Let's assume for a second that Dennis Rodman isn't exactly the model for intellectual stability that the rest of us should emulate.
And let's further assume that, feeding his uncle to 120 starving dogs notwithstanding, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is really a lot of yucks when you get to know him.
How would those two assumptions even possibly explain how a bunch of other name-brand former NBA stars like Kenny Anderson, Charles Smith and Vin Baker could ever agree to go to North Korea to play a basketball game to celebrate the dictator's birthday?
It's one thing for Rodman to be nuts. It's another thing to allow your own good name to be destroyed.
That's what TigerBlog can't get over with this whole North Korean basketball trip. It's such an obviously, indefensibly, ridiculously awful idea to attach one's good name to that why would these guys let themselves get into this mess?
Were none of them smart enough to say "hey, Dennis, it's okay if you want to make yourself into a complete pariah in this country, but let's just leave me out of this, okay?"
On the other hand, maybe Smith is getting what he deserves after missing all those layups for the Knicks against the Bulls in the 1993 playoffs.
On a more serious note, it's sort of important to consider the big picture before getting on board with a dictator. Kim Jong Un is clearly unstable and has no regard for the citizens of his own country, let alone the others in his region or across the globe for that matter. For all of the problems that Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups pose, the greatest threat for a massive world war probably is North Korea.
Rodman has been duped by Kim Jong Un for awhile now in trying to make the dictator look more harmless and normal. And now Rodman has duped some of his friends into being part of it, and they just look like idiots for going along.
It makes TB wonder what any of them were thinking. And on a scale of 1-100, what level of regret they all feel? Rodman is probably a one. The rest are probably around 99.9.
Meanwhile, much closer to home, there is a huge game in Ivy League men's basketball tonight, and it doesn't involve Princeton. Not directly, anyway.
Harvard, with a 13-1 record, is at UConn, 11-3. In the RPI rankings, UConn is ranked 40th, while Harvard is 41st.
Princeton is 62nd.
As an aside, while it's not about UConn exactly, the guy who was the voice of Yukon Cornelius in "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" died this week at the age of 91. Were it not for the Island of Misfit Toys, Yukon Cornelius would have stolen the whole show.
Anyway, as painful as this is for Princeton fans, you need to root for Harvard tonight. Sort of.
For starters, it would be good for the Ivy League to have a win over a power program like UConn. For another, if the Ivy League hopes to get two NCAA bids, then a win tonight is almost a must.
The most likely scenario for a two-bid Ivy League - probably the only one that is even worth discussing - involves a 13-1 Princeton team and a 13-1 Harvard team, with the winner of the playoff to the NCAA tournament and the loser on the fringes of an at-large bid. It's possible that a different Ivy school at 13-1 along with Princeton or Harvard with the other team (Columbia? Yale?) as the playoff winner for the automatic bid would leave the loser of the playoff on the NCAA bubble, but probably not.
The next-highest RPI for an Ivy team is Columbia's 142. The resume for an at-large bid probably needs to include a win over a top 50 school, or at least top 100 school, which Princeton and Harvard would both have if they split. The other schools in the league won't be able to provide that, and a Harvard or Princeton team in a scenario where the other is 13-1 and another league school is also 13-1 would mean at least four league losses and thus not a top 100 RPI anymore.
Princeton has played a pretty good schedule so far and has two top 100 wins - over No. 65 Pacific and No. 82 Penn State. The Tigers (the Princeton ones, not the Pacific ones) are 11-2, with a loss to Butler (No. 57) and a loss to Portland (168).
TigerBlog doubts the Ivy League will be a two-bid league this year. It's never happened before, and even with a strong preseason for the league, the RPIs of its top teams will go down when the league season gets going.
Right now, there are five teams with plus-200 RPIs, including three with plus-300 RPIs. Playing each of those teams twice will pull Princeton's and Harvard's RPIs down.
It's likely that the only way into the NCAA tournament will be by winning the league.
Still, it's worth rooting for Harvard tonight. It helps Princeton's RPI if the Crimson win.
You can go back to rooting against the Crimson tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Mega Cold
While it was only to take the garbage can to the curb, TB was outside long enough to figure out it was a tad chilly.
Actually, it was garbage can and recycling day, which meant bringing the two recycling cans out as well. TB would have done it last night, except the wind would have blown the stuff all over the neighborhood.
That's sort of what happened anyway, as TB's driveway was littered with other people's recycling, something that forced TB to "co-mingle" with his neighbors, as it were. He's not sure what he had a bigger problem with - the fact that it was beyond freezing or that he was picking up other people's pizza boxes and soda bottles.
The temperature at the time was one degree. It's actually gone up three times that in the last two hours.
Of course, given the way the weather has been around here lately, it's not astonishing that it's also 57 degrees colder than it was at this time yesterday. Or that it's 54 degrees colder than it will be Saturday.
It's not just the fact that it's near zero around here now. The wind chill is at about 20-below, which makes it the coldest it's been in this area in more than 20 years, apparently.
At least that's what TB heard on the radio this morning. He also heard Don Imus hilariously mock the coverage of the weather, including the part where people are told to bundle up and dress in layers and all that, as if, as Imus put it, "we've all had a traumatic brain injury today and forgot."
Talk of the weather managed to supplant talk of the BCS championship game from last night.
In case you missed it, Florida State beat Auburn 34-31 on a touchdown pass with 13 seconds left after rallying from an early 21-3 deficit. It was a fairly thrilling game, even if you could care less who won.
TB supposes he was rooting for Auburn, though it's hard to consider Auburn as an underdog Cinderella team. It was already a win for TB anyway, as the game wasn't Alabama vs. Ohio State, or Alabama vs. anyone, for that matter.
Even with how exciting the game was, the real story wasn't Florida State's win over Auburn as much as it was ESPN's Megacast of the event.
ESPN had the game. ESPN2 had something called "Title Talk." ESPN Classic had the game feed minus the announcers, with just sideline noise and the PA announcer. ESPN News had the "Film Room," with several college coaches who had a running talk about the game and its situations as it went on. ESPN3 had the game with each school's local broadcasters.
TB thought the Film Room was the best part. Actually, he thought any part that offered an option of not having to listen to Brent Musburger was the best part. Seriously, is there nobody at ESPN who can realize that Musburger destroys every game he does? TB cannot be the only one who cringes when Musburger comes on. In fact, Musburger can actually get TB to not watch a game, something that's hard to accomplish.
Anyway, whether or not you actually liked what ESPN did or though it was overdone, there was something for everyone. And in a world of cookie-cutter television productions, TB admires the creativity and thought that went into coming up with all of these options.
It's been done before - TB remembers it from the Duke-Carolina men's basketball game last year - though not to the extent it was last night. The Film Room alone is an idea that should stick.
The college football season is over now, except for a few all-star games.
It was a great year for Princeton football obviously, as the Tigers won an improbably Ivy League championship and earned a second-straight bonfire.
Bob Surace, the Princeton head coach, stood in TB's office yesterday, seven weeks after earning his first Ivy title as a coach (he won one as a player as well; only Dartmouth's Buddy Teevens has also won as a player and head coach).
Surace was relaxed and joking, which is how he always is, except during game days. He was talking about that commercial where the team in the Princeton uniforms is playing the team in the blue uniforms in the game where halftime gets invented, ostensibly because pretty women with Pepsi show up and interrupt the game.
It's hard to place the game in it's proper historical context.
It's clearly Princeton, with its orange and black uniforms. It's clearly not Rutgers, the team that Princeton played in the first football game.
Of course, that game was back on Nov. 6, 1869, long before cars were invented. And the players have uniform numbers, something that didn't happen until the early 1920s, at least that's what TB's memory tells him.
And who is the opponent? Columbia? There's too much brown with the blue in the uniforms.
And the field is just a field with no stands. Palmer Stadium was built in 1914.
Anyway, TB was reading too much into the commercial. And it's better that it's Princeton, without an identifiable opponent.
It does make TB wonder when halftime was actually incorporated into football games. It probably wasn't during the first Princeton-Rutgers game, but who knows? Maybe they did have a 15-minute break, for pretty girls.
Just not with Pepsi, which didn't produce its first soda until 1893.
TB's favorite Pepsi product is the Cherry Pepsi. Diet of course.
He's probably had more Coke than Pepsi in his life to this point, but that's changing.
Any product that uses Princeton football for its marketing campaign is all right with TB.
On the other hand, Coke is a sponsor of Princeton University.
Torn. Very torn.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Why do people have children anyway?
Is it to advance the family line? To leave a piece of oneself in the world? To try to have the next generation have it better than the current one?
All of those are acceptable answers.
So is having someone else to shovel the snow after a storm. If someone were to tell TigerBlog that tht was the sole reason that they had children, he'd understand.
One of the weirdest prolonged stretches of weather that TB can remember is currently rolling through one of its weirdest 48-hour periods.
Let's recap what's happened around here in the last few weeks. There have been four major snow events, all of which have been followed by record high temperatures, which have melted the snow relatively quickly. It's been below zero. It's been above 70. It's been sunny, snowy and everything in between.
And what about now?
There were eight inches of snow beginning Thursday night, which closed Princeton University Friday and necessitated the most recent round of shoveling. When TB woke up Saturday morning and checked the weather app, the local temperature was zero. But sunny, at least.
Then it started to warm up. And then it got cloudy. And then the freezing rain started.
By early yesterday morning, it was a complete sheet of ice everywhere. TigerBlog, among others, could barely make it off his front steps.
Then it warmed up enough to be only slightly slippery. And then it kept on warming up.
When TB woke up this morning, his weather app said 60. Well, 59, but 60 makes a better story.
And it was pouring, which combined with the warmth melted almost all of the snow again.
The forecast for the rest of the day? Temps starting to plummet, until they reach a low tonight of seven. And a high tomorrow of 14. With the wind child, it'll feel like minus-20.
To recap, the temperature at this time tomorrow will be about 50 degrees less than it was 24 hours earlier. And if you know it's going to be 60 and pouring when you walk into the building and around 30 and whipping wind when you walk out, what are you supposed to wear? A coat? A rain jacket?
It's all very confusing. TigerBlog will trade it for 90 and high humidity.
The weather is a always a huge story on the news, almost to a laughable extent, with reporters outside in hurricanes or blizzards or ice storms. Once they say "it's raining hard," there's really not much else left to cover.
The weather is the big story for the NFL playoffs, which kicked off this weekend with one game in a dome and three others outside in cold weather climates of Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Green Bay.
TigerBlog was in the supermarket Saturday shortly before kickoff for the Eagles game, and as he went outside, he thought to himself that he couldn't imagine sitting at Lincoln Financial Field on a night like that. It was actually 40 or so and raining in Cincinnati and frozen in Green Bay.
But a funny thing happened with the dire weather outside. All three home teams lost.
During the Niners-Packers game, it dawned on TB that of the 12 cities whose teams reached the NFL playoffs, he'd been to 11 of them. The only one he hasn't been to is San Francisco.
And, as is the case with so many of the places he's been to, his trips to seven of those 11 cities was for the sole reason that Princeton was playing basketball there. The four he'd been to for other reasons were San Diego (cousin Toby lived there for awhile), Seattle (BrotherBlog's home for the last quarter century), Foxboro (NCAA lacrosse championships) and Philadelphia (lots of reasons, including "attended college" and "cheesesteaks").
The other seven are Kansas City, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Denver, New Orleans, Charlotte and of course Green Bay.
TB was in Green Bay in late December of 1995, for the Pepsi Oneida Nation's Classic. Princeton knocked off Ohio in the first round 65-60 and lost to Wisconsin-Green Bay 55-35 in the final. TB didn't have to look up either score; as he knew them off the top of his head, something that scares him a bit.
TB also knew that UW-GB's star back then was Jeff Nordgaard, who had 28 points against the Tigers, something TB also didn't have to look up. TB thought he had 15 rebounds, but it turned out that he had only 13.
Oh, and as an aside, Pete Carril had this great habit of reversing the order of the school name when playing satellite campuses, so he would refer to "Las Vegas, Nevada," instead of Nevada-Las Vegas, and in this case "Green Bay, Wisconsin," instead of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
TB remembers the trip to Green Bay even before the plane descended directly over Lambeau Field shortly before touchdown, as it were. In fact, he remembers being in the Philadelphia airport for five hours, after the original flight to Detroit was cancelled and the team put on the next one.
It was during that time at the gate that TB heard over and over and over "please do not leave your luggage unattended; unattended luggage will be confiscated." After an hour or two of that message on an endless loop, one of the two other people sitting with TB - then assistant coach Bill Carmody - said "it's not the unattended luggage you need to worry about; it's the guy who's sitting there hugging his bag."
Green Bay is a really interesting place, in that it's little Wisconsin town - roughly with the same sized population and layout as Hamilton, N.J., which is about 10 miles from Princeton, though without the millions and millions of people within an hours drive that Hamilton has. And yet it has an NFL franchise, with its iconic stadium plopped down right in the middle of it.
Picture Hamilton with an NFL team - and nothing else around it.
Lambeau Field shares the parking lot with the hotel Princeton stayed at and with the Brown County Arena, where the tournament was held. When Princeton was leaving early Sunday morning (which was also New Year's Eve), the parking lot was starting to swell, as the Packers were playing the Falcons later that day.
Green Bay has a unique smell to it, from the pulp from the paper mills, as TB understands it. The people were really friendly, and the weather was awful the entire time, though what would one expect from the last days of December. Oh, and they're really, really, really into the Packers.
Tom McCarthy was TB's radio play-by-play man on the trip. Boog, as he is sometimes known, was back there yesterday, doing the national radio broadcast.
Manish Mehta, who began his tenure as an intern here at the Princeton OAC the following year, was also in Green Bay yesterday as the national football writer for the New York Daily News. Manish tweeted a picture pregame that showed players warming up wearing long sleeves, and he called them "wusses."
Facetiously, of course.
TB enjoyed his short visit to Green Bay nearly 20 years ago.
And, if he misses the place, he's in luck. Tomorrow's weather forecast indicates that Green Bay is coming here.
Is it to advance the family line? To leave a piece of oneself in the world? To try to have the next generation have it better than the current one?
All of those are acceptable answers.
So is having someone else to shovel the snow after a storm. If someone were to tell TigerBlog that tht was the sole reason that they had children, he'd understand.
One of the weirdest prolonged stretches of weather that TB can remember is currently rolling through one of its weirdest 48-hour periods.
Let's recap what's happened around here in the last few weeks. There have been four major snow events, all of which have been followed by record high temperatures, which have melted the snow relatively quickly. It's been below zero. It's been above 70. It's been sunny, snowy and everything in between.
And what about now?
There were eight inches of snow beginning Thursday night, which closed Princeton University Friday and necessitated the most recent round of shoveling. When TB woke up Saturday morning and checked the weather app, the local temperature was zero. But sunny, at least.
Then it started to warm up. And then it got cloudy. And then the freezing rain started.
By early yesterday morning, it was a complete sheet of ice everywhere. TigerBlog, among others, could barely make it off his front steps.
Then it warmed up enough to be only slightly slippery. And then it kept on warming up.
When TB woke up this morning, his weather app said 60. Well, 59, but 60 makes a better story.
And it was pouring, which combined with the warmth melted almost all of the snow again.
The forecast for the rest of the day? Temps starting to plummet, until they reach a low tonight of seven. And a high tomorrow of 14. With the wind child, it'll feel like minus-20.
To recap, the temperature at this time tomorrow will be about 50 degrees less than it was 24 hours earlier. And if you know it's going to be 60 and pouring when you walk into the building and around 30 and whipping wind when you walk out, what are you supposed to wear? A coat? A rain jacket?
It's all very confusing. TigerBlog will trade it for 90 and high humidity.
The weather is a always a huge story on the news, almost to a laughable extent, with reporters outside in hurricanes or blizzards or ice storms. Once they say "it's raining hard," there's really not much else left to cover.
The weather is the big story for the NFL playoffs, which kicked off this weekend with one game in a dome and three others outside in cold weather climates of Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Green Bay.
TigerBlog was in the supermarket Saturday shortly before kickoff for the Eagles game, and as he went outside, he thought to himself that he couldn't imagine sitting at Lincoln Financial Field on a night like that. It was actually 40 or so and raining in Cincinnati and frozen in Green Bay.
But a funny thing happened with the dire weather outside. All three home teams lost.
During the Niners-Packers game, it dawned on TB that of the 12 cities whose teams reached the NFL playoffs, he'd been to 11 of them. The only one he hasn't been to is San Francisco.
And, as is the case with so many of the places he's been to, his trips to seven of those 11 cities was for the sole reason that Princeton was playing basketball there. The four he'd been to for other reasons were San Diego (cousin Toby lived there for awhile), Seattle (BrotherBlog's home for the last quarter century), Foxboro (NCAA lacrosse championships) and Philadelphia (lots of reasons, including "attended college" and "cheesesteaks").
The other seven are Kansas City, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Denver, New Orleans, Charlotte and of course Green Bay.
TB was in Green Bay in late December of 1995, for the Pepsi Oneida Nation's Classic. Princeton knocked off Ohio in the first round 65-60 and lost to Wisconsin-Green Bay 55-35 in the final. TB didn't have to look up either score; as he knew them off the top of his head, something that scares him a bit.
TB also knew that UW-GB's star back then was Jeff Nordgaard, who had 28 points against the Tigers, something TB also didn't have to look up. TB thought he had 15 rebounds, but it turned out that he had only 13.
Oh, and as an aside, Pete Carril had this great habit of reversing the order of the school name when playing satellite campuses, so he would refer to "Las Vegas, Nevada," instead of Nevada-Las Vegas, and in this case "Green Bay, Wisconsin," instead of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
TB remembers the trip to Green Bay even before the plane descended directly over Lambeau Field shortly before touchdown, as it were. In fact, he remembers being in the Philadelphia airport for five hours, after the original flight to Detroit was cancelled and the team put on the next one.
It was during that time at the gate that TB heard over and over and over "please do not leave your luggage unattended; unattended luggage will be confiscated." After an hour or two of that message on an endless loop, one of the two other people sitting with TB - then assistant coach Bill Carmody - said "it's not the unattended luggage you need to worry about; it's the guy who's sitting there hugging his bag."
Green Bay is a really interesting place, in that it's little Wisconsin town - roughly with the same sized population and layout as Hamilton, N.J., which is about 10 miles from Princeton, though without the millions and millions of people within an hours drive that Hamilton has. And yet it has an NFL franchise, with its iconic stadium plopped down right in the middle of it.
Picture Hamilton with an NFL team - and nothing else around it.
Lambeau Field shares the parking lot with the hotel Princeton stayed at and with the Brown County Arena, where the tournament was held. When Princeton was leaving early Sunday morning (which was also New Year's Eve), the parking lot was starting to swell, as the Packers were playing the Falcons later that day.
Green Bay has a unique smell to it, from the pulp from the paper mills, as TB understands it. The people were really friendly, and the weather was awful the entire time, though what would one expect from the last days of December. Oh, and they're really, really, really into the Packers.
Tom McCarthy was TB's radio play-by-play man on the trip. Boog, as he is sometimes known, was back there yesterday, doing the national radio broadcast.
Manish Mehta, who began his tenure as an intern here at the Princeton OAC the following year, was also in Green Bay yesterday as the national football writer for the New York Daily News. Manish tweeted a picture pregame that showed players warming up wearing long sleeves, and he called them "wusses."
Facetiously, of course.
TB enjoyed his short visit to Green Bay nearly 20 years ago.
And, if he misses the place, he's in luck. Tomorrow's weather forecast indicates that Green Bay is coming here.
Friday, January 3, 2014
The Year In Page Views
The last three bowl games of the college football season will be the BBVA Compass Bowl tomorrow, the Godaddy Bowl Sunday and the BCS championship game Monday.
If you know without looking that the Compass Bowl is between Vanderbilt and Houston and the Godaddy Bowl is between Ball State and Arkansas State, well, then, TigerBlog isn't really sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Is this really how the college football season is supposed to end? A bunch of games that used to be on New Year's Day spread out for a few days, two games nobody in their right mind cares about and then the championship game?
New Year's Day used to be such a great day for football. Bowl games all day, with the best teams in them. Now? Hardly any.
It'll get worse next year, TB presumes, when the BCS becomes a four-team playoff. Yes, the playoff will be way better for determining a national champion.
Still, there was always something really special about the New Year's Day bowl games. And that'll just be further eroded a year from now.
Anyway, it's 2014.
Each time the calendar turns over now, TB always thinks back to when he was a kid and the year 2000 seemed so far in the future. It seemed like it was going to be a whole different world, a futuristic one.
And now? That was 14 years ago.
With the end of 2013, TigerBlog figured he'd take a look back at the most viewed pages on goprincetontigers.com for the last 12 months, which featured nearly 10,000,000 total page views.
He's a bit shocked by what he found.
The top four rarely change - the recruiting information page is No. 1, followed by the staff directory, the ticketing page and the facilities page.
After that, the most clicked on page? Hint - it's an athlete's bio.
Beyond those first four, the next 10 featured two game stories, three coach bios, three athlete bios and two other pages.
Going 2-10, it went like this:
2. future football schedules; 3. giving central page; 4. Bob Surace's bio; 5. Chris Bates' bio, ; 6. Tom Schreiber's bio; 7. Quinn Epperly's bio; 8. Princeton's win over Yale in football; 9. James Perry's bio and 10. Princeton's win over Harvard in football.
So which athlete's bio was No. 1? Baseball player Andrew Christie, the son of New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
There are more bios than anything else in the top 50. In fact, there are 29 bios and 21 non-bios in the top 50, with current Princeton athletes Caraun Reid, Blake Dietrick, Jake Froccaro, Kip Orban and T.J. Bray the next highest. The most viewed members of the Class of 2013 were Mike Catapano and Niveen Rasheed.
The most viewed page for an event recap that wasn't a football game belonged to the men's indoor track and field team's NCAA championship distance medley relay.
The other post-event recaps in the top 50?
Cornell football win. Penn football win. Brown football win. Dartmouth football loss. Penn State men's basketball comeback. Harvard men's squash win. No. 51 was the NCAA fencing championship.
So what can be learned from these numbers?
Well, clearly the football season generated considerable interest. And apparently bios are a huge draw.
TigerBlog is always curious about what the demand is among the people who go to goprincetontigers.com and what the OAC staff has to do to keep pace with that demand.
It's not always easy to figure out what the right direction is. These numbers certainly help.
Meanwhile, the weather in Princeton is awful, with heavy snow and freezing temps. It took 2014 all of two days to get ugly.
Oh, and the early leader for most viewed this year?
In the first two days, it's the men's basketball pregame story for the Liberty game tomorrow.
TB senses it won't hold up.
If you know without looking that the Compass Bowl is between Vanderbilt and Houston and the Godaddy Bowl is between Ball State and Arkansas State, well, then, TigerBlog isn't really sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Is this really how the college football season is supposed to end? A bunch of games that used to be on New Year's Day spread out for a few days, two games nobody in their right mind cares about and then the championship game?
New Year's Day used to be such a great day for football. Bowl games all day, with the best teams in them. Now? Hardly any.
It'll get worse next year, TB presumes, when the BCS becomes a four-team playoff. Yes, the playoff will be way better for determining a national champion.
Still, there was always something really special about the New Year's Day bowl games. And that'll just be further eroded a year from now.
Anyway, it's 2014.
Each time the calendar turns over now, TB always thinks back to when he was a kid and the year 2000 seemed so far in the future. It seemed like it was going to be a whole different world, a futuristic one.
And now? That was 14 years ago.
With the end of 2013, TigerBlog figured he'd take a look back at the most viewed pages on goprincetontigers.com for the last 12 months, which featured nearly 10,000,000 total page views.
He's a bit shocked by what he found.
The top four rarely change - the recruiting information page is No. 1, followed by the staff directory, the ticketing page and the facilities page.
After that, the most clicked on page? Hint - it's an athlete's bio.
Beyond those first four, the next 10 featured two game stories, three coach bios, three athlete bios and two other pages.
Going 2-10, it went like this:
2. future football schedules; 3. giving central page; 4. Bob Surace's bio; 5. Chris Bates' bio, ; 6. Tom Schreiber's bio; 7. Quinn Epperly's bio; 8. Princeton's win over Yale in football; 9. James Perry's bio and 10. Princeton's win over Harvard in football.
So which athlete's bio was No. 1? Baseball player Andrew Christie, the son of New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
There are more bios than anything else in the top 50. In fact, there are 29 bios and 21 non-bios in the top 50, with current Princeton athletes Caraun Reid, Blake Dietrick, Jake Froccaro, Kip Orban and T.J. Bray the next highest. The most viewed members of the Class of 2013 were Mike Catapano and Niveen Rasheed.
The most viewed page for an event recap that wasn't a football game belonged to the men's indoor track and field team's NCAA championship distance medley relay.
The other post-event recaps in the top 50?
Cornell football win. Penn football win. Brown football win. Dartmouth football loss. Penn State men's basketball comeback. Harvard men's squash win. No. 51 was the NCAA fencing championship.
So what can be learned from these numbers?
Well, clearly the football season generated considerable interest. And apparently bios are a huge draw.
TigerBlog is always curious about what the demand is among the people who go to goprincetontigers.com and what the OAC staff has to do to keep pace with that demand.
It's not always easy to figure out what the right direction is. These numbers certainly help.
Meanwhile, the weather in Princeton is awful, with heavy snow and freezing temps. It took 2014 all of two days to get ugly.
Oh, and the early leader for most viewed this year?
In the first two days, it's the men's basketball pregame story for the Liberty game tomorrow.
TB senses it won't hold up.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Haka, Hielscher And A Nice New Year's Eve Win
For entertainment purposes, the best part of the Princeton-Kent State men's basketball game might have occurred about 30 minutes prior to tip-off outside of the ticket office in the corridor between Jadwin's main lobby and the side exit.
It was there that the Golden Flashes gathered for a pregame chant/dance that reminded TB of a New Zealand rugby Haka.
Anyone who was entering the gym could hear and see the Kent State players as they went through their pregame ritual, which TB later learned is a long-standing tradition. It was great theater, and, as TB said to one of the Kent State players shortly before tip-off, it was almost enough to get him to root for the visitors.
Almost. Not quite.
The game itself was hardly aesthetic, as neither team shot better than 40% and with more made foul shots (43) than field goals (40) between the two.
Also, TB can't remember a half that ever took longer or seemed unable to develop any flow like the second half of the game. And the final 1:10? It took 14 minutes to play.
Add it all up though, and it was a very beautiful way for the 2013 calendar year to end for the Tigers, with a 73-68 win that left the team at 10-2. Kent State, for its part, is 9-4 and one of the better teams in the MAC, which is a very strong league.
It was a very, very good win for Princeton, and it showed that the Tigers can win games against good teams without lighting it up from three-point range. Against Kent State, Princeton was 8 for 32 from beyond the arc.
New Year's Eve afternoon is a great time for a game, and the crowd was filled with families with little kids. Many of those families were local; at least one was here from Illinois.
Shortly before tip, TB turned around to see a very familiar face on a 6' 9" body, and he knew immediately that it was Rick Hielscher, perhaps the most underrated two-time first-team All-Ivy League player Princeton has ever had.
Hielscher ranks 15th all-time in scoring at Princeton with 1,130 points, despite knees - and circumstances - that limited his playing time. He is Princeton's career leader with 159 blocked shots, though in fairness Chris Young would have obliterated that record had he played more than two seasons. Add in more than 400 rebounds and 200 assists, and it's a pretty well-rounded basketball resume.
Hielscher was the 1991-92 Ivy League Rookie of the Year and a first-team All-Ivy selection as a junior and senior. He helped Princeton to the 1992 Ivy League championship and NCAA tournament, as the Class of 1992 become the only men's class in Ivy history to play four varsity seasons and go to four NCAA tournaments.
As an aside, the Princeton women's class of 2013 is the only women's class to match that accomplishment.
Of course, Hielscher had some issues to deal with, not the least of which was that he and Pete Carril didn't exactly always see eye-to-eye. And Hielscher was the center who followed Kit Mueller.
And, perhaps worst of all, he was the only member of his class who saw considerable playing time, while Penn's Class of 1995 featured, among others, Jerome Allen and Matt Maloney.
As a senior, Hielscher came off the bench, behind freshman Steve Goodrich. The year after Hielscher's graduation was the Carril's last, the year that Princeton defeated UCLA in the NCAA tournament and began a run of three straight championships.
Still, there's no denying that Hielscher was a great player at Princeton, something Carril admitted at media day before the 1995-95 season. And there he was at Jadwin for the game Tuesday, with his wife, daughter and two sons.
TB spoke to Hielscher again after the game started, and the big guy mentioned how impressed he was with the Tigers.
Princeton is at Liberty Saturday and then at Penn in the Ivy opener the following Saturday before the long first-semester exam break.
With no league games yet to be played, there are currently five Ivy teams above .500 and one a game below. It's been a pretty good non-league run by the league, and even some of the losses have been impressive - close setbacks on the home courts of power conference teams.
Clearly the team that has generated the most attention is Harvard, with its 12-1 record after its win over Boston College yesterday. And that's just fine with Princeton, who is 10-2 and playing very, very well.
Of course, nothing will be easy in the league. Dartmouth is 7-4 and Columbia is 8-6, and both have looked good too. Brown is 6-5; Yale is 5-6.
The month of January isn't a huge one for Princeton in terms of number of games, with just four of them, including Division III Kean after exams.
But the one at Penn is huge to start the Ivy season, and there is the Jan. 31 date at Harvard.
For now, Princeton can be a happy 10-2.
Win No. 10 might not have been an aesthetic 10, but it still looks really pretty on the results page.
It was there that the Golden Flashes gathered for a pregame chant/dance that reminded TB of a New Zealand rugby Haka.
Anyone who was entering the gym could hear and see the Kent State players as they went through their pregame ritual, which TB later learned is a long-standing tradition. It was great theater, and, as TB said to one of the Kent State players shortly before tip-off, it was almost enough to get him to root for the visitors.
Almost. Not quite.
The game itself was hardly aesthetic, as neither team shot better than 40% and with more made foul shots (43) than field goals (40) between the two.
Also, TB can't remember a half that ever took longer or seemed unable to develop any flow like the second half of the game. And the final 1:10? It took 14 minutes to play.
Add it all up though, and it was a very beautiful way for the 2013 calendar year to end for the Tigers, with a 73-68 win that left the team at 10-2. Kent State, for its part, is 9-4 and one of the better teams in the MAC, which is a very strong league.
It was a very, very good win for Princeton, and it showed that the Tigers can win games against good teams without lighting it up from three-point range. Against Kent State, Princeton was 8 for 32 from beyond the arc.
New Year's Eve afternoon is a great time for a game, and the crowd was filled with families with little kids. Many of those families were local; at least one was here from Illinois.
Shortly before tip, TB turned around to see a very familiar face on a 6' 9" body, and he knew immediately that it was Rick Hielscher, perhaps the most underrated two-time first-team All-Ivy League player Princeton has ever had.
Hielscher ranks 15th all-time in scoring at Princeton with 1,130 points, despite knees - and circumstances - that limited his playing time. He is Princeton's career leader with 159 blocked shots, though in fairness Chris Young would have obliterated that record had he played more than two seasons. Add in more than 400 rebounds and 200 assists, and it's a pretty well-rounded basketball resume.
Hielscher was the 1991-92 Ivy League Rookie of the Year and a first-team All-Ivy selection as a junior and senior. He helped Princeton to the 1992 Ivy League championship and NCAA tournament, as the Class of 1992 become the only men's class in Ivy history to play four varsity seasons and go to four NCAA tournaments.
As an aside, the Princeton women's class of 2013 is the only women's class to match that accomplishment.
Of course, Hielscher had some issues to deal with, not the least of which was that he and Pete Carril didn't exactly always see eye-to-eye. And Hielscher was the center who followed Kit Mueller.
And, perhaps worst of all, he was the only member of his class who saw considerable playing time, while Penn's Class of 1995 featured, among others, Jerome Allen and Matt Maloney.
As a senior, Hielscher came off the bench, behind freshman Steve Goodrich. The year after Hielscher's graduation was the Carril's last, the year that Princeton defeated UCLA in the NCAA tournament and began a run of three straight championships.
Still, there's no denying that Hielscher was a great player at Princeton, something Carril admitted at media day before the 1995-95 season. And there he was at Jadwin for the game Tuesday, with his wife, daughter and two sons.
TB spoke to Hielscher again after the game started, and the big guy mentioned how impressed he was with the Tigers.
Princeton is at Liberty Saturday and then at Penn in the Ivy opener the following Saturday before the long first-semester exam break.
With no league games yet to be played, there are currently five Ivy teams above .500 and one a game below. It's been a pretty good non-league run by the league, and even some of the losses have been impressive - close setbacks on the home courts of power conference teams.
Clearly the team that has generated the most attention is Harvard, with its 12-1 record after its win over Boston College yesterday. And that's just fine with Princeton, who is 10-2 and playing very, very well.
Of course, nothing will be easy in the league. Dartmouth is 7-4 and Columbia is 8-6, and both have looked good too. Brown is 6-5; Yale is 5-6.
The month of January isn't a huge one for Princeton in terms of number of games, with just four of them, including Division III Kean after exams.
But the one at Penn is huge to start the Ivy season, and there is the Jan. 31 date at Harvard.
For now, Princeton can be a happy 10-2.
Win No. 10 might not have been an aesthetic 10, but it still looks really pretty on the results page.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
The Top 13 Princeton Athletic Moments Of 2013
At first, the goal for New Year's Eve is to stay awake until midnight. Then, several decades later, the goal is to not care if you're not awake at midnight on New Year's Eve.
In between, the struggle is to find something to do on New Year's Eve, even if you'd rather do nothing at all.
Whatever it is you do tonight, if you're out and about, have a great time - and be safe and careful. And Happy New Year to all.
Before 2014 rolls in, TigerBlog offers up the top 13 moments in Princeton Athletics for the year 2013. This is his list, put together without soliciting any feedback from anyone else, which means that it's his fault if it's completely off base.
Also, TB didn't want to just do the top games, because it leaves too much out, so he has settled on moments, which could be games or other happenings.
Anyway, here is TB's top 13 for 2013:
13. Princeton golf has a huge weekend
One year after the women finished sixth and the men fifth at the Ivy League championships, Princeton came within one shot of sweeping the team championships in 2013. The men won by five shots, with an 883-888 win over Yale to win the first Ivy title for the program since 2006. The women almost matched that effort but lost by one excruciating shot, 909-910, to finish second. Princeton did have both individual champions, as Kelly Shon won the women's title in a playoff and Greg Jarmas won for the men.
12. Princeton field hockey wins another Ivy League championship
Princeton once again dominated Ivy League field hockey, going 7-0 in the league to win its 19th championship in 20 years. Princeton outscored its seven league opponents by a combined 32-5 and beat second-place Penn 5-1 on the final day of the regular season for the outright title. Princeton then beat Penn State in the NCAA opening round and came within one goal of a return to the Final Four in a 3-2 loss to Maryland in the quarterfinals. Princeton won the 2012 NCAA championship.
11. Princeton defeats Cornell in the Ivy League men's lacrosse semifinal
Less than one week after Cornell easily handled Princeton at MetLife Stadium, Princeton came back to defeat the Big Red 14-13 in overtime in the Ivy tournament semifinal in one of the great games in program history. The game was tied 7-7 at the end of the third quarter, but there would be 13 more goals scored in the fourth quarter and overtime, including a wild, wild stretch in which the game went from 10-10 with less than four minutes to go to 13-13 three minutes later. Mike MacDonald had a ridiculous night with seven goals and two assists, including one on Kip Orban's game-winning laser late in the first OT.
10. Princeton finishes fifth at the NCAA women's water polo championship
Princeton rallied to defeat UC San Diego 12-10 to finish in fifth place at the NCAA championships for the best finish in program history, as well as the best finish ever by a CWPA team in the current eight-team format. Princeton, who advanced to the NCAA tournament by winning the Eastern championship, was led by freshman goalie Ashleigh Johnson, who had 14 saves in the fifth-place game and set an NCAA tournament record with 38 saves in three games. She also would represent the U.S. at the World Junior Championships, where she win a gold medal and be named the top goalie.
9. Princeton sweeps the Ivy League swimming and diving championships
Princeton's men entered the final day of the 2013 Ivy League men's swimming and diving championship with a 23-point lead over Harvard. By the time it was over, the final margin of victory was 68 points. The Princeton women actually trailed in the team standings at one point on the final night of their Ivy championship meet before winning by 100.5 points. For the men, it was the fifth straight Ivy title. For the women, it was the 11th Ivy title in 14 years.
8. Princeton comes from 20 points back in the final eight minutes to defeat Penn State in men's basketball
Playing in Penn State's Rec Hall, Princeton trailed by 20 at 56-36 with 8:29 to play before rallying to pull it out 81-79 in overtime. In other words, Princeton scored 36 points in the first 31:31 of the game and then scored 45 points in the final 13:29, connecting on 12 of its final 17 field goal attempts. Will Barrett scored 21 of his 24 in the second half and at one point scored 16 of Princeton's 25 points, while T.J. Bray broke the school record with 13 assists. The extraordinary win was Princeton's first against a Big 10 team since 1985 and first on a Big 10 team's home court since 1955.
7. Bob Callahan retires as Princeton men's squash coach
Bob Callahan played squash for four years at Princeton and then coached the sport for 32 before retiring after the 2013 season, going out in style after winning the Ivy League title. Since taking over the program he captained to the 1977 national championships, Callahan led Princeton to 314 victories, 11 Ivy League titles and three national championships (1982, 1993, 2012). He also coached the individual national champion 10 times. Callahan, a beloved figure in the Princeton Department of Athletics, has inspired his players, co-workers and competitors with his courageous fight against brain cancer.
6. Princeton wins its fourth-straight Ivy women's basketball championship
Before the Class of 2013 arrived at Princeton, the women's basketball team had never appeared in the NCAA tournament. When the Class of ’13 graduated, it did so with four Ivy League championships and four NCAA tournament appearances. Princeton's women's basketball Class of 2013 went 96-20 record (the 96 wins are the most ever by an Ivy women's basketball team in a four-year period) with four Ivy titles, a 54-2 Ivy record, the four best seeds by an Ivy team in the NCAA tournament (11, 12, 9, 9), the first national ranking by an Ivy team.
5. Princeton wins the NCAA fencing championship
Princeton's men's team kept it close and the women's team dominated, giving Princeton the combined co-ed NCAA fencing championship for the time in program history. Princeton had finished eighth, sixth, fourth and second the last four years before winning the national title in 2013. The win for the Tigers is even more impressive considering that Penn State, Notre Dame and Ohio State - the three schools who finished 2-3-4 behind Princeton - had combined to win 19 of the 23 championships in the current format. In addition to the co-ed team title, Princeton's Eliza Stone won the individual women's saber championship.
4. Dick Kazmaier passes away
Princeton has had three athletic icons who have always stood above all the other great athletes who have competed for the Tigers during the 150 years that the school has fielded a team. One of them was Hobey Baker, the football/hockey legend who died in 1918. One is Bill Bradley, who is probably the greatest athlete in school history. The other was Dick Kazmaier, the 1951 Heisman Trophy winner who led Princeton to perfect seasons in 1950 and 1951. Kazmaier came to Princeton from Maumee, Ohio, as an undersized back who was given little chance to make an impact for the Tigers, but instead he became a passing/rushing/punting threat, not to mention the personification of the student-athlete ideal. He went on to a long career in business and philanthropy while remaining one of Princeton's most loyal and respected alums, as well as a lifelong supporter of the football program. Kazmaier passed away on Aug. 1 at the age of 82.
3. Princeton wins the NCAA indoor track and field distance medley relay
In one of the great individual performances Princeton has had in years, Peter Callahan ran a brilliant final lap to break open a close race and give the Tigers the 2013 NCAA distance medley relay championship. Michael Williams led off in the 1,200, followed by Austin Hollimon in the 400 and Russell Dinkins in the 800 before it was turned over to Callahan. As he battled with runners from Penn State, Arkansas and Villanova, Callahan stayed near the front until the bell lap, at which point he seemed to find a different gear, turning a close race into a, well, runaway. Callahan ran a 4:01.1 leg, and Princeton would win by nearly a full second over Penn State.
2. Gary Walters announces he is stepping down as Princeton Director of Athletics
Gary Walters came to Princeton as a freshman in 1963. Nearly 50 years later to the day, Walters stood a few yards away from where his father had first dropped him off and announced to the Department of Athletics coaches and staff that he was stepping down as the Ford Family Director of Athletics at the end of the current academic year, completing a 20-year run as AD, during which time his on-field record is extraordinary. Princeton has won the Ivy League's unofficial all sports points championship each of his 19 years, and Princeton has won 216 Ivy League championships in his time as AD, a total 82 higher than the next highest total in the league during that time. There have also been 48 national championships, including at least one team or individual national champion each of his years as well. Princeton has been the highest finishing Ivy League school in the Directors' Cup 16 of the 19 years it has been awarded, and the Tigers routinely finish in the top 40 nationally, usually as the top non-BCS conference school. Beyond the athletic success, he has also been a tireless advocate for Princeton's coaches and athletes while holding them to his high ethical standards. He has worked to provide Princeton's athletes with the best possible undergraduate experience, and his belief in the co-curricular value of intercollegiate athletics became his signature philosophy of "Education Through Athletics." In addition, he has overseen a complete overhaul of Princeton's athletic facilities and has also been a national voice in the NCAA, including a five-year run on the Division I men's basketball committee.
1. Princeton football wins the Ivy League championship
If you were a senior on the Princeton football team, then you lived through consecutive 1-9 seasons to start your career, not to mention a 1-3 finish to your junior year that had you 7-23 overall and 5-16 in the Ivy League through three years. Then you were part of a magical senior year that saw Princeton break the Ivy League records for total offense and points in a season, reach the 50-point mark five times, sweep Harvard and Yale to have a bonfire and ultimately win a share of the Ivy League championship. Princeton, picked to finish fifth in the league's preseason media poll, lost its opener to Lehigh and then ripped off eight straight wins, culminating in a 59-23 win over Yale on a brilliant fall afternoon in front of a partying crowd at Princeton Stadium that nailed down the league title and the bonfire. It was a completely balanced effort on offense and defense, but it was led by Quinn Epperly, who won the Bushnell Cup as the league's Offensive Player of the Year after, among his many other amazing achievements for the year, accounting for 43 touchdowns (25 passing, 18 rushing) and setting an NCAA record by completing his first 29 passes against Cornell.
In between, the struggle is to find something to do on New Year's Eve, even if you'd rather do nothing at all.
Whatever it is you do tonight, if you're out and about, have a great time - and be safe and careful. And Happy New Year to all.
Before 2014 rolls in, TigerBlog offers up the top 13 moments in Princeton Athletics for the year 2013. This is his list, put together without soliciting any feedback from anyone else, which means that it's his fault if it's completely off base.
Also, TB didn't want to just do the top games, because it leaves too much out, so he has settled on moments, which could be games or other happenings.
Anyway, here is TB's top 13 for 2013:
13. Princeton golf has a huge weekend
One year after the women finished sixth and the men fifth at the Ivy League championships, Princeton came within one shot of sweeping the team championships in 2013. The men won by five shots, with an 883-888 win over Yale to win the first Ivy title for the program since 2006. The women almost matched that effort but lost by one excruciating shot, 909-910, to finish second. Princeton did have both individual champions, as Kelly Shon won the women's title in a playoff and Greg Jarmas won for the men.
12. Princeton field hockey wins another Ivy League championship
Princeton once again dominated Ivy League field hockey, going 7-0 in the league to win its 19th championship in 20 years. Princeton outscored its seven league opponents by a combined 32-5 and beat second-place Penn 5-1 on the final day of the regular season for the outright title. Princeton then beat Penn State in the NCAA opening round and came within one goal of a return to the Final Four in a 3-2 loss to Maryland in the quarterfinals. Princeton won the 2012 NCAA championship.
11. Princeton defeats Cornell in the Ivy League men's lacrosse semifinal
Less than one week after Cornell easily handled Princeton at MetLife Stadium, Princeton came back to defeat the Big Red 14-13 in overtime in the Ivy tournament semifinal in one of the great games in program history. The game was tied 7-7 at the end of the third quarter, but there would be 13 more goals scored in the fourth quarter and overtime, including a wild, wild stretch in which the game went from 10-10 with less than four minutes to go to 13-13 three minutes later. Mike MacDonald had a ridiculous night with seven goals and two assists, including one on Kip Orban's game-winning laser late in the first OT.
10. Princeton finishes fifth at the NCAA women's water polo championship
Princeton rallied to defeat UC San Diego 12-10 to finish in fifth place at the NCAA championships for the best finish in program history, as well as the best finish ever by a CWPA team in the current eight-team format. Princeton, who advanced to the NCAA tournament by winning the Eastern championship, was led by freshman goalie Ashleigh Johnson, who had 14 saves in the fifth-place game and set an NCAA tournament record with 38 saves in three games. She also would represent the U.S. at the World Junior Championships, where she win a gold medal and be named the top goalie.
9. Princeton sweeps the Ivy League swimming and diving championships
Princeton's men entered the final day of the 2013 Ivy League men's swimming and diving championship with a 23-point lead over Harvard. By the time it was over, the final margin of victory was 68 points. The Princeton women actually trailed in the team standings at one point on the final night of their Ivy championship meet before winning by 100.5 points. For the men, it was the fifth straight Ivy title. For the women, it was the 11th Ivy title in 14 years.
8. Princeton comes from 20 points back in the final eight minutes to defeat Penn State in men's basketball
Playing in Penn State's Rec Hall, Princeton trailed by 20 at 56-36 with 8:29 to play before rallying to pull it out 81-79 in overtime. In other words, Princeton scored 36 points in the first 31:31 of the game and then scored 45 points in the final 13:29, connecting on 12 of its final 17 field goal attempts. Will Barrett scored 21 of his 24 in the second half and at one point scored 16 of Princeton's 25 points, while T.J. Bray broke the school record with 13 assists. The extraordinary win was Princeton's first against a Big 10 team since 1985 and first on a Big 10 team's home court since 1955.
7. Bob Callahan retires as Princeton men's squash coach
Bob Callahan played squash for four years at Princeton and then coached the sport for 32 before retiring after the 2013 season, going out in style after winning the Ivy League title. Since taking over the program he captained to the 1977 national championships, Callahan led Princeton to 314 victories, 11 Ivy League titles and three national championships (1982, 1993, 2012). He also coached the individual national champion 10 times. Callahan, a beloved figure in the Princeton Department of Athletics, has inspired his players, co-workers and competitors with his courageous fight against brain cancer.
6. Princeton wins its fourth-straight Ivy women's basketball championship
Before the Class of 2013 arrived at Princeton, the women's basketball team had never appeared in the NCAA tournament. When the Class of ’13 graduated, it did so with four Ivy League championships and four NCAA tournament appearances. Princeton's women's basketball Class of 2013 went 96-20 record (the 96 wins are the most ever by an Ivy women's basketball team in a four-year period) with four Ivy titles, a 54-2 Ivy record, the four best seeds by an Ivy team in the NCAA tournament (11, 12, 9, 9), the first national ranking by an Ivy team.
5. Princeton wins the NCAA fencing championship
Princeton's men's team kept it close and the women's team dominated, giving Princeton the combined co-ed NCAA fencing championship for the time in program history. Princeton had finished eighth, sixth, fourth and second the last four years before winning the national title in 2013. The win for the Tigers is even more impressive considering that Penn State, Notre Dame and Ohio State - the three schools who finished 2-3-4 behind Princeton - had combined to win 19 of the 23 championships in the current format. In addition to the co-ed team title, Princeton's Eliza Stone won the individual women's saber championship.
4. Dick Kazmaier passes away
Princeton has had three athletic icons who have always stood above all the other great athletes who have competed for the Tigers during the 150 years that the school has fielded a team. One of them was Hobey Baker, the football/hockey legend who died in 1918. One is Bill Bradley, who is probably the greatest athlete in school history. The other was Dick Kazmaier, the 1951 Heisman Trophy winner who led Princeton to perfect seasons in 1950 and 1951. Kazmaier came to Princeton from Maumee, Ohio, as an undersized back who was given little chance to make an impact for the Tigers, but instead he became a passing/rushing/punting threat, not to mention the personification of the student-athlete ideal. He went on to a long career in business and philanthropy while remaining one of Princeton's most loyal and respected alums, as well as a lifelong supporter of the football program. Kazmaier passed away on Aug. 1 at the age of 82.
3. Princeton wins the NCAA indoor track and field distance medley relay
In one of the great individual performances Princeton has had in years, Peter Callahan ran a brilliant final lap to break open a close race and give the Tigers the 2013 NCAA distance medley relay championship. Michael Williams led off in the 1,200, followed by Austin Hollimon in the 400 and Russell Dinkins in the 800 before it was turned over to Callahan. As he battled with runners from Penn State, Arkansas and Villanova, Callahan stayed near the front until the bell lap, at which point he seemed to find a different gear, turning a close race into a, well, runaway. Callahan ran a 4:01.1 leg, and Princeton would win by nearly a full second over Penn State.
2. Gary Walters announces he is stepping down as Princeton Director of Athletics
Gary Walters came to Princeton as a freshman in 1963. Nearly 50 years later to the day, Walters stood a few yards away from where his father had first dropped him off and announced to the Department of Athletics coaches and staff that he was stepping down as the Ford Family Director of Athletics at the end of the current academic year, completing a 20-year run as AD, during which time his on-field record is extraordinary. Princeton has won the Ivy League's unofficial all sports points championship each of his 19 years, and Princeton has won 216 Ivy League championships in his time as AD, a total 82 higher than the next highest total in the league during that time. There have also been 48 national championships, including at least one team or individual national champion each of his years as well. Princeton has been the highest finishing Ivy League school in the Directors' Cup 16 of the 19 years it has been awarded, and the Tigers routinely finish in the top 40 nationally, usually as the top non-BCS conference school. Beyond the athletic success, he has also been a tireless advocate for Princeton's coaches and athletes while holding them to his high ethical standards. He has worked to provide Princeton's athletes with the best possible undergraduate experience, and his belief in the co-curricular value of intercollegiate athletics became his signature philosophy of "Education Through Athletics." In addition, he has overseen a complete overhaul of Princeton's athletic facilities and has also been a national voice in the NCAA, including a five-year run on the Division I men's basketball committee.
1. Princeton football wins the Ivy League championship
If you were a senior on the Princeton football team, then you lived through consecutive 1-9 seasons to start your career, not to mention a 1-3 finish to your junior year that had you 7-23 overall and 5-16 in the Ivy League through three years. Then you were part of a magical senior year that saw Princeton break the Ivy League records for total offense and points in a season, reach the 50-point mark five times, sweep Harvard and Yale to have a bonfire and ultimately win a share of the Ivy League championship. Princeton, picked to finish fifth in the league's preseason media poll, lost its opener to Lehigh and then ripped off eight straight wins, culminating in a 59-23 win over Yale on a brilliant fall afternoon in front of a partying crowd at Princeton Stadium that nailed down the league title and the bonfire. It was a completely balanced effort on offense and defense, but it was led by Quinn Epperly, who won the Bushnell Cup as the league's Offensive Player of the Year after, among his many other amazing achievements for the year, accounting for 43 touchdowns (25 passing, 18 rushing) and setting an NCAA record by completing his first 29 passes against Cornell.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Get Packing
TigerBlog doesn't remember all the details of his parents' three-week trip Down Under way, way back when.
He does remember a few things. Like one of the stops, in addition to Australia and New Zealand, was Tahiti, since for weeks before they left, FatherBlog kept singing "Tahiti sounds the greatest, of all the crazy places that you've been."
In case you didn't get the reference, that's a line from the title song in "Mame." Is it any wonder TigerBlog grew up to be so cool?
TB also remembers that it was in the summer, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. At some place along their route, it was the dead of winter, while in other spots it was winter but summer year-round, probably Tahiti.
Anyway, what TB's parents did was take their winter stuff and ship their summer stuff to the hotel where they would be when it came to be summer weather. Then they shipped the winter stuff home. Ingenious, no?
TB thought about that when he saw that the Princeton men's hockey team was going to spend eight days split between Fort Myers, Florida, and Vancouver, British Columbia.
The high temperatures in Fort Myers have been in the 80s. The low temperatures in Vanoucover will be in the low 20s, with highs in the high 30s or low 40s.
So what do you pack? Summer stuff and winter stuff, all for less than the 50 pounds a checked bag can be? That's not easy to pull off.
The Tigers go from the Florida College Hockey Classic to the Great Northwest Showcase, with a little New Year's Eve and New Year's Day fun thrown into the mix.
Princeton lost to Maine and New Hampshire in Florida and will play Canadian universities Simon Fraser and the University of British Columbia Friday night and Saturday night. Princeton is struggling this season, but there is plenty of time for a second-half run, especially with such key players as Andrew Calof now healthy.
And besides, the trip to Canada is were such a seasonal turnarounds can begin.
Another Princeton team that played in a tournament this past weekend was the women's basketball team, which had a very successful run at the Cavalier Classic at the University of Virginia.
The Tigers reached the championship game, falling to the host team 69-57 as UVa won its own tournament for the 10th straight time.
To get to the game against Virginia, Princeton blew out Alabama 79-59 Friday for its first win ever against an SEC opponent.
It's not just that Princeton beat Alabama. It's that Princeton beat Alabama by 20 points.
The Tigers are rounding into top form just when necessary, with the start of the Ivy season coming up. Princeton will spend the next two Saturdays in Philadelphia, with a game this weekend at Drexel and then the Ivy opener Jan. 11 at Penn.
After that is a 20-day break for first semester exams, followed by a showdown at home against Harvard.
The loss to Virginia ended a five-game winning streak for Princeton, which included four blowout wins over Navy, Binghamton, Illinois State and Alabama and one overtime win against a very good Delaware team. The loss to Virginia, a perennial ACC power, was very competitive.
Blake Dietrick had 36 points in the two games, and she was joined by Kristen Helmstetter (26 points, 10 rebounds, 14 assists in the two games) on the all-tournament team.
As an aside, every time TB hears about all-tournament teams, he thinks about what Pete Carril once said, when told that one of his players in an in-season tournament had made the all-tournament team: "Yeah? So did the guy he was guarding."
He does remember a few things. Like one of the stops, in addition to Australia and New Zealand, was Tahiti, since for weeks before they left, FatherBlog kept singing "Tahiti sounds the greatest, of all the crazy places that you've been."
In case you didn't get the reference, that's a line from the title song in "Mame." Is it any wonder TigerBlog grew up to be so cool?
TB also remembers that it was in the summer, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. At some place along their route, it was the dead of winter, while in other spots it was winter but summer year-round, probably Tahiti.
Anyway, what TB's parents did was take their winter stuff and ship their summer stuff to the hotel where they would be when it came to be summer weather. Then they shipped the winter stuff home. Ingenious, no?
TB thought about that when he saw that the Princeton men's hockey team was going to spend eight days split between Fort Myers, Florida, and Vancouver, British Columbia.
The high temperatures in Fort Myers have been in the 80s. The low temperatures in Vanoucover will be in the low 20s, with highs in the high 30s or low 40s.
So what do you pack? Summer stuff and winter stuff, all for less than the 50 pounds a checked bag can be? That's not easy to pull off.
The Tigers go from the Florida College Hockey Classic to the Great Northwest Showcase, with a little New Year's Eve and New Year's Day fun thrown into the mix.
Princeton lost to Maine and New Hampshire in Florida and will play Canadian universities Simon Fraser and the University of British Columbia Friday night and Saturday night. Princeton is struggling this season, but there is plenty of time for a second-half run, especially with such key players as Andrew Calof now healthy.
And besides, the trip to Canada is were such a seasonal turnarounds can begin.
Another Princeton team that played in a tournament this past weekend was the women's basketball team, which had a very successful run at the Cavalier Classic at the University of Virginia.
The Tigers reached the championship game, falling to the host team 69-57 as UVa won its own tournament for the 10th straight time.
To get to the game against Virginia, Princeton blew out Alabama 79-59 Friday for its first win ever against an SEC opponent.
It's not just that Princeton beat Alabama. It's that Princeton beat Alabama by 20 points.
The Tigers are rounding into top form just when necessary, with the start of the Ivy season coming up. Princeton will spend the next two Saturdays in Philadelphia, with a game this weekend at Drexel and then the Ivy opener Jan. 11 at Penn.
After that is a 20-day break for first semester exams, followed by a showdown at home against Harvard.
The loss to Virginia ended a five-game winning streak for Princeton, which included four blowout wins over Navy, Binghamton, Illinois State and Alabama and one overtime win against a very good Delaware team. The loss to Virginia, a perennial ACC power, was very competitive.
Blake Dietrick had 36 points in the two games, and she was joined by Kristen Helmstetter (26 points, 10 rebounds, 14 assists in the two games) on the all-tournament team.
As an aside, every time TB hears about all-tournament teams, he thinks about what Pete Carril once said, when told that one of his players in an in-season tournament had made the all-tournament team: "Yeah? So did the guy he was guarding."
Friday, December 27, 2013
Hey Coach
TigerBlog was rooting hard for Bowling Green last night in the, um, well, in the bowl game that Bowling Green was in.
TB knows it was in Detroit. And that it was named for a pizza company. Turns out it was the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl.
And why was he rooting for Bowling Green? Its interim head coach, Adam Scheier.
As it turned out, the game was a pretty good one. Pitt beat BG 30-27 on a late field goal as freshman James Conner ran for 229 yards while also playing defensive end.
So Scheier went 0-1 as BG's interim coach. He took over for Dave Clawson when Clawson was named the head coach at Wake Forest.
This seems to happen every year in bowl games, when teams from leagues like the MAC always appear at least to have lost their head coach to a BCS conference school that had recently fired its old coach.
Bowling Green hired Dino Babers from Eastern Illinois to replace Clawson, which means that Scheier appears to be on his way to Wake Forest to reunite with his old boss. That's why it would have been nice for Scheier to get to 1-0 in his head coaching career, because there is no guarantee for an assistant coach that there will be another chance to be the head man.
Consider Scheier's resume - Wake Forest now. Bowling Green before that. Lehigh before that. A Dartmouth grad who once blocked two punts that were returned for touchdowns in the same game (click here and scroll down a bit), he began his coaching career at his alma mater before moving to Columbia.
And then? He spent two years at Princeton, where he was special teams coordinator and wide receivers coach. TigerBlog remembers Scheier mostly for being one of the best passers in Jadwin lunchtime basketball history.
It's not easy being an assistant coach in any sport. There are way more people who want to be head coaches than there are head coaching spots, and most assistants will never achieve the top spot.
TB thinks it's hardest in football, maybe because there are so many more coaches on a staff that the math suggests the odds are longer of becoming a head coach. Plus, when the head coach is fired (which happens all the time in football), the assistants almost always lose their jobs as well.
Princeton has had pretty good consistency in its football coaching staffs in TB's time, probably more so than most schools.
Bob Dipipi, one of the assistant coaches that TB worked with passed away recently, at the age of 78. Dipipi was a tough football guy who worked on Steve Tosches' staff and then was the head coach of the sprint team for a few years.
Some of the former assistant football coaches have gone on to become high school head coaches. TB can't think of one who became a head coach on the college level. Maybe he's missing someone.
And maybe someone on the current staff will get there. If TB had to guess, he'd say the odds are pretty good that at least one will.
Still, these are the realities that these guys live with.
Yes, not every administrator in college athletics will become an athletic director. It's a little different existence, though, as people like TB don't have to consider that if the football team doesn't win that his job is at stake.
And while some people in administration bounce around from school to school, it happens much less frequently than it does in coaching, especially among football coaches - who often go from school to school against their will.
Even at Princeton, where the staff is stable and the team is coming off its best season in years, TB didn't see much of the football assistant coaches for the month of December, during which they are always away recruiting all over the country.
Another head football coach with Princeton connections is Jason Garrett of the Cowboys, who was the quarterback at Princeton when current Tiger head coach Bob Surace was the center. Garrett has achieved the highest level of his profession, only he has to live with the weekly "will he be fired, will he not be fired" discussion.
Yes, he makes a ton of money. Still, his job perhaps rides on the outcome of one game, this Sunday against the Eagles, when the winner makes the playoffs and the loser goes home.
As an aside, TB isn't sure which team he's rooting for in this one, as they are tied for first among his least favorite NFL teams.
Anyway, it was good to see an old friend like Scheier on TV, with an opportunity to be the head coach for a game. It was good to see him in all the closeups, good to hear commentators debating his decisions.
Hopefully he gets another chance.
TB knows it was in Detroit. And that it was named for a pizza company. Turns out it was the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl.
And why was he rooting for Bowling Green? Its interim head coach, Adam Scheier.
As it turned out, the game was a pretty good one. Pitt beat BG 30-27 on a late field goal as freshman James Conner ran for 229 yards while also playing defensive end.
So Scheier went 0-1 as BG's interim coach. He took over for Dave Clawson when Clawson was named the head coach at Wake Forest.
This seems to happen every year in bowl games, when teams from leagues like the MAC always appear at least to have lost their head coach to a BCS conference school that had recently fired its old coach.
Bowling Green hired Dino Babers from Eastern Illinois to replace Clawson, which means that Scheier appears to be on his way to Wake Forest to reunite with his old boss. That's why it would have been nice for Scheier to get to 1-0 in his head coaching career, because there is no guarantee for an assistant coach that there will be another chance to be the head man.
Consider Scheier's resume - Wake Forest now. Bowling Green before that. Lehigh before that. A Dartmouth grad who once blocked two punts that were returned for touchdowns in the same game (click here and scroll down a bit), he began his coaching career at his alma mater before moving to Columbia.
And then? He spent two years at Princeton, where he was special teams coordinator and wide receivers coach. TigerBlog remembers Scheier mostly for being one of the best passers in Jadwin lunchtime basketball history.
It's not easy being an assistant coach in any sport. There are way more people who want to be head coaches than there are head coaching spots, and most assistants will never achieve the top spot.
TB thinks it's hardest in football, maybe because there are so many more coaches on a staff that the math suggests the odds are longer of becoming a head coach. Plus, when the head coach is fired (which happens all the time in football), the assistants almost always lose their jobs as well.
Princeton has had pretty good consistency in its football coaching staffs in TB's time, probably more so than most schools.
Bob Dipipi, one of the assistant coaches that TB worked with passed away recently, at the age of 78. Dipipi was a tough football guy who worked on Steve Tosches' staff and then was the head coach of the sprint team for a few years.
Some of the former assistant football coaches have gone on to become high school head coaches. TB can't think of one who became a head coach on the college level. Maybe he's missing someone.
And maybe someone on the current staff will get there. If TB had to guess, he'd say the odds are pretty good that at least one will.
Still, these are the realities that these guys live with.
Yes, not every administrator in college athletics will become an athletic director. It's a little different existence, though, as people like TB don't have to consider that if the football team doesn't win that his job is at stake.
And while some people in administration bounce around from school to school, it happens much less frequently than it does in coaching, especially among football coaches - who often go from school to school against their will.
Even at Princeton, where the staff is stable and the team is coming off its best season in years, TB didn't see much of the football assistant coaches for the month of December, during which they are always away recruiting all over the country.
Another head football coach with Princeton connections is Jason Garrett of the Cowboys, who was the quarterback at Princeton when current Tiger head coach Bob Surace was the center. Garrett has achieved the highest level of his profession, only he has to live with the weekly "will he be fired, will he not be fired" discussion.
Yes, he makes a ton of money. Still, his job perhaps rides on the outcome of one game, this Sunday against the Eagles, when the winner makes the playoffs and the loser goes home.
As an aside, TB isn't sure which team he's rooting for in this one, as they are tied for first among his least favorite NFL teams.
Anyway, it was good to see an old friend like Scheier on TV, with an opportunity to be the head coach for a game. It was good to see him in all the closeups, good to hear commentators debating his decisions.
Hopefully he gets another chance.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Play Of The Year
Sometime yesterday afternoon, TigerBlog experienced the opposite of a Christmas miracle.
He got sick of Ralphie.
He never could have imagined it. There he was, watching Ralphie and his classmates at school, when he suddenly realized he'd had enough of "A Christmas Story."
Will this be a one-year thing, or is he done with it forever? Is there an expiration date? Are there a finite number of times TB can watch "A Christmas Story?" He's certainly never reached that number with, say, "The Godfather" or Bugs Bunny.
He is glad that the end of "It's A Wonderful Life" still had its usual effect on him, especially when Harry makes his toast at the end.
One of the highlights of TB's Christmas was the video that his colleague Craig Sachson texted him of his five-year-old daughter Maddie's reaction when she found that Santa had left her the Barbie Dreamhouse. Now that was Christmas at its best, a little girl who got exactly what she wanted - even adding in the perfect ending, when she nudges her younger brother away and reminds him that "Mason, this is for me."
Does it get better than that?
December 25th is the day that is circled on everyone's calendar. The Barbie Dreamhouses and whatever else is on the list for the nice kids - and adults - have to be under the tree by Dec. 25. Then they're torn open, wrapping paper thrown everywhere, piles of opened presents stacked around, in, oh, about 10 minutes, after weeks of preparation.
And getting the presents bought, delivered (if you're smart enough to buy them online) and wrapped - TB is an awful gift-wrapper - is only a small part of what needs to get done. There's the tree, the decorations, the food (if people are coming over), the parties, the plans and all of it.
December 25th is the deadline day.
December 26th is a little different.
Now it's all about taking down trees and ornaments, about cleaning up. It's about taking down the Christmas lights, unless you're the people who leave them up until February or even all year round.
Next up is New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and then getting back to work.
Between now and next week, there will be all kinds of Year in Reviews, Top People of the Year, etc. etc. TigerBlog saw one of them on ESPN yesterday, when it ran down the top 50 plays of the year.
The problem with choosing the top plays of a year is what the criteria is. Are you looking for the most significant plays or the best plays, regardless of their context?
Sometimes, if you're lucky, the best plays occur in the most significant moments, as was the case in 2013. It's really hard to argue against the two plays that were co-No. 1 on ESPN's list, the game-winners for Auburn football against Georgia (the long Hail Mary pass that got tipped right to the Auburn wide receiver) and then the missed field goal return against Alabama.
They were both incredible plays, and because of them, Auburn will play for the BCS championship against Florida State.
There were many other plays in the top 50 that were wild but had no context. There were others that were routine but tied together the biggest moments of the year.
What about at Princeton?
The biggest play of the year in 2013 at Princeton is probably Quinn Epperly's touchdown pass to Roman Wilson in the third overtime against Harvard. It was the biggest play because it gave Princeton a 51-48 win over the Crimson and had Princeton not won that game, it wouldn't have won a share of the Ivy League championship.
The play itself was a pretty good one. Epperly fakes like he's running and then flips it into the corner to Wilson, who pulls it down over a Harvard defender. The Ivy League Digital Network named it to the top play of the year in Ivy football.
If you're looking for a better catch, then Wilson's TD against Cornell was a bit better, with his body turned around and his ability to just get his foot inbounds. That one was part of Epperly's 29 straight completions to start the game against the Big Red and earned No. 3 on the list.
TigerBlog knows that there were any number of plays in any number of Princeton games across all sports that were probably wilder than the football ones. Hey, there were other football ones too for that matter.
Off the top of his head, TB is thinking of two men's lacrosse plays - the one where Tom Schreiber ripped the net in the Ivy final against Yale and Kip Orban's game-winner in overtime against Cornell in the Ivy semifinal.
Still, for the significance of the moment, it's hard to beat the play against Harvard in the third overtime.
TigerBlog will go with that as the Play of the Year for Princeton Athletics.
He got sick of Ralphie.
He never could have imagined it. There he was, watching Ralphie and his classmates at school, when he suddenly realized he'd had enough of "A Christmas Story."
Will this be a one-year thing, or is he done with it forever? Is there an expiration date? Are there a finite number of times TB can watch "A Christmas Story?" He's certainly never reached that number with, say, "The Godfather" or Bugs Bunny.
He is glad that the end of "It's A Wonderful Life" still had its usual effect on him, especially when Harry makes his toast at the end.
One of the highlights of TB's Christmas was the video that his colleague Craig Sachson texted him of his five-year-old daughter Maddie's reaction when she found that Santa had left her the Barbie Dreamhouse. Now that was Christmas at its best, a little girl who got exactly what she wanted - even adding in the perfect ending, when she nudges her younger brother away and reminds him that "Mason, this is for me."
Does it get better than that?
December 25th is the day that is circled on everyone's calendar. The Barbie Dreamhouses and whatever else is on the list for the nice kids - and adults - have to be under the tree by Dec. 25. Then they're torn open, wrapping paper thrown everywhere, piles of opened presents stacked around, in, oh, about 10 minutes, after weeks of preparation.
And getting the presents bought, delivered (if you're smart enough to buy them online) and wrapped - TB is an awful gift-wrapper - is only a small part of what needs to get done. There's the tree, the decorations, the food (if people are coming over), the parties, the plans and all of it.
December 25th is the deadline day.
December 26th is a little different.
Now it's all about taking down trees and ornaments, about cleaning up. It's about taking down the Christmas lights, unless you're the people who leave them up until February or even all year round.
Next up is New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and then getting back to work.
Between now and next week, there will be all kinds of Year in Reviews, Top People of the Year, etc. etc. TigerBlog saw one of them on ESPN yesterday, when it ran down the top 50 plays of the year.
The problem with choosing the top plays of a year is what the criteria is. Are you looking for the most significant plays or the best plays, regardless of their context?
Sometimes, if you're lucky, the best plays occur in the most significant moments, as was the case in 2013. It's really hard to argue against the two plays that were co-No. 1 on ESPN's list, the game-winners for Auburn football against Georgia (the long Hail Mary pass that got tipped right to the Auburn wide receiver) and then the missed field goal return against Alabama.
They were both incredible plays, and because of them, Auburn will play for the BCS championship against Florida State.
There were many other plays in the top 50 that were wild but had no context. There were others that were routine but tied together the biggest moments of the year.
What about at Princeton?
The biggest play of the year in 2013 at Princeton is probably Quinn Epperly's touchdown pass to Roman Wilson in the third overtime against Harvard. It was the biggest play because it gave Princeton a 51-48 win over the Crimson and had Princeton not won that game, it wouldn't have won a share of the Ivy League championship.
The play itself was a pretty good one. Epperly fakes like he's running and then flips it into the corner to Wilson, who pulls it down over a Harvard defender. The Ivy League Digital Network named it to the top play of the year in Ivy football.
If you're looking for a better catch, then Wilson's TD against Cornell was a bit better, with his body turned around and his ability to just get his foot inbounds. That one was part of Epperly's 29 straight completions to start the game against the Big Red and earned No. 3 on the list.
TigerBlog knows that there were any number of plays in any number of Princeton games across all sports that were probably wilder than the football ones. Hey, there were other football ones too for that matter.
Off the top of his head, TB is thinking of two men's lacrosse plays - the one where Tom Schreiber ripped the net in the Ivy final against Yale and Kip Orban's game-winner in overtime against Cornell in the Ivy semifinal.
Still, for the significance of the moment, it's hard to beat the play against Harvard in the third overtime.
TigerBlog will go with that as the Play of the Year for Princeton Athletics.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
TigerBlog was in the car last night when Karen Carpenter's voice came on the radio, singing one of the classics, "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas."
It's actually not a Christmas carol per se, as it originally is from another classic, which TB will get to in a second.
Late last week, TB heard Gary Walters sing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" in the hallway and asked him if he knew what show that it was originally from. He did not come up with "Meet Me In St. Louis." TigerBlog was almost positive that Walters would, in an attempt at humor, say "Fiddler on the Roof" and was actually a bit disappointed that he didn't.
A few minutes after TB heard Carpenter on the radio, he was home, where he found "Meet Me In St. Louis" on Turner Classic Movies. It was in the middle of the movie, when Tootie - the youngest of the Smith children - heads off for Halloween.
He stayed with it until the end, which means he got to see Judy Garland's original version of the song, which Garland sings to a very upset Tootie, who like the rest of the Smith family has to move to New York because of Mr. Smith's promotion, something that will force them to leave their hometown and miss the 1904 World's Fair.
Not to ruin it for you, but it all works out in the end for everyone.
Here's something (from Wikipedia, at least) about the song TB didn't know, even after hearing versions by, among others, Carpenter, Garland and Walters in a one-week span:
Some of the original lyrics that were penned by Martin were rejected before the show began. They were: "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last/ Next year we may all be living in the past / Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Pop that champagne cork / Next year we may all be living in New York.When presented with the original draft lyric, Garland, her co-star Tom Drake and director Vincente Minnelli criticized the song as depressing, and asked Martin to change the lyrics. Though he initially resisted, Martin made several changes to make the song more upbeat. For example, the lines "It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past" became "Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight." Garland's version of the song, which was also released as a single by Decca Records, became popular among United States troops serving in World War II; her performance at the Hollywood Canteen brought many soldiers to tears.
TigerBlog doesn't think of "Meet Me In St. Louis" as a Christmas movie.
When he thinks of Christmas movies, he thinks of tonight at 8, when "It's A Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story" both come on. The difference is that "A Christmas Story" will continue 11 more times after its first go-round.
"It's A Wonderful Life" stars Jimmy Stewart, Princeton Class of 1932. Stewart was a cheerleader and the member of the Triangle Club at Princeton.
In the movie, Stewart plays George Bailey, who lives in Beford Falls, near Buffalo. His lifelong dream is to get out of Bedford Falls, of course, since all he wants is to see the world. At least that's what he thinks he wants.
It's not until Clarence, his guardian angel, jumps into the freezing waters below the bridge and shows George the impact his life has had on all of those around him and what Bedford Falls would have become had he never been born that George finally gets it.
Sometime around 10:50 tonight, Harry Bailey will say "to my big brother George, the richest man in town," and TB will get a bit misty.
By then, he'll also have seen Ralphie do all kinds of hilarious things, like drop the "F dash dash dash" word on the side of the road while his father is changing the tire, panic when it comes time to tell Santa what he wants and sit with his family while a duck meets a rather sad fate in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas night.
Then he'll watch those things 11 more times. Well, maybe not 11, but multiple.
Princeton Athletics is made up of athletes, coaches and staff who come from all over the country and in some cases the world.
For some, getting home means a very short car ride. For others, it means long drives or flights.
It's not often that most, if not all, of them find their way home. Today and tomorrow is probably as close as it gets.
The Tigers are scattered now. They'll be back soon, back in orange and black, back on campus, back practicing and competing, not to mention studying for and taking first semester exams. Or, in the case of those who work here, doing all the things that they do every day to make the experience for the athletes the best it can be, and to enable Princeton to put on its events.
Well, not every day. Not today or tomorrow.
It's Christmas Eve, which to everyone means something different. More than any other time, people seem to have a tradition that they follow for the next 36 hours, one that doesn't vary from year to year to year.
The more TB asks people what they do for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the more he realizes that these traditions are pretty much etched in stone. There's something incredibly special about that.
Whatever yours is - even if it's Chinese food and the movies - TigerBlog wishes you and your family a very merry Christmas.
It's actually not a Christmas carol per se, as it originally is from another classic, which TB will get to in a second.
Late last week, TB heard Gary Walters sing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" in the hallway and asked him if he knew what show that it was originally from. He did not come up with "Meet Me In St. Louis." TigerBlog was almost positive that Walters would, in an attempt at humor, say "Fiddler on the Roof" and was actually a bit disappointed that he didn't.
A few minutes after TB heard Carpenter on the radio, he was home, where he found "Meet Me In St. Louis" on Turner Classic Movies. It was in the middle of the movie, when Tootie - the youngest of the Smith children - heads off for Halloween.
He stayed with it until the end, which means he got to see Judy Garland's original version of the song, which Garland sings to a very upset Tootie, who like the rest of the Smith family has to move to New York because of Mr. Smith's promotion, something that will force them to leave their hometown and miss the 1904 World's Fair.
Not to ruin it for you, but it all works out in the end for everyone.
Here's something (from Wikipedia, at least) about the song TB didn't know, even after hearing versions by, among others, Carpenter, Garland and Walters in a one-week span:
Some of the original lyrics that were penned by Martin were rejected before the show began. They were: "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last/ Next year we may all be living in the past / Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Pop that champagne cork / Next year we may all be living in New York.When presented with the original draft lyric, Garland, her co-star Tom Drake and director Vincente Minnelli criticized the song as depressing, and asked Martin to change the lyrics. Though he initially resisted, Martin made several changes to make the song more upbeat. For example, the lines "It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past" became "Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight." Garland's version of the song, which was also released as a single by Decca Records, became popular among United States troops serving in World War II; her performance at the Hollywood Canteen brought many soldiers to tears.
TigerBlog doesn't think of "Meet Me In St. Louis" as a Christmas movie.
When he thinks of Christmas movies, he thinks of tonight at 8, when "It's A Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story" both come on. The difference is that "A Christmas Story" will continue 11 more times after its first go-round.
"It's A Wonderful Life" stars Jimmy Stewart, Princeton Class of 1932. Stewart was a cheerleader and the member of the Triangle Club at Princeton.
In the movie, Stewart plays George Bailey, who lives in Beford Falls, near Buffalo. His lifelong dream is to get out of Bedford Falls, of course, since all he wants is to see the world. At least that's what he thinks he wants.
It's not until Clarence, his guardian angel, jumps into the freezing waters below the bridge and shows George the impact his life has had on all of those around him and what Bedford Falls would have become had he never been born that George finally gets it.
Sometime around 10:50 tonight, Harry Bailey will say "to my big brother George, the richest man in town," and TB will get a bit misty.
By then, he'll also have seen Ralphie do all kinds of hilarious things, like drop the "F dash dash dash" word on the side of the road while his father is changing the tire, panic when it comes time to tell Santa what he wants and sit with his family while a duck meets a rather sad fate in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas night.
Then he'll watch those things 11 more times. Well, maybe not 11, but multiple.
Princeton Athletics is made up of athletes, coaches and staff who come from all over the country and in some cases the world.
For some, getting home means a very short car ride. For others, it means long drives or flights.
It's not often that most, if not all, of them find their way home. Today and tomorrow is probably as close as it gets.
The Tigers are scattered now. They'll be back soon, back in orange and black, back on campus, back practicing and competing, not to mention studying for and taking first semester exams. Or, in the case of those who work here, doing all the things that they do every day to make the experience for the athletes the best it can be, and to enable Princeton to put on its events.
Well, not every day. Not today or tomorrow.
It's Christmas Eve, which to everyone means something different. More than any other time, people seem to have a tradition that they follow for the next 36 hours, one that doesn't vary from year to year to year.
The more TB asks people what they do for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the more he realizes that these traditions are pretty much etched in stone. There's something incredibly special about that.
Whatever yours is - even if it's Chinese food and the movies - TigerBlog wishes you and your family a very merry Christmas.
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