 1951 National League race between the Giants and Dodgers more than any other sporting event that TigerBlog can remember. As for TB, he rooted hard for the Red Sox to hold off the Yankees in 1978, though it wasn't to be.

Maybe the best race TB can remember was in 1993, when the Braves outdid the Giants by a single game, as Atlanta won 104 games and San Francisco won 103.

For those who don't remember, before 1969 there were no divisions in Major League Baseball, just a National League and an American League, and the winner of each played in the World Series. From 1969 until 1993, there were two divisions in each league, so the division winners played each other to see who would play in the World Series.

The first year of the wild card would have been 1994, except a strike wiped out the last six weeks of the regular season and the postseason. That was essentially the end of the line for the Montreal Expos, who had a six game lead on the Braves when the strike came. The Expos, who would have definitely won the 1994 World Series, never really recovered; today they are the Washington Nationals.

The idea of the wild card was to have as many teams as possible remain in contention through the end of the year. Plus, with expansion, there was a need for more than two divisions.

Still, there was something much better about when teams had to win their division. The 2010 Yankees-Rays race is a clear example of that, as neither team tried to win the AL East, which ultimately went to the Rays. Still, would you take the Rays over the Yankees to win the AL at this point? Maybe, maybe not. Other than possibly an extra home game, there is no reward for winning the division.

The NL race between the Padres and Giants for the West title was tempered by the fact that the one that didn't win still had a shot at the wild card. As it turned out, the Padres took the Giants to the wire before losing yesterday, and Atlanta's win over Philadelphia yesterday gave the Braves the wild card.

If you go back to the first two weeks of the Major League Baseball season, you will see that the San Diego Padres lost two of three to the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Colorado Rockies and the Atlanta Braves. At the time, who even noticed?

Now that the season has ended, any game would have been the difference between postseason or no postseason for the Padres. Some rainy night in April, or an extra inning game in July, or some day-game-after-night-game in August - any one game made the difference.

It's hard to think in terms of that over the course of a 162-game season. Some old-time manager - TB thinks it was Leo Durocher - used to say that you start out with 50 wins and 50 losses and that the rest of the games will determine your season, but he never said how you know if the game you just lost was one of your predetermined 50 or one of the determining games.

That's the nature of baseball. Football, on the other hand, is a much different animal.

TigerBlog has always been struck by the difference between playing yesterday, today, tomorrow and so on versus playing once a week.

There is no sport that can compare to football in terms of the disparity of the ratio of practice time to playing time, and the result is that in football, every game is like it's own mini-season, regardless of whether or not it's for first place or last place.

To TigerBlog, it's that way of thinking that would sustain him if he played for Princeton's sprint football team. Every week offers another chance, another opportunity for that mini-season to be a success.

Of course, not all weeks are created equal, and this one certainly isn't like many of the others for the Tigers.

The Princeton sprint football team has lost 26 straight games overall and 66 straight to its league opponents. The only win for Princeton since 1999 came in 2005 against VMI, who put together a club team to play two games that year.

This Friday night, Princeton will play its fourth straight home game. Before looking ahead, let's look back at the first three games of this year, compared to similar scores of last year:

2009
vs. Cornell - lost, 44-0
vs. Penn - lost 57-7 and 91-13
vs. Mansfield - lost 33-0 and 26-14

2010
vs. Cornell - lost 33-12
vs. Penn - lost 48-12
vs. Mansfield - lost 10-6

In other words, the scores this year are much closer than they were a year ago and in most recent years.

And then there's this week. Coming up Friday at 7 on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium, Princeton will host Post, a first-year program in the CSFL. Post is not C.W. Post or any other school; it's a college in Waterbury, Conn., and judging by its website, everyone who goes there likes everyone else and has a lot of fun.

Post, nicknamed the Eagles, is playing four games in its first year, much like Mansfield did a few years ago. For schools that don't want to get into the cost of fielding a heavyweight team, sprint might start to catch on - it's much easier to run operationally, and it brings to the school full tuition-paying students.

The Eagles are 0-2, with losses of 42-12 to Penn and 22-14 to Cornell the last two weekends. After playing Princeton, Post will be off for two weeks before taking on Mansfield. TB assumes the service academies will join the schedule next year.

Princeton will come into the game with a reasonable degree of confidence after its results so far this year. The close game against Cornell should make Post feel that it has a chance as well.

The Eagles have 42 players on their roster, 41 of whom are freshmen or sophomores and one of whom is a junior. Most of the team comes from Connecticut, but the roster does include players from as far away as Florida, Idaho and Tennessee.

If nothing else, it shapes up as the most interesting sprint football game in awhile. Call it the biggest game of this mini-season for the Tigers.

Stat Lines And Sprint Football

There's a guy who works in the business office named Ryan Yurko who looks 1) about 15 years old and 2) exactly like Chuck Yrigoyen, who used to work here at TigerBlog HQ back in the 1980s before moving on to the Ivy League office and finally on to the become the commissioner of the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

As an aside, TigerBlog misses Chuck, who was about as universally liked as anyone TB has ever met. Not sure how he pulled it off; maybe it was just a lot of smiling.

Anyway, Ryan Yurko sent TigerBlog a link this morning to the box score for the game between his alma mater Ball State and Eastern Michigan this past Saturday. The stat line for this game is ridiculous, particularly:
* two players Ball State who rushed for at least 200 yards, including one who had 301 yards
* the winning points coming on a fourth quarter safety
* the fact that both teams were winless prior to the game
* the winning quarterback was 2 for 10 for one yard and one interception

Also, the AP recap is supposed to be pretty straight-forward, but hey, can there be some acknowledgement that it was a wild game? And maybe the mention of the fact that two players on the same team reached at least 200 rushing yards in the same game for the fourth time in Division I history and that a team had one 300-yard rusher and one 20o-yard rusher in the same game for the first time ever?

TigerBlog then forwarded that to TB-Baltimore, a big fan of stat lines, and he sent back the Navy-Wake Forest box. Navy, TB's favorite FBS team, won the game 13-10. The Mids ran 64 plays, all rushes, for 338 rushing yards. Navy did not attempt a pass.

The two box scores got TB thinking about great stat lines in Princeton history, of which there are so many. Perhaps TB's favorite was the men's basketball game against Niagara in 1997-98 when Princeton had 21 assists on 21 baskets. Or Nate Walton's line against Penn in the 2001 Ivy clincher: nine points, eight rebounds, seven assists, six steals. Or Mason Rocca against Georgetown in the 1999 NIT: six points, 18 rebounds.

In football, there was Michael Lerch's game against Brown in 1991, where he caught nine passes for 370 yards, with touchdowns of 64, 79, 90 and 45 yards.

TigerBlog also thought back to a sprint football game against Army a few years ago, and after a quick search on goprincetontigers.com, he found the recap from that night, complete with the headline "Army Tops Sprint Football 35-0 In Bizarre Game."

Bizarre? How about these numbers?:
* Princeton had a 42:17-17:43 edge in time of possession
* Princeton ran 94 plays; Army ran 37
* Army scored five touchdowns, all on plays of at least 66 yards

TigerBlog was at Princeton Stadium Friday night for the sprint football game against Mansfield. That game itself offered an amazing statistical background: After Mansfield had defeated Princeton 33-0 in the opener for both, the teams were a combined 0-8 against the other four teams in the league, having been outscored 352-7 during that time.

Princeton led the game Friday night 7-0 in the second quarter and 14-7 in the third. Had two plays gone differently (a fumbled punt and a third down conversion that went against Princeton), the game might have marked the end of Princeton's now-54 game CSFL losing streak.

It can't be easy to be a sprint football player, knowing that the odds are stacked against you off the bat by the presence of two service academies and the two Ivy schools with the largest enrollments, not to mention that addition of Mansfield, which appears to have a strong institutional commitment to fielding a competitive sprint football program.

Still, TB was impressed by how hard Princeton played Friday night, or indeed how hard Princeton plays every time he sees the sprint team. In all the years that TigerBlog has gone to sprint games, he's never seen a team going through the motions or a team that has given up, or even a team that isn't playing to win.

Sadly for the Tigers, they fell short 26-14 Friday night. TigerBlog would say that in the wake of a season in which Princeton has lost games by scores of 33-0, 57-0, 57-7, 44-0 and 42-0, the game Friday night offered the team a chance to walk off the field with its collective head held high.

But the sprint team does that after every game. Somewhere in what those guys go through is a lesson on character and the importance of sports. TB hopes that along with those two things, the sprint team can also get a win one of these days. They certainly deserve one.

Big Night Looming At Princeton

The four Princeton-Harvard showdowns of Saturday will lure far more people to campus than the events of Friday night. Still, the menu for Oct. 24 is a pretty good one.

The big attraction is the 42 retirement dinner in Jadwin Gym beginning at 7, honoring Dick Kazmaier and Bill Bradley and featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee. Tickets can be purchased at the door.

In addition, there s men's water polo next door at DeNunzio Pool as Princeton and Bucknell meet, also at 7. And, at the same time, the sprint football team hosts first-year program Mansfield at Princeton Stadium. While not in the same basic area, the women's volleyball team will be across campus at Dillon Gym taking on Harvard at 7, and the women's hockey team hosts UConn at Baker Rink, also at 7.

Speaking of the 42 dinner, our friend Harvey Yavener of the Trenton Times offered this take this morning: http://www.nj.com/princeton/times/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/12247347489090.xml&coll=5.