There are two guys who come into Jadwin Gym most workdays wearing suits and carrying gym bags. They emerge a few minutes later in running attire, and off they go, only to return awhile later to shower and put the suits back on.
One of them is tall; the other is short. TB is pretty sure they're lawyers. He's seen them for years, more than a decade, several times a week. He has no idea what their names are; his relationship with them consists of "hello," followed by some basic pleasantry about what a great day it is for running and/or what's coming next in Princeton Athletics.
TigerBlog has never been a fan of running. He's been a fan of exercising, though he's liked to get that exercise in the framework of playing a sport, rather than simply running.
Through the years, TB was a big fan of the Jadwin Gym lunchtime basketball game, something that a few years ago gave way to playing squash. If you've never played squash, go do so, because you'll get hooked on it immediately.
Even if there was no game, TB would rather ride the exercise bike than simply go out and run. The times that TB has gone running, he's spent the entire time thinking to himself "TigerBlog hates this."
As an aside, the best song TigerBlog has ever heard just might be, ironically enough, "Born To Run."
Still, TB does appreciate what it takes to be a long-distance runner, the dedication to keep going when it's so easy to stop.
And when TB looks at the athletic calendar each year, one of his absolute favorite can't-miss dates is the Ivy League Heptagonal cross-country championships, held in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx the last Friday of October.
And hey, tomorrow is the last Friday in October.
If you're anywhere near New York City, it's worth heading up to the park to check this event out, especially if you've never seen it before.
Basically, it's eight schools with two teams each who set up in a row of tents that are loaded up with sandwiches, bagels, cookies, cookies, brownies and cookies. Last year, TB sampled cookies from all eight schools and gave the edge, as always, to Brown.
Each tent is swarming with parents, recent alums, friends, relatives and anyone else, all of whom have come out to support that particular team.
The women's race goes off first, followed by the men. Construction in the park has forced the course to change several times, but the runners are not visible most of the time that the race is going on, but that only adds to the drama.
Eventually, the runners come back into view and close to the finish, which is right in front of the tents. They come across the line in a rapid formation of different uniforms, which makes it nearly impossible to the untrained eye to figure out exactly which team is where.
Last year, on the women's side, it was easy - even for TB's untrained eye. Princeton's women came in 1-2-3-4-5, which of course is a record that can be tied but never broken. It was an amazing site, with Princeton's Liz Costello so far ahead of the field and a trail of all orange and black behind her.
The men's race a year ago was much harder to figure, and with good reason. Columbia edged Princeton by a single point - one placing either way would have changed the outcome - and the drama was amazing as the judges counted and recounted before making a formal announcement.
TB has seen Heps winners who have crossed the finish line and look not the least bit winded, and he's seen many others who have struggled across the line in tears, who have collapsed just after finishing.
This year's races?
Well, Princeton is still the favorite on the women's side, but not as prohibitively as last year. In fact, Cornell, Columbia and Harvard are expected to challenge.
As for the men, Columbia returns four of its top five. Princeton is ranked 18th nationally and has run very well this year, and all of the top six finishers from last year's individual race are back, including Harvard's Dan Chenoweth, the 2009 winner.
In other words, it should be another great event at Van Cortlandt Park.
The women's race begins at 11, followed by the men at 11:45. The weather should be perfect. The races should be tremendous.
And so should the cookies.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
The Whammy
TigerBlog could fill a week's worth of entries with funny things that he heard Pete Carril said, on the record and off, rated G all the way through NC-17.
Despite the fact that Bill Carmody was only the head coach here for four years, he hardly was lacking in his own funny comments, which also ran the same ratings gamut.
Carmody, especially, was also very superstitious. And he was a big believer in a concept he called "The Whammy."
Basically, it's the same thing as a jinx. If you write, for instance, that Brian Earl has been in double figures in five straight games, you're ensuring that he won't get there in the next one.
TB heard Carmody say the word "whammy" so much that he incorporated it into the game notes, as in this 1998 entry: "The whammy - Princeton is 10-0 in the Ivy League and has won every game by double figures." Princeton, of course, went on to go 14-0 in the league that year and won 13 of those 14 by double figures.
Anyway, TigerBlog could hear Carmody's cautionary tone when he went to Penn's website yesterday and found the lead story with a headline that said: "Fall Frenzy For Penn's Athletic Teams."
The basic point of the story is that Penn is having a good fall. Heading into this weekend, Penn has five teams in first place in their league: football (tied with Brown), sprint football, men's soccer (tied with Princeton), women's soccer (tied with Columbia) and women's volleyball (tied with Princeton).
TigerBlog, in fact, was going to write a similar story last week but instead thought of Carmody. And Gary Walters, who also believes in the whammy, though not quite by that name. Instead, the Princeton Athletic Director believes in managing expectations.
You will notice that most of those Penn teams are tied for the lead, including two with Princeton. The football team at Penn is tied with Brown, whom it hosts this weekend. Men's soccer still has to play the other three top teams in the league, two of whom (Brown and Princeton) are ranked in the Top 25. The women's soccer team is tied for first, but it is really a four-team race with Penn, Columbia, Harvard and Princeton.
On the other hand, the story was a good, positive one for the Quakers, and with big home games this weekend around Homecoming in West Philadelphia, such a story can generate some pretty good excitement.
So the question then becomes, how should athletic communications offices handle such situations?
Is it okay to point out how well your teams are doing, or is that only putting extra pressure on them, setting them up to fail and giving the opponents additional motivation?
Is it okay to state the facts about where teams are in the standings, or is it better to be low-key until championships are actually won?
It's something TB has wrestled with a lot here.
As the Penn story was being written, Princeton has seven fall teams very much in the championship mix. Still, TB was hesitant to write about last week and still is, for that matter, because none of those teams has won a championship yet.
And even if, say, two or three do, if you write a story that says seven teams have a great shot at winning their league, then it appears that overall you've come up short in the end.
Back in the pre-internet days, TigerBlog was pretty sure that no Princeton athletes read the Trenton Times or any other local paper every day and therefore really didn't know much about what was being said about them.
Today, where each of Princeton's 38 sports and each of every other school's however many teams have their own page on the school's website, TB is pretty sure that every Princeton athlete and every opposing athlete reads everything.
TB also has said that he doesn't think that anything he or anyone else writes can actually influence the outcome of a game (if it could, then sports info people should be paid more), there is something to the fact that athletes and coaches take it personally if they read something that slights their team.
In general, TB likes to err on the side of caution, largely to avoid having a game end only to hear a player on the other team say something like "I read on Princeton's webpage how great they were and wanted to knock them down a little."
So good luck to Penn in its quest for championships this fall. If nothing else, there are some great races in Ivy League sports that are just heading to stretch run.
And hey, wondering whether or not to really pump up your teams during their own runs towards championships?
It's not a bad problem to have.
Despite the fact that Bill Carmody was only the head coach here for four years, he hardly was lacking in his own funny comments, which also ran the same ratings gamut.
Carmody, especially, was also very superstitious. And he was a big believer in a concept he called "The Whammy."
Basically, it's the same thing as a jinx. If you write, for instance, that Brian Earl has been in double figures in five straight games, you're ensuring that he won't get there in the next one.
TB heard Carmody say the word "whammy" so much that he incorporated it into the game notes, as in this 1998 entry: "The whammy - Princeton is 10-0 in the Ivy League and has won every game by double figures." Princeton, of course, went on to go 14-0 in the league that year and won 13 of those 14 by double figures.
Anyway, TigerBlog could hear Carmody's cautionary tone when he went to Penn's website yesterday and found the lead story with a headline that said: "Fall Frenzy For Penn's Athletic Teams."
The basic point of the story is that Penn is having a good fall. Heading into this weekend, Penn has five teams in first place in their league: football (tied with Brown), sprint football, men's soccer (tied with Princeton), women's soccer (tied with Columbia) and women's volleyball (tied with Princeton).
TigerBlog, in fact, was going to write a similar story last week but instead thought of Carmody. And Gary Walters, who also believes in the whammy, though not quite by that name. Instead, the Princeton Athletic Director believes in managing expectations.
You will notice that most of those Penn teams are tied for the lead, including two with Princeton. The football team at Penn is tied with Brown, whom it hosts this weekend. Men's soccer still has to play the other three top teams in the league, two of whom (Brown and Princeton) are ranked in the Top 25. The women's soccer team is tied for first, but it is really a four-team race with Penn, Columbia, Harvard and Princeton.
On the other hand, the story was a good, positive one for the Quakers, and with big home games this weekend around Homecoming in West Philadelphia, such a story can generate some pretty good excitement.
So the question then becomes, how should athletic communications offices handle such situations?
Is it okay to point out how well your teams are doing, or is that only putting extra pressure on them, setting them up to fail and giving the opponents additional motivation?
Is it okay to state the facts about where teams are in the standings, or is it better to be low-key until championships are actually won?
It's something TB has wrestled with a lot here.
As the Penn story was being written, Princeton has seven fall teams very much in the championship mix. Still, TB was hesitant to write about last week and still is, for that matter, because none of those teams has won a championship yet.
And even if, say, two or three do, if you write a story that says seven teams have a great shot at winning their league, then it appears that overall you've come up short in the end.
Back in the pre-internet days, TigerBlog was pretty sure that no Princeton athletes read the Trenton Times or any other local paper every day and therefore really didn't know much about what was being said about them.
Today, where each of Princeton's 38 sports and each of every other school's however many teams have their own page on the school's website, TB is pretty sure that every Princeton athlete and every opposing athlete reads everything.
TB also has said that he doesn't think that anything he or anyone else writes can actually influence the outcome of a game (if it could, then sports info people should be paid more), there is something to the fact that athletes and coaches take it personally if they read something that slights their team.
In general, TB likes to err on the side of caution, largely to avoid having a game end only to hear a player on the other team say something like "I read on Princeton's webpage how great they were and wanted to knock them down a little."
So good luck to Penn in its quest for championships this fall. If nothing else, there are some great races in Ivy League sports that are just heading to stretch run.
And hey, wondering whether or not to really pump up your teams during their own runs towards championships?
It's not a bad problem to have.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Howdy, Partner
One of TigerBlog's favorite websites, not surprisingly, is goprincetontigers.com.
As TB is writing, the seven stories that rotate through the main part of the front page includes one about the women's golf team. In a solid bit of scheduling, it appears that the Tigers are headed to Hawaii for fall break.
There are also stories about men's soccer, two about women's tennis, one about rowing from the Head of the Charles and one about field hockey.
And the seventh?
It's about Princeton and its renewal of its contract with Nelligan Sports Marketing.
At first glance, it appears to be a standard-issue story: Princeton and NSM have continued their partnership, and there is some basic information about both groups and the to-be-expected quotes from Director of Athletics Gary Walters and the Nelligan leadership.
Make no mistake, though. Princeton Athletics' partnership with Nelligan is huge. It's also somewhat unique - and it raises all kinds of issues about the current state of college athletics.
Nelligan is a giant in the field of collegiate sports marketing, especially in this area. From the story:
In addition to Princeton University, NSM represents some of the elite college properties in the country, including the Colonial Athletic Association and its 12 member institutions, the Horizon League, Pac-10 Conference, Patriot League, Brown University, Cal Poly, UC Santa Barbara, Cleveland State University, Colorado State University, Eastern Michigan University, Fairfield University, Florida Atlantic University, Indiana State University, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, University of Louisville, Marquette University, Middle Tennessee State University, Missouri State University, Monmouth University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Providence College, Rutgers University, University of Texas at San Antonio, West Virginia University, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, the Champs Sports Bowl, the Capital One Bowl and the Penn Relays.
What makes Princeton's situation unique - at least from most of the outlets Nelligan works with - is that the University's goal isn't to squeeze every last dollar out of its athletic corporate partnership. In fact, it's quite the opposite - Princeton is very resistant to over-commercialization of its product.
In today's sports world, almost anything goes as far as sponsorship. All you have to do is listen to a Yankees game on the radio (mercifully, you won't be able to do that for the World Series) to see what TB means. Everything - everything - it seems is sponsored, from the broadcast booth to the 15th out of the game to the pitching changes.
And none of this is unique. Pretty much everything in the world of sports works that way now.
Even the games themselves are affected by rules specific to sponsorship. Why else would paying customers have to sit through nine media timeouts at college basketball games (written into the NCAA rules, by the way) or, even way worse, the dreaded score-TV timeout-kickoff-TV timeout-play again for NFL games. If you've been to an NFL game in person, you see how it drags the whole game to a halt.
When Princeton plays a football game with TV timeouts, it never takes fewer than three hours. Without TV timeouts? In the last three weeks, Princeton played three home football games with no TV timeouts. Game times? Princeton-Colgate was played in 2:37. Princeton-Brown was 2:43. Princeton-Harvard was 2:48.
And the most amazing thing about all of this to TB is how the sporting public simply accepts this. TB isn't 100% sure when the idea of having media timeouts began, but there can be no doubt that the flow of games is better without them.
Media timeouts don't even take into account the bombarding of the senses that can go on at venues, with signs, announcements, sponsored promotions and the like.
Princeton is not immune to this reality of modern-day collegiate sports. Still, TB is sure that Princeton is at the low end of what it will tolerate and what it won't.
As a result, Princeton will sometimes have to say "no" to requests for sponsored elements that would bring in additional revenue. In that regard, Nelligan is a great partner.
It's been clear from the five years that Princeton and NSM have partnered that NSM has bought into this reality and actually embraced it for its uniqueness. The result has been win-win, as Princeton has been able to maintain a semblance of order while Nelligan has been able to be satisfied with the arrangement to the point of eagerly renewing.
At the same time, Nelligan has also brought Princeton forward in terms of corporate sponsorship and what the University is comfortable with in that area. This is also important, because it has helped Princeton develop strong relationships with local corporations and organizations in a business and community sense, without having to cede control of its athletic venues.
There will always be a segment of the Princeton fan base that views any commercialization as a bad thing, and TB understands that.
Still, Princeton Athletics is fortunate to have a partner like Nelligan Sports Marketing. The relationship has developed over the last five years to its current state, which is very positive for both sides, a rarity in business.
Of all the news on goprincetontigers.com in the last few days, the story about the renewal of this relationship might have been an afterthought to most who glanced at it.
To Princeton Athletics, it's huge.
As TB is writing, the seven stories that rotate through the main part of the front page includes one about the women's golf team. In a solid bit of scheduling, it appears that the Tigers are headed to Hawaii for fall break.
There are also stories about men's soccer, two about women's tennis, one about rowing from the Head of the Charles and one about field hockey.
And the seventh?
It's about Princeton and its renewal of its contract with Nelligan Sports Marketing.
At first glance, it appears to be a standard-issue story: Princeton and NSM have continued their partnership, and there is some basic information about both groups and the to-be-expected quotes from Director of Athletics Gary Walters and the Nelligan leadership.
Make no mistake, though. Princeton Athletics' partnership with Nelligan is huge. It's also somewhat unique - and it raises all kinds of issues about the current state of college athletics.
Nelligan is a giant in the field of collegiate sports marketing, especially in this area. From the story:
In addition to Princeton University, NSM represents some of the elite college properties in the country, including the Colonial Athletic Association and its 12 member institutions, the Horizon League, Pac-10 Conference, Patriot League, Brown University, Cal Poly, UC Santa Barbara, Cleveland State University, Colorado State University, Eastern Michigan University, Fairfield University, Florida Atlantic University, Indiana State University, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, University of Louisville, Marquette University, Middle Tennessee State University, Missouri State University, Monmouth University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Providence College, Rutgers University, University of Texas at San Antonio, West Virginia University, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, the Champs Sports Bowl, the Capital One Bowl and the Penn Relays.
What makes Princeton's situation unique - at least from most of the outlets Nelligan works with - is that the University's goal isn't to squeeze every last dollar out of its athletic corporate partnership. In fact, it's quite the opposite - Princeton is very resistant to over-commercialization of its product.
In today's sports world, almost anything goes as far as sponsorship. All you have to do is listen to a Yankees game on the radio (mercifully, you won't be able to do that for the World Series) to see what TB means. Everything - everything - it seems is sponsored, from the broadcast booth to the 15th out of the game to the pitching changes.
And none of this is unique. Pretty much everything in the world of sports works that way now.
Even the games themselves are affected by rules specific to sponsorship. Why else would paying customers have to sit through nine media timeouts at college basketball games (written into the NCAA rules, by the way) or, even way worse, the dreaded score-TV timeout-kickoff-TV timeout-play again for NFL games. If you've been to an NFL game in person, you see how it drags the whole game to a halt.
When Princeton plays a football game with TV timeouts, it never takes fewer than three hours. Without TV timeouts? In the last three weeks, Princeton played three home football games with no TV timeouts. Game times? Princeton-Colgate was played in 2:37. Princeton-Brown was 2:43. Princeton-Harvard was 2:48.
And the most amazing thing about all of this to TB is how the sporting public simply accepts this. TB isn't 100% sure when the idea of having media timeouts began, but there can be no doubt that the flow of games is better without them.
Media timeouts don't even take into account the bombarding of the senses that can go on at venues, with signs, announcements, sponsored promotions and the like.
Princeton is not immune to this reality of modern-day collegiate sports. Still, TB is sure that Princeton is at the low end of what it will tolerate and what it won't.
As a result, Princeton will sometimes have to say "no" to requests for sponsored elements that would bring in additional revenue. In that regard, Nelligan is a great partner.
It's been clear from the five years that Princeton and NSM have partnered that NSM has bought into this reality and actually embraced it for its uniqueness. The result has been win-win, as Princeton has been able to maintain a semblance of order while Nelligan has been able to be satisfied with the arrangement to the point of eagerly renewing.
At the same time, Nelligan has also brought Princeton forward in terms of corporate sponsorship and what the University is comfortable with in that area. This is also important, because it has helped Princeton develop strong relationships with local corporations and organizations in a business and community sense, without having to cede control of its athletic venues.
There will always be a segment of the Princeton fan base that views any commercialization as a bad thing, and TB understands that.
Still, Princeton Athletics is fortunate to have a partner like Nelligan Sports Marketing. The relationship has developed over the last five years to its current state, which is very positive for both sides, a rarity in business.
Of all the news on goprincetontigers.com in the last few days, the story about the renewal of this relationship might have been an afterthought to most who glanced at it.
To Princeton Athletics, it's huge.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Sunday, With A Cherry On Top
When Peter Farrell ducks his head into the OAC, it's usually followed by some funny story. It's been 17 years of this now, and the women's track and field/cross country coach hasn't run out of them yet.
So this is how it went this morning:
"Are you a baseball fan? When I was 11 and played CYO baseball, my father told me two things: Never make the last out of the season, and never strike out looking."
The Phils' Ryan Howard did both Saturday night, though in fairness to Howard, it looked like the 3-2 pitch was a bit low. Still, as Mr. Farrell said, don't strike out looking, especially to end the season.
Howard took the called third strike with two on and his team down 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth of Game 6. The result was that the Giants will play the Rangers in the World Series, a thought that has to be thrilling for Fox, which has paid a lot of money to show the event. Hey, it may turn out to be a great World Series. Will it draw big ratings? Unlikely.
So maybe Howard didn't have a great weekend. You know who did? Jim Barlow.
As a matter of fact, you can't ask for more out of a game than Barlow got against Harvard yesterday. For Barlow and Princeton men's soccer, it was a great Sunday - with a cherry on top.
It wasn't just that Princeton defeated Harvard 2-1, coming from behind after allowing a goal off a free kick in the first half to win on second-half goals from Josh Walburn and Matt Sanner three minutes apart - though the win was huge for the Tigers.
No, this was more than just getting a win. It was getting a win over a huge rival, which gave Princeton back-to-back wins over Harvard for the first time since 1999-2000.
And, it was getting that win on national television. Okay, the audience was smaller than the one that saw Howard strike out (though it might rival the one the World Series will draw), but still, those who were watching had to come away impressed with Princeton and the facility.
Certainly the announcers were, including color man Taylor Twellman, formerly of the U.S. national team.
TigerBlog was going to go to the game, but he decided instead to watch in on ESPNU to get the full effect of how the game played on television. It was a great decision.
For starters, it wasn't something that you ordinarily can do, so why not see Princeton from that perspective.
As the game unfolded, it turned into almost an advertisement for the program and facility.
Princeton worked with ESPNU to ensure that the cameras were on the far side of the field shooting into the stands, rather than on the press box side shooting into the benches with a background of the turf practice field, which doesn't capture the true feel of the stadium.
ESPNU obliged and then set its announcers up in the end zone, giving them a different view of the play. ESPNU also set a camera up high behind the end zone, so the TV audience was given the wide angle view as well. For the announcers, it worked out pretty well, as all three goals were scored into the goal directly in front of them.
TB isn't sure where you were yesterday, but if you were in the Central Jersey area, you couldn't beat the weather, which reached the low 70s with low humidity and brilliant sunshine.
The day led to awesome looks at the campus and Nassau Street through numerous cut-aways by ESPNU. And the on-air guys? They couldn't say enough great things about the campus, the stadium, the coaching, the players.
There were a ton of references to the fact that the U.S. national team trained there before the World Cup, and there was a halftime feature with video of the Americans at Roberts Stadium.
And, of course, in the end, it was a win, Princeton's ninth in a row.
The result is that Princeton and Penn are now 4-0-0 in the league, followed by Brown at 2-1-1 and Harvard at 1-1-2. Both Brown and Harvard have suffered their only league loss (and in Brown's case, only loss period) to Princeton.
Princeton and Penn meet on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium in two weeks, after Princeton is at Cornell and Penn is home against Brown. Penn also has to play Harvard, while Princeton's final league game is against Yale.
Men's soccer is a sport where it's hard to run the table in the Ivy League, and the season is one week past the halfway point. The stretch run could be a great one for Princeton, or the depth and strength of Ivy soccer could catch up to the Tigers.
Not to jinx anyone, but Princeton, with a rising RPI, is in great shape for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament if it doesn't win the league's automatic bid. Last year, four Ivy teams played in the NCAAs, and Princeton, Penn and Brown seem to be in line at least this year. Should Princeton go to the NCAA tournament, it would be the eighth time that the Tigers did so - but the first time in program history that they would be there in consecutive years.
Whatever happens, that's for the next few weeks. For today, with nearly a full week until the game at Cornell, Jim Barlow can smile a big smile at what his team did yesterday.
It was a perfect game to watch on TV. Through the eyes of the head coach, it had to be even better than that.
So this is how it went this morning:
"Are you a baseball fan? When I was 11 and played CYO baseball, my father told me two things: Never make the last out of the season, and never strike out looking."
The Phils' Ryan Howard did both Saturday night, though in fairness to Howard, it looked like the 3-2 pitch was a bit low. Still, as Mr. Farrell said, don't strike out looking, especially to end the season.
Howard took the called third strike with two on and his team down 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth of Game 6. The result was that the Giants will play the Rangers in the World Series, a thought that has to be thrilling for Fox, which has paid a lot of money to show the event. Hey, it may turn out to be a great World Series. Will it draw big ratings? Unlikely.
So maybe Howard didn't have a great weekend. You know who did? Jim Barlow.
As a matter of fact, you can't ask for more out of a game than Barlow got against Harvard yesterday. For Barlow and Princeton men's soccer, it was a great Sunday - with a cherry on top.
It wasn't just that Princeton defeated Harvard 2-1, coming from behind after allowing a goal off a free kick in the first half to win on second-half goals from Josh Walburn and Matt Sanner three minutes apart - though the win was huge for the Tigers.
No, this was more than just getting a win. It was getting a win over a huge rival, which gave Princeton back-to-back wins over Harvard for the first time since 1999-2000.
And, it was getting that win on national television. Okay, the audience was smaller than the one that saw Howard strike out (though it might rival the one the World Series will draw), but still, those who were watching had to come away impressed with Princeton and the facility.
Certainly the announcers were, including color man Taylor Twellman, formerly of the U.S. national team.
TigerBlog was going to go to the game, but he decided instead to watch in on ESPNU to get the full effect of how the game played on television. It was a great decision.
For starters, it wasn't something that you ordinarily can do, so why not see Princeton from that perspective.
As the game unfolded, it turned into almost an advertisement for the program and facility.
Princeton worked with ESPNU to ensure that the cameras were on the far side of the field shooting into the stands, rather than on the press box side shooting into the benches with a background of the turf practice field, which doesn't capture the true feel of the stadium.
ESPNU obliged and then set its announcers up in the end zone, giving them a different view of the play. ESPNU also set a camera up high behind the end zone, so the TV audience was given the wide angle view as well. For the announcers, it worked out pretty well, as all three goals were scored into the goal directly in front of them.
TB isn't sure where you were yesterday, but if you were in the Central Jersey area, you couldn't beat the weather, which reached the low 70s with low humidity and brilliant sunshine.
The day led to awesome looks at the campus and Nassau Street through numerous cut-aways by ESPNU. And the on-air guys? They couldn't say enough great things about the campus, the stadium, the coaching, the players.
There were a ton of references to the fact that the U.S. national team trained there before the World Cup, and there was a halftime feature with video of the Americans at Roberts Stadium.
And, of course, in the end, it was a win, Princeton's ninth in a row.
The result is that Princeton and Penn are now 4-0-0 in the league, followed by Brown at 2-1-1 and Harvard at 1-1-2. Both Brown and Harvard have suffered their only league loss (and in Brown's case, only loss period) to Princeton.
Princeton and Penn meet on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium in two weeks, after Princeton is at Cornell and Penn is home against Brown. Penn also has to play Harvard, while Princeton's final league game is against Yale.
Men's soccer is a sport where it's hard to run the table in the Ivy League, and the season is one week past the halfway point. The stretch run could be a great one for Princeton, or the depth and strength of Ivy soccer could catch up to the Tigers.
Not to jinx anyone, but Princeton, with a rising RPI, is in great shape for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament if it doesn't win the league's automatic bid. Last year, four Ivy teams played in the NCAAs, and Princeton, Penn and Brown seem to be in line at least this year. Should Princeton go to the NCAA tournament, it would be the eighth time that the Tigers did so - but the first time in program history that they would be there in consecutive years.
Whatever happens, that's for the next few weeks. For today, with nearly a full week until the game at Cornell, Jim Barlow can smile a big smile at what his team did yesterday.
It was a perfect game to watch on TV. Through the eyes of the head coach, it had to be even better than that.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Rooting For The Tigers - And Texas
TigerBlog listened to enough sports talk radio last week to get the basic point of Yankees' fans, who were aghast at the idea of having to pitch A.J. Burnett in the American League Championship Series.
How could the Yankees be stuck with such a terrible option, they all wondered? And how best to hide him? Should he be sacrificed against Cliff Lee in Game 3, even if it meant messing up the rest of the rotation for the series, or should he pitch Game 4, even if that meant that Texas would have a huge edge in Game 3 with Lee and Game 4 against Burnett.
The idea that Burnett might actually win never came up. The only issue was that Burnett was unworthy of starting a game for the Yankees.
And what did TigerBlog end up screaming at the radio? Five years, $82.5 million.
This is Year 2 of that deal for Burnett, whose 2010 salary is $16,500,000. Tommy Hunter, who started for Texas in Game 4 against Burnett, has a 2010 salary of $409,500.
It's stuff like that that fuels the anti-Yankee sentiment of people like TB. It's not just that the Yankees can throw money at big-name players that other teams can't dream of doing; it's that it doesn't matter if they're wrong about those players. They just eat that contract and move on to the next.
By the way, where do you think Lee is going to be pitching next season?
As one caller said when calling WFAN, how hard is it to be the Yankees' GM, who has limitless resources and hasn't had to worry about second, short, third, catcher and closer for years now?
Bill Simmons, on ESPN.com Page 2, once said that rooting for the Yankees "is like rooting for the house in black jack."
TB does know several Yankees fans, including one who happens to be the head football coach at Princeton.
Bob Surace grew up in South Jersey, in the heart of Phillies/Eagles' country. His father, though, was a long, long time Yankees fan.
How much of a fan? Well, he named one of his children "Mickey Charles Surace," after "Mickey Charles Mantle."
Tragically, Mickey Charles Surace died at the age of seven months, something that TB never knew about Bob Surace.
Still, the Yankee gene was passed from his father, and Surace was rolling his eyes after Game 4, when the Rangers built their 3-1 lead in the series. Things got a little better for the Yankees Wednesday when they made it 3-2, with Game 6 tonight and Game 7 (hopefully not necessary) tomorrow.
Surace will be busy with his own game this weekend, as he goes through his first Princeton-Harvard game as a head coach. He did go 2-1 against the Crimson as a player, with wins his junior and senior years.
The football game is one of four between Princeton and Harvard this weekend on campus. It's a busy weekend for Princeton athletics, with a schedule like this (the only home event with an admission charge is football):
* the men's hockey team hosts Morrisville State, a Division III team, in its final exhibition game tomorrow at 4 at Baker Rink. The regular season begins next weekend with a four-team tournament in New Haven featuring Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown and Yale; all four will play two games that will count towards their records but won't count towards their league records.
* the women's hockey team plays its first real games this weekend, at Northeastern tonight and at Providence tomorrow
* the women's tennis team competes at the ITA regionals at Dartmouth
* the rowing teams compete at the Head of the Charles in Boston. If you're in the area and want to see a sporting spectacular, check out the pageantry of that event.
* the men's water polo team inches closer to the Southern Championships and the Eastern Championships when it takes on Iona at 11 and George Washington at 5 at DeNunzio Pool tomorrow
* sprint football is at Navy tonight. It's asking a lot to expect the Tigers to beat Navy, something that hasn't happened in 12 years. TigerBlog does know someone who feels that Princeton's best chance at a sprint football win is against one of the established teams, rather than the newcomers, because the established teams could be looking past Princeton.
* the women's volleyball team is 5-0 in the league as it heads to Columbia and Cornell. The Tigers are the only undefeated team at this point, but Penn has won four straight since its opening loss to Princeton. This race seems likely to go the end, when Princeton and Penn have their rematch.
* the field hockey team is playing the toughest non-league schedule in the country, something that should have the Tigers pretty well toughened up by the NCAA tournament. As for the Ivy League, Yale is 3-1 and tied for second - but the Bulldogs have been outscored 10-7 in the league. Why? Three wins by a combined four goals, plus a 7-0 loss to Princeton. Cornell is also 3-1, with its loss to Yale; the Tigers are at Cornell next weekend, after they host Harvard tomorrow (noon) and then play at Penn State Sunday. Princeton finishes the regular season with Penn.
* the football team will be playing its first full game without injured quarterback Tommy Wornham, who broke his collarbone last week against Brown. Princeton used three quarterbacks against the Bears after Wornham was hurt; a full week of practice at the position will be a huge plus. Princeton and Harvard meet for the 104th time in the 12th-most played rivalry in the FCS, though Harvard has played Yale, Dartmouth and Brown more than its played Princeton, and Princeton has played Yale more than its played Harvard.
* Princeton and Harvard meet at 5 in women's soccer tomorrow on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. Princeton is in second place entering the weekend, one point behind Columbia, who hosts Dartmouth. Harvard is 5-6-1 overall and 2-2 in the league, but no women's soccer game against the Crimson is ever easy.
* the men's soccer game will be played Sunday at 5 and can be seen on ESPNU. Princeton is one of three Ivy League schools ranked in the NSCAA Top 25 this week, along with Penn and Brown. The Ivy standings right now have Princeton and Penn at 3-0-0, followed by Harvard at 1-0-2.
How could the Yankees be stuck with such a terrible option, they all wondered? And how best to hide him? Should he be sacrificed against Cliff Lee in Game 3, even if it meant messing up the rest of the rotation for the series, or should he pitch Game 4, even if that meant that Texas would have a huge edge in Game 3 with Lee and Game 4 against Burnett.
The idea that Burnett might actually win never came up. The only issue was that Burnett was unworthy of starting a game for the Yankees.
And what did TigerBlog end up screaming at the radio? Five years, $82.5 million.
This is Year 2 of that deal for Burnett, whose 2010 salary is $16,500,000. Tommy Hunter, who started for Texas in Game 4 against Burnett, has a 2010 salary of $409,500.
It's stuff like that that fuels the anti-Yankee sentiment of people like TB. It's not just that the Yankees can throw money at big-name players that other teams can't dream of doing; it's that it doesn't matter if they're wrong about those players. They just eat that contract and move on to the next.
By the way, where do you think Lee is going to be pitching next season?
As one caller said when calling WFAN, how hard is it to be the Yankees' GM, who has limitless resources and hasn't had to worry about second, short, third, catcher and closer for years now?
Bill Simmons, on ESPN.com Page 2, once said that rooting for the Yankees "is like rooting for the house in black jack."
TB does know several Yankees fans, including one who happens to be the head football coach at Princeton.
Bob Surace grew up in South Jersey, in the heart of Phillies/Eagles' country. His father, though, was a long, long time Yankees fan.
How much of a fan? Well, he named one of his children "Mickey Charles Surace," after "Mickey Charles Mantle."
Tragically, Mickey Charles Surace died at the age of seven months, something that TB never knew about Bob Surace.
Still, the Yankee gene was passed from his father, and Surace was rolling his eyes after Game 4, when the Rangers built their 3-1 lead in the series. Things got a little better for the Yankees Wednesday when they made it 3-2, with Game 6 tonight and Game 7 (hopefully not necessary) tomorrow.
Surace will be busy with his own game this weekend, as he goes through his first Princeton-Harvard game as a head coach. He did go 2-1 against the Crimson as a player, with wins his junior and senior years.
The football game is one of four between Princeton and Harvard this weekend on campus. It's a busy weekend for Princeton athletics, with a schedule like this (the only home event with an admission charge is football):
* the men's hockey team hosts Morrisville State, a Division III team, in its final exhibition game tomorrow at 4 at Baker Rink. The regular season begins next weekend with a four-team tournament in New Haven featuring Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown and Yale; all four will play two games that will count towards their records but won't count towards their league records.
* the women's hockey team plays its first real games this weekend, at Northeastern tonight and at Providence tomorrow
* the women's tennis team competes at the ITA regionals at Dartmouth
* the rowing teams compete at the Head of the Charles in Boston. If you're in the area and want to see a sporting spectacular, check out the pageantry of that event.
* the men's water polo team inches closer to the Southern Championships and the Eastern Championships when it takes on Iona at 11 and George Washington at 5 at DeNunzio Pool tomorrow
* sprint football is at Navy tonight. It's asking a lot to expect the Tigers to beat Navy, something that hasn't happened in 12 years. TigerBlog does know someone who feels that Princeton's best chance at a sprint football win is against one of the established teams, rather than the newcomers, because the established teams could be looking past Princeton.
* the women's volleyball team is 5-0 in the league as it heads to Columbia and Cornell. The Tigers are the only undefeated team at this point, but Penn has won four straight since its opening loss to Princeton. This race seems likely to go the end, when Princeton and Penn have their rematch.
* the field hockey team is playing the toughest non-league schedule in the country, something that should have the Tigers pretty well toughened up by the NCAA tournament. As for the Ivy League, Yale is 3-1 and tied for second - but the Bulldogs have been outscored 10-7 in the league. Why? Three wins by a combined four goals, plus a 7-0 loss to Princeton. Cornell is also 3-1, with its loss to Yale; the Tigers are at Cornell next weekend, after they host Harvard tomorrow (noon) and then play at Penn State Sunday. Princeton finishes the regular season with Penn.
* the football team will be playing its first full game without injured quarterback Tommy Wornham, who broke his collarbone last week against Brown. Princeton used three quarterbacks against the Bears after Wornham was hurt; a full week of practice at the position will be a huge plus. Princeton and Harvard meet for the 104th time in the 12th-most played rivalry in the FCS, though Harvard has played Yale, Dartmouth and Brown more than its played Princeton, and Princeton has played Yale more than its played Harvard.
* Princeton and Harvard meet at 5 in women's soccer tomorrow on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. Princeton is in second place entering the weekend, one point behind Columbia, who hosts Dartmouth. Harvard is 5-6-1 overall and 2-2 in the league, but no women's soccer game against the Crimson is ever easy.
* the men's soccer game will be played Sunday at 5 and can be seen on ESPNU. Princeton is one of three Ivy League schools ranked in the NSCAA Top 25 this week, along with Penn and Brown. The Ivy standings right now have Princeton and Penn at 3-0-0, followed by Harvard at 1-0-2.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Gently Down The Stream
TigerBlog used to live with a guy named Jim Chesko, who at various times was the color commentator for Princeton basketball and the PA announcer at Princeton football.
Chesko was a human DVR back in those days, as he would set his multiple VCRs to record multiple television shows, edit out the commercials and then watch them. It was revolutionary stuff at the time, back when he had a library's worth of "Seinfeld" and "Friends" and "The Gary Shandling Show" and others.
Chesko and TB lived in a row house in South Trenton, on Chestnut Avenue near DeKlyn Avenue. It was a nice, quiet place, with a little grassy yard in the back.
It was also a short walk from there to a vacant area on the Trenton waterfront that, shortly before TB left, started to be populated by cranes and construction vehicles. It was on that spot that Mercer County Waterfront Park - the home of the Double-A Trenton Thunder - was built.
TB was completely certain that the entire idea was headed for disaster. When Tom McCarthy left the Trenton Times to go work for the Thunder, TB told him that it was a mistake, since the team couldn't possibly succeed in Trenton.
Build a stadium there? Expect people to come into Trenton at night? Whose idea was this? The alternate idea at the time was to build the stadium in West Windsor's Mercer County Park, but the Mercer County executive at the time (as TB remembers it) was the driving force behind the Trenton site.
TB was not alone in thinking that this would never work; his Trenton Times colleagues at the time Harvey Yavener and Mark Eckel were also certain.
So what happened? Well, nearly 20 years and millions and millions of fans later, the franchise has turned into a model for both minor league baseball and small, local business. TigerBlog has never been more wrong.
Of course, he was just as certain a few years ago that Princeton athletics had no sustainable way of bringing live and archived video to the fans who are interested in watching it.
Now, a few years later, TB would say that this is the single biggest challenge that Princeton has in athletic communications.
The basic history is that a long time ago, Princeton figured out that it could get the TV feed for football and men's basketball from the old cable company (it was called C-Tec back then) onto its webpage, back when it was princeton.edu/athletics and not goprincetontigers.com.
After years of not having any sustained video effort, the current video model began to evolve in something known as TigerZone off of goprincetontigers.com. Today, all of this is housed on goprincetontigers.tv.
The tv site has live and archived game video, as well as original content that is created through athletic communications and marketing. Those original pieces (interviews, features, bios, facility tours) have been extraordinarily well-received, and TB isn't talking about those when he talks about the problems with video, only with the live and archived.
To videostream a game, all you need is a camera, a laptop and an internet connection (preferably an ethernet connection rather than wireless). All you do is plug the camera into the laptop and away you go.
It also became apparent early on that you could stream multiple sports at the same time.
At first, all of this seemed like a great thing. Parents and friends and such could now watch the games whereas before there would possibly be livestats or audio. And now it was video, right there to see.
And then the list of obvious problems began to materialize:
* web providers viewed streaming as a revenue source, so it became necessary to charge a subscription fee. Once a fee is charged, no matter how small, the level of expectation of the viewer goes way up.
* the feed that is usually being shown is from the coaches' camera, which is usually being handled by an injured player or team manager. The entire feed consists of one camera that never changes position, with no replays or multiple camera looks.
* for the majority of games that are streamed, there is no audio, and it's often difficult for the viewer to know what point the game is at, what the score is, etc.
* there is nobody at Princeton who is a designated video person. This means that either an assistant coach or a member of the marketing staff or both have to coordinate having the laptop in the right place, making sure the computer is connected and anything else that is involved in getting a videostream going.
* multiply this by the number of sports that want to stream their events.
* all subscription information is done through neulion, not through Princeton.
* and the biggest problem is that there is no way of troubleshooting during a game if something does go wrong, because the resources here don't permit us to have a video coordinator. Instead, if the marketing staff has set up the game with the assistant coach, then they're both busy once the game starts - or often times, the marketing staff doesn't remain at the game.
When Princeton has a game on Verizon Fios TV, it's able to take that feed and stream it directly. This results in multiple cameras, announcers, graphics and such and makes the presentation immeasurably better.
Unfortunately, Verizon Fios TV only does a handful of games.
The result of all of this is that demand for video far exceeds our ability to supply a high quality product at this point.
Goprincetontigers.com has a feedback section, and the overwhelming number of them refer to video efforts. Most of those are about subscription issues, but many are technical as well.
People are used to watching sports on television. When videostreaming first started, the attitude was something of "hey, this is great; it's way better than nothing."
That attitude is no longer true. Now, there is a much higher level of expectation for the quality and reliability.
Here at Princeton, there are no plans to add additional staff. The challenge - our biggest, actually - is to figure out how to meet the demand.
Chesko was a human DVR back in those days, as he would set his multiple VCRs to record multiple television shows, edit out the commercials and then watch them. It was revolutionary stuff at the time, back when he had a library's worth of "Seinfeld" and "Friends" and "The Gary Shandling Show" and others.
Chesko and TB lived in a row house in South Trenton, on Chestnut Avenue near DeKlyn Avenue. It was a nice, quiet place, with a little grassy yard in the back.
It was also a short walk from there to a vacant area on the Trenton waterfront that, shortly before TB left, started to be populated by cranes and construction vehicles. It was on that spot that Mercer County Waterfront Park - the home of the Double-A Trenton Thunder - was built.
TB was completely certain that the entire idea was headed for disaster. When Tom McCarthy left the Trenton Times to go work for the Thunder, TB told him that it was a mistake, since the team couldn't possibly succeed in Trenton.
Build a stadium there? Expect people to come into Trenton at night? Whose idea was this? The alternate idea at the time was to build the stadium in West Windsor's Mercer County Park, but the Mercer County executive at the time (as TB remembers it) was the driving force behind the Trenton site.
TB was not alone in thinking that this would never work; his Trenton Times colleagues at the time Harvey Yavener and Mark Eckel were also certain.
So what happened? Well, nearly 20 years and millions and millions of fans later, the franchise has turned into a model for both minor league baseball and small, local business. TigerBlog has never been more wrong.
Of course, he was just as certain a few years ago that Princeton athletics had no sustainable way of bringing live and archived video to the fans who are interested in watching it.
Now, a few years later, TB would say that this is the single biggest challenge that Princeton has in athletic communications.
The basic history is that a long time ago, Princeton figured out that it could get the TV feed for football and men's basketball from the old cable company (it was called C-Tec back then) onto its webpage, back when it was princeton.edu/athletics and not goprincetontigers.com.
After years of not having any sustained video effort, the current video model began to evolve in something known as TigerZone off of goprincetontigers.com. Today, all of this is housed on goprincetontigers.tv.
The tv site has live and archived game video, as well as original content that is created through athletic communications and marketing. Those original pieces (interviews, features, bios, facility tours) have been extraordinarily well-received, and TB isn't talking about those when he talks about the problems with video, only with the live and archived.
To videostream a game, all you need is a camera, a laptop and an internet connection (preferably an ethernet connection rather than wireless). All you do is plug the camera into the laptop and away you go.
It also became apparent early on that you could stream multiple sports at the same time.
At first, all of this seemed like a great thing. Parents and friends and such could now watch the games whereas before there would possibly be livestats or audio. And now it was video, right there to see.
And then the list of obvious problems began to materialize:
* web providers viewed streaming as a revenue source, so it became necessary to charge a subscription fee. Once a fee is charged, no matter how small, the level of expectation of the viewer goes way up.
* the feed that is usually being shown is from the coaches' camera, which is usually being handled by an injured player or team manager. The entire feed consists of one camera that never changes position, with no replays or multiple camera looks.
* for the majority of games that are streamed, there is no audio, and it's often difficult for the viewer to know what point the game is at, what the score is, etc.
* there is nobody at Princeton who is a designated video person. This means that either an assistant coach or a member of the marketing staff or both have to coordinate having the laptop in the right place, making sure the computer is connected and anything else that is involved in getting a videostream going.
* multiply this by the number of sports that want to stream their events.
* all subscription information is done through neulion, not through Princeton.
* and the biggest problem is that there is no way of troubleshooting during a game if something does go wrong, because the resources here don't permit us to have a video coordinator. Instead, if the marketing staff has set up the game with the assistant coach, then they're both busy once the game starts - or often times, the marketing staff doesn't remain at the game.
When Princeton has a game on Verizon Fios TV, it's able to take that feed and stream it directly. This results in multiple cameras, announcers, graphics and such and makes the presentation immeasurably better.
Unfortunately, Verizon Fios TV only does a handful of games.
The result of all of this is that demand for video far exceeds our ability to supply a high quality product at this point.
Goprincetontigers.com has a feedback section, and the overwhelming number of them refer to video efforts. Most of those are about subscription issues, but many are technical as well.
People are used to watching sports on television. When videostreaming first started, the attitude was something of "hey, this is great; it's way better than nothing."
That attitude is no longer true. Now, there is a much higher level of expectation for the quality and reliability.
Here at Princeton, there are no plans to add additional staff. The challenge - our biggest, actually - is to figure out how to meet the demand.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Games Gone Wrong
TigerBlog saw a story this morning about how the NFL had been selling photos on its website of a hit that James Harrison of the Steelers put on Mohamed Massaquoi of the Browns last Sunday, a hit that drew no penalty flag but did contribute to a $75,000 fine against Harrison.
And there, TigerBlog said immediately, is the whole problem with football right now.
The issue of big defensive-player-as-missile hits would go away right now if the NFL decided it really wanted it to. Unfortunately, there's little evidence to suggest that's the case.
Instead, the opposite continues to be true. The NFL loves the violence because it sells, from TV ratings to video games to pictures on its own website.
It you watch professional football today compared with 20 or so years ago and longer, you'll see among other things the fact that nobody is trying to tackle anymore by putting his shoulder into the ball carriers chest and wrapping him up. Today, your average defensive player doesn't use his arms at all and instead tries to hit the ball carrier as hard as possible (the first player TB remembers doing this was San Francisco's Ronnie Lott). This often results in leading with the helmet.
And then this is what happens:
1) the TV commentators jump all over it as being spectacular, talking in glowing terms about the hit itself while showing numerous replays
2) the hit ends up on SportsCenter and every other highlight show
3) college players see this and figure that's how you have to play to get to the NFL or to get on TV
4) high school and youth kids emulate this
And all of this is so unnecessary, because the NFL could make it stop in one second by 1) strictly enforcing the existing helmet-to-helmet rules and the rule about defenseless wide receivers and 2) by suspending those who make these hits.
This past weekend seemed to be particularly violent in the NFL, especially with the two hits by Harrison and the stunning collision between Atlanta's Dunta Robinson and Philadelphia's DeSean Jackson.
And it seemed like the NFL was about to start taking it seriously - and maybe the NFL still is - with the stories about coming suspensions for such hits. But then TB saw the story about the Harrison picture, and that brought him back to the reality that there is money to be made from those kinds of hits.
Call TigerBlog cynical, but he doesn't accept the NFL's explanation that it made a "mistake" in having the Harrison picture for sale.
An hour north of where TB is writing this, Rutgers football player Eric LeGrand is in a hospital bed, paralyzed from the neck down after making a tackle on a kickoff against Army last Saturday. Hopefully LeGrand will make the same sort of progress that Kevin Everett and Adam Tagliaferro were able to make after they were in the same place that LeGrand is now and be able to walk again.
TigerBlog has been impressed by the way Rutgers has handled the LeGrand injury, a situation that is horrible all the way around.
TB today got an email from Mike Cross, who is nearing the one-year mark of his tenure as Director of Athletics at Bradley after spending 10 years working here at Princeton. Included in the email was a reference to a Bradley baseball player, Phil Kaiser, who died Sunday night from an undetected heart ailment.
When you get into the college athletics business, you know that you're going to be working with people who are young and in the peak of health and physical prowess. At its best moments, working in college athletics puts you around people who are devoted to fitness and teamwork, people who awe you with their pure athleticism.
For the majority of college athletes, there is also a true balance between student and athlete, between a healthy mind and a healthy body.
TB has seen it here at Princeton for decades, and still after all this time he is awed by the people he sees here. In many ways, they seem indestructible.
And yet, every now and then, there are worst-case scenarios that have to be dealt with. Sadly, TB has seen it first-hand here, as Princeton athletics has not been immune to tragedy, with athletes, young alums and young colleagues.
It hasn't been easy any of those times. In the end, TB has mostly been left to think about the randomness of it, the sadness of it, the unfairness of it.
You work in college athletics to have an impact on the lives of these young people. If you're lucky, you also get to be there when they have the big wins, the championship experiences, the glory days that nobody will ever forget.
That's why Mike Cross went to Bradley, to help the athletes there have those kinds of moments. And less than a year later, he finds himself in the middle of a tragedy nobody could have anticipated.
And suddenly, he has to deal with it, taking the emotional lead for his department and University.
There's no way to properly prepare yourself for it, and it's an awful experience to have to go through.
It's even worse when it's preventable. The NFL has played with fire for years with the violence in its sport, and worse - it's allowed that violence to trickle down to the kids who play the game.
TB wishes the best to Eric LeGrand and his family and to Phil Kaiser and his family, as well as all of their friends.
He also gives the people at Rutgers and Bradley his best for having to handle these situations and huge credit for how they have.
We're all in this for the fun and games, but unfortunately, that's not always what life is about.
And there, TigerBlog said immediately, is the whole problem with football right now.
The issue of big defensive-player-as-missile hits would go away right now if the NFL decided it really wanted it to. Unfortunately, there's little evidence to suggest that's the case.
Instead, the opposite continues to be true. The NFL loves the violence because it sells, from TV ratings to video games to pictures on its own website.
It you watch professional football today compared with 20 or so years ago and longer, you'll see among other things the fact that nobody is trying to tackle anymore by putting his shoulder into the ball carriers chest and wrapping him up. Today, your average defensive player doesn't use his arms at all and instead tries to hit the ball carrier as hard as possible (the first player TB remembers doing this was San Francisco's Ronnie Lott). This often results in leading with the helmet.
And then this is what happens:
1) the TV commentators jump all over it as being spectacular, talking in glowing terms about the hit itself while showing numerous replays
2) the hit ends up on SportsCenter and every other highlight show
3) college players see this and figure that's how you have to play to get to the NFL or to get on TV
4) high school and youth kids emulate this
And all of this is so unnecessary, because the NFL could make it stop in one second by 1) strictly enforcing the existing helmet-to-helmet rules and the rule about defenseless wide receivers and 2) by suspending those who make these hits.
This past weekend seemed to be particularly violent in the NFL, especially with the two hits by Harrison and the stunning collision between Atlanta's Dunta Robinson and Philadelphia's DeSean Jackson.
And it seemed like the NFL was about to start taking it seriously - and maybe the NFL still is - with the stories about coming suspensions for such hits. But then TB saw the story about the Harrison picture, and that brought him back to the reality that there is money to be made from those kinds of hits.
Call TigerBlog cynical, but he doesn't accept the NFL's explanation that it made a "mistake" in having the Harrison picture for sale.
An hour north of where TB is writing this, Rutgers football player Eric LeGrand is in a hospital bed, paralyzed from the neck down after making a tackle on a kickoff against Army last Saturday. Hopefully LeGrand will make the same sort of progress that Kevin Everett and Adam Tagliaferro were able to make after they were in the same place that LeGrand is now and be able to walk again.
TigerBlog has been impressed by the way Rutgers has handled the LeGrand injury, a situation that is horrible all the way around.
TB today got an email from Mike Cross, who is nearing the one-year mark of his tenure as Director of Athletics at Bradley after spending 10 years working here at Princeton. Included in the email was a reference to a Bradley baseball player, Phil Kaiser, who died Sunday night from an undetected heart ailment.
When you get into the college athletics business, you know that you're going to be working with people who are young and in the peak of health and physical prowess. At its best moments, working in college athletics puts you around people who are devoted to fitness and teamwork, people who awe you with their pure athleticism.
For the majority of college athletes, there is also a true balance between student and athlete, between a healthy mind and a healthy body.
TB has seen it here at Princeton for decades, and still after all this time he is awed by the people he sees here. In many ways, they seem indestructible.
And yet, every now and then, there are worst-case scenarios that have to be dealt with. Sadly, TB has seen it first-hand here, as Princeton athletics has not been immune to tragedy, with athletes, young alums and young colleagues.
It hasn't been easy any of those times. In the end, TB has mostly been left to think about the randomness of it, the sadness of it, the unfairness of it.
You work in college athletics to have an impact on the lives of these young people. If you're lucky, you also get to be there when they have the big wins, the championship experiences, the glory days that nobody will ever forget.
That's why Mike Cross went to Bradley, to help the athletes there have those kinds of moments. And less than a year later, he finds himself in the middle of a tragedy nobody could have anticipated.
And suddenly, he has to deal with it, taking the emotional lead for his department and University.
There's no way to properly prepare yourself for it, and it's an awful experience to have to go through.
It's even worse when it's preventable. The NFL has played with fire for years with the violence in its sport, and worse - it's allowed that violence to trickle down to the kids who play the game.
TB wishes the best to Eric LeGrand and his family and to Phil Kaiser and his family, as well as all of their friends.
He also gives the people at Rutgers and Bradley his best for having to handle these situations and huge credit for how they have.
We're all in this for the fun and games, but unfortunately, that's not always what life is about.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
The Worldwide Leader At Roberts Stadium
When TigerBlog was a kid, PBS used to have a weekly college hockey game on each Saturday. TB was fascinated by the broadcasts, which he sometimes watched on the tiny black-and-white TV that was in the room he shared with BrotherBlog.
For whatever reason, TB remembers that it always seemed like New Hampshire was one of the teams playing.
Back then, college sports on television were almost completely limited to football and men's basketball. And those sports were pretty limited in their distribution, with very few games on each weekend.
TB grew up halfway between Philadelphia and New York City (though he went to New York 100 times for every time he went to Philadelphia), and he was able to get the TV stations from both cities. Not on his cable system, of course, because there was no such thing as cable TV yet, at least until he was in high school.
Getting the channels of both meant actually walking over to the TV and changing the channel knob, to either channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9 or 11 from New York or 3, 6, 10, 17, 29 or 48 from Philadelphia. There were also public TV options - 12 and 13 were the New York and Philly PBS channels, and 23 and 52 were New Jersey's.
TB remembers watching the Mets, Knicks, Rangers and Nets (from the ABA) on Channel 9 and the Yankees on Channel 11. Home games for basketball and hockey were never televised.
Of course, there were also Big Five doubleheaders from the Palestra on Channel 48.
Back then, the highlight shows were the best part of watching sports, especially football. "This Week In Pro Football," with Tom Brookshier and Pat Summerall and its distinctive music, was a must-see every week.
As for college football, TB remembers a Game of the Week show that would focus on the top two or three games and would run Sundays at noon, before the NFL games started.
As for live games, there were a few, but not many.
Fast forward to today, and obviously it's all different. There were about 25 college football games on TB's cable system this past Saturday, and that doesn't include the additional games that are on Thursdays, Fridays and even Wednesdays.
When college basketball season starts, it'll be even more saturated, with about a million games on every night. More, of course, does not necessary equate to better; at some point, it all starts to look alike.
Princeton has a contract with ESPN to show a minimum of seven home events per year. It's a very nice situation for us to be in, especially since it gives us a chance to showcase a variety of teams.
TigerBlog starts each year working with ESPN on the schedule of events. This year, we were unable to make a football game work, after having one on for four straight years.
The ESPN people have long ago made it clear that their two favorite sports from Princeton are men's hockey and men's lacrosse, which fit in nicely with the big picture of their programming.
Still, they have been open to some other things, like, for instance, the first event of this year that was televised, men's water polo vs. Santa Barbara.
The next event will be this Sunday at 5, when the men's soccer game against Harvard will be shown (on ESPNU).
Early on, TB tried to sell ESPN on the idea of 1) televising a game on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium and 2) putting the cameras on the field turf side to shoot into the stands, so as to show off the facility. This year, he was successful on both counts.
The game itself is a huge one for the Ivy League men's soccer race.
Princeton and Penn are currently 3-0-0 each, while Harvard is in third at 1-0-2 after a scoreless tie with Brown last weekend. In Ivy League soccer, three points are awarded for a win and one for a tie, so technically Princeton and Penn have nine points, Harvard has five and Brown has four.
The Tigers will enter the TV game on a seven-game winning streak and with exactly three goals scored in each of the seven games. To put that in perspective, Princeton has scored 21 goals in its last seven games; it scored 21 for the entire 2008 season and 20 for the entire 2007 season, both of which were 17 games.
Penn still has games against Princeton, Brown and Harvard. Brown is still the highest ranked Ivy school.
It's unlikely Princeton or Penn will run the table. It's also likely that three or even four Ivy schools will get NCAA tournament bids, as Ivy men's soccer is among the most competitive of all league sports.
ESPNU chose the game in part to be a good partner with Princeton, but the result is a fairly strong matchup.
TB never could have envisioned back when he was a kid that an all-sports network would grow to what it has become and that sports like college soccer and water polo would be able to be seen on regular TV.
Still, that's where the world has gone, and it's been great for Princeton.
So watch your 25 college football games on Saturday. Then tune in for a big college soccer game, Sunday at 5.
For whatever reason, TB remembers that it always seemed like New Hampshire was one of the teams playing.
Back then, college sports on television were almost completely limited to football and men's basketball. And those sports were pretty limited in their distribution, with very few games on each weekend.
TB grew up halfway between Philadelphia and New York City (though he went to New York 100 times for every time he went to Philadelphia), and he was able to get the TV stations from both cities. Not on his cable system, of course, because there was no such thing as cable TV yet, at least until he was in high school.
Getting the channels of both meant actually walking over to the TV and changing the channel knob, to either channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9 or 11 from New York or 3, 6, 10, 17, 29 or 48 from Philadelphia. There were also public TV options - 12 and 13 were the New York and Philly PBS channels, and 23 and 52 were New Jersey's.
TB remembers watching the Mets, Knicks, Rangers and Nets (from the ABA) on Channel 9 and the Yankees on Channel 11. Home games for basketball and hockey were never televised.
Of course, there were also Big Five doubleheaders from the Palestra on Channel 48.
Back then, the highlight shows were the best part of watching sports, especially football. "This Week In Pro Football," with Tom Brookshier and Pat Summerall and its distinctive music, was a must-see every week.
As for college football, TB remembers a Game of the Week show that would focus on the top two or three games and would run Sundays at noon, before the NFL games started.
As for live games, there were a few, but not many.
Fast forward to today, and obviously it's all different. There were about 25 college football games on TB's cable system this past Saturday, and that doesn't include the additional games that are on Thursdays, Fridays and even Wednesdays.
When college basketball season starts, it'll be even more saturated, with about a million games on every night. More, of course, does not necessary equate to better; at some point, it all starts to look alike.
Princeton has a contract with ESPN to show a minimum of seven home events per year. It's a very nice situation for us to be in, especially since it gives us a chance to showcase a variety of teams.
TigerBlog starts each year working with ESPN on the schedule of events. This year, we were unable to make a football game work, after having one on for four straight years.
The ESPN people have long ago made it clear that their two favorite sports from Princeton are men's hockey and men's lacrosse, which fit in nicely with the big picture of their programming.
Still, they have been open to some other things, like, for instance, the first event of this year that was televised, men's water polo vs. Santa Barbara.
The next event will be this Sunday at 5, when the men's soccer game against Harvard will be shown (on ESPNU).
Early on, TB tried to sell ESPN on the idea of 1) televising a game on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium and 2) putting the cameras on the field turf side to shoot into the stands, so as to show off the facility. This year, he was successful on both counts.
The game itself is a huge one for the Ivy League men's soccer race.
Princeton and Penn are currently 3-0-0 each, while Harvard is in third at 1-0-2 after a scoreless tie with Brown last weekend. In Ivy League soccer, three points are awarded for a win and one for a tie, so technically Princeton and Penn have nine points, Harvard has five and Brown has four.
The Tigers will enter the TV game on a seven-game winning streak and with exactly three goals scored in each of the seven games. To put that in perspective, Princeton has scored 21 goals in its last seven games; it scored 21 for the entire 2008 season and 20 for the entire 2007 season, both of which were 17 games.
Penn still has games against Princeton, Brown and Harvard. Brown is still the highest ranked Ivy school.
It's unlikely Princeton or Penn will run the table. It's also likely that three or even four Ivy schools will get NCAA tournament bids, as Ivy men's soccer is among the most competitive of all league sports.
ESPNU chose the game in part to be a good partner with Princeton, but the result is a fairly strong matchup.
TB never could have envisioned back when he was a kid that an all-sports network would grow to what it has become and that sports like college soccer and water polo would be able to be seen on regular TV.
Still, that's where the world has gone, and it's been great for Princeton.
So watch your 25 college football games on Saturday. Then tune in for a big college soccer game, Sunday at 5.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Mrs. Cleaver And A Huge Almost
TigerBlog was listening to the news in the car yesterday morning when a story about some politician who blames the coming opponent for every ill on the planet and whose opponent does likewise in return was followed not by the announcer but instead by a woman's voice who was immediately familiar.
Of course, there could only be one reason for Barbara Billingsley's voice to be coming through the radio on a Sunday morning: The 94-year-old actress had obviously passed away.
As an aside, when older actors/actresses die, the announcers never seem to say so first; they always play a clip of the person from one of his or her most famous roles and then say that they died. The only time TB can remember it differently was when the announcer said: "This voice will sing no more" and then played "White Christmas" back in 1977, when Bing Crosby died.
As for Barbara Billingsley, while her career spanned many decades in many different roles - including a hugely funny moment in the movie "Airplane" - the clip that was played on the day of her death had to be from her most famous character, June Cleaver, from the perfectly charming sitcom "Leave It To Beaver," a show of which TB has seen every episode multiple times despite the fact that it ended its six-year, 234-episode run back when he was still Babyblog.
If you're looking for pure Americana nostalgia, go no further than "Leave It To Beaver." If you're looking for something more dramatic than how, say, a broken chair can get fixed without having the parents find out, then you've come to the wrong place.
The show was about the Cleaver family of Mayfield, with its father Ward, mother June and sons Wally and Theodore, who is nicknamed "Beaver" after the way Wally said "Theodore" when the Beaver was a baby.
During the course of the show, Wally and Beaver grow from being little boys into high school kids. They are constantly getting into trouble, but simple stuff, and they always make it worse by trying to hide the damage from their parents.
Ah, and what parents they were. Ward was a solid hard-working businessman who never forgot what it was like to be a pre-teen or teenage boy. June - famous for doing housework in a dress and pearls - was a tad overprotective, but you would have been fine with her as your mother.
She was a bit naive at times about what the boys were going through, but she was sharp enough to know that Eddie Haskell was a complete phony. And, of course, there was always a well-balanced, nutritious meal for the whole family at dinnertime.
The boys themselves were good athletes, though Wally was better than Beaver. In fact, TigerBlog is pretty sure Wally went on to play football and run track at an Ivy League college; at least he's seen a million pictures of athletes in team photos from that era who look just like him. And who knows, maybe it worked out in the end for Wally and Mary Ellen Rogers.
Wally's best friends were Eddie and Lumpy Rutherford. Beaver had friends named Whitey and Gilbert and Larry and of course the old firefighter Gus.
Beaver's best sport was football, and there are many episodes where he is playing the game either on a formal team or just on the sandlot (back then, not everything was about signing up for the sport and then trying to make the travel team; kids just played, and where they played was called "the sandlot").
Beaver was always trying to think up great trick plays, and every now and then they came up with some great ones, like "ol' 99."
None of them had anything on what Princeton almost pulled off against Brown Saturday afternoon. Had the play that the Tigers dusted off worked, it would have been the equal of any football ending ever, including The Immaculate Reception and the Stanford Band, though without the historical significance.
With 31 seconds remaining, Princeton trailed Brown 17-13 and had the ball first-and-10 at its 21. Expanding on the situation, Princeton needed to go 79 yards, needed a touchdown, had no timeouts to work with and was without its injured starting quarterback.
The first play of the drive saw backup quarterback Andrew Dixon throw a short pass to Shane Wilkinson, who then pitched it back to Trey Peacock on what looked like a standard hook-and-lateral.
Instead, Peacock flipped it back to Dixon, who was two yards in front of the line of scrimmage at this point. Of course, that was irrelevant, since there had already been one forward pass on the play, so another would have been illegal.
Dixon then threw the ball all the way across the field, to in front of the Brown bench, right to Wilkinson, who caught the ball after it went over the head of Meko McCray.
Wilkinson then began to sprint up the sideline. Had Brown's defense been all scattered to the far side chasing the ball, Wilkinson would have possibly scored. With McCray as a blocker, Wilkinson still managed to go 35 yards to the Brown 45 before he was brought down. Perhaps if McCray had caught the ball, he would have had Wilkinson to pitch it to.
It was a great play, well-designed and well-executed, and it almost pulled out the win for Princeton.
As for Wilkinson, he now has been involved in two near-misses, as he was the one who caught the 43-yard Hail Mary at the end of the first half against Colgate that came up short of the end zone.
In case you're wondering how to score that play, there can only be one reception on any play, but all the yards are receiving yards. Therefore, Wilkinson gets credit for the original six-yard catch, and he gets 35 more receiving yards but no other reception.
Peacock was credited with no catch and minus-2 yards, and so was Dixon. In Peacock's case, it'll hardly be noticed. In Dixon's, his season receiving stats now read zero receptions for minus-2 yards.
The Princeton-Brown game saw the Tigers lose quarterback Tommy Wornham for the season with a broken collarbone and top running backs and captains Jordan Culbreath and Matt Zimmerman for the second half.
Still, the Tigers came really, really, really close to pulling it out - with what have been one of the greatest endings in football history.
Of course, there could only be one reason for Barbara Billingsley's voice to be coming through the radio on a Sunday morning: The 94-year-old actress had obviously passed away.
As an aside, when older actors/actresses die, the announcers never seem to say so first; they always play a clip of the person from one of his or her most famous roles and then say that they died. The only time TB can remember it differently was when the announcer said: "This voice will sing no more" and then played "White Christmas" back in 1977, when Bing Crosby died.
As for Barbara Billingsley, while her career spanned many decades in many different roles - including a hugely funny moment in the movie "Airplane" - the clip that was played on the day of her death had to be from her most famous character, June Cleaver, from the perfectly charming sitcom "Leave It To Beaver," a show of which TB has seen every episode multiple times despite the fact that it ended its six-year, 234-episode run back when he was still Babyblog.
If you're looking for pure Americana nostalgia, go no further than "Leave It To Beaver." If you're looking for something more dramatic than how, say, a broken chair can get fixed without having the parents find out, then you've come to the wrong place.
The show was about the Cleaver family of Mayfield, with its father Ward, mother June and sons Wally and Theodore, who is nicknamed "Beaver" after the way Wally said "Theodore" when the Beaver was a baby.
During the course of the show, Wally and Beaver grow from being little boys into high school kids. They are constantly getting into trouble, but simple stuff, and they always make it worse by trying to hide the damage from their parents.
Ah, and what parents they were. Ward was a solid hard-working businessman who never forgot what it was like to be a pre-teen or teenage boy. June - famous for doing housework in a dress and pearls - was a tad overprotective, but you would have been fine with her as your mother.
She was a bit naive at times about what the boys were going through, but she was sharp enough to know that Eddie Haskell was a complete phony. And, of course, there was always a well-balanced, nutritious meal for the whole family at dinnertime.
The boys themselves were good athletes, though Wally was better than Beaver. In fact, TigerBlog is pretty sure Wally went on to play football and run track at an Ivy League college; at least he's seen a million pictures of athletes in team photos from that era who look just like him. And who knows, maybe it worked out in the end for Wally and Mary Ellen Rogers.
Wally's best friends were Eddie and Lumpy Rutherford. Beaver had friends named Whitey and Gilbert and Larry and of course the old firefighter Gus.
Beaver's best sport was football, and there are many episodes where he is playing the game either on a formal team or just on the sandlot (back then, not everything was about signing up for the sport and then trying to make the travel team; kids just played, and where they played was called "the sandlot").
Beaver was always trying to think up great trick plays, and every now and then they came up with some great ones, like "ol' 99."
None of them had anything on what Princeton almost pulled off against Brown Saturday afternoon. Had the play that the Tigers dusted off worked, it would have been the equal of any football ending ever, including The Immaculate Reception and the Stanford Band, though without the historical significance.
With 31 seconds remaining, Princeton trailed Brown 17-13 and had the ball first-and-10 at its 21. Expanding on the situation, Princeton needed to go 79 yards, needed a touchdown, had no timeouts to work with and was without its injured starting quarterback.
The first play of the drive saw backup quarterback Andrew Dixon throw a short pass to Shane Wilkinson, who then pitched it back to Trey Peacock on what looked like a standard hook-and-lateral.
Instead, Peacock flipped it back to Dixon, who was two yards in front of the line of scrimmage at this point. Of course, that was irrelevant, since there had already been one forward pass on the play, so another would have been illegal.
Dixon then threw the ball all the way across the field, to in front of the Brown bench, right to Wilkinson, who caught the ball after it went over the head of Meko McCray.
Wilkinson then began to sprint up the sideline. Had Brown's defense been all scattered to the far side chasing the ball, Wilkinson would have possibly scored. With McCray as a blocker, Wilkinson still managed to go 35 yards to the Brown 45 before he was brought down. Perhaps if McCray had caught the ball, he would have had Wilkinson to pitch it to.
It was a great play, well-designed and well-executed, and it almost pulled out the win for Princeton.
As for Wilkinson, he now has been involved in two near-misses, as he was the one who caught the 43-yard Hail Mary at the end of the first half against Colgate that came up short of the end zone.
In case you're wondering how to score that play, there can only be one reception on any play, but all the yards are receiving yards. Therefore, Wilkinson gets credit for the original six-yard catch, and he gets 35 more receiving yards but no other reception.
Peacock was credited with no catch and minus-2 yards, and so was Dixon. In Peacock's case, it'll hardly be noticed. In Dixon's, his season receiving stats now read zero receptions for minus-2 yards.
The Princeton-Brown game saw the Tigers lose quarterback Tommy Wornham for the season with a broken collarbone and top running backs and captains Jordan Culbreath and Matt Zimmerman for the second half.
Still, the Tigers came really, really, really close to pulling it out - with what have been one of the greatest endings in football history.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Happy Bosses' Day
TigerBlog has talked before about how much he loved the TV show "Taxi" going back a few decades, of course.
TB learned that tomorrow is National Bosses Day (on a Saturday?) when he was forwarded a link to a site that listed the six worst TV bosses of all time. TigerBlog cannot believe that Mr. Slate from "The Flintstones" and Mr. Spacely from "The Jetsons" - described by The Site That Knows All in not quite glowing terms - didn't make the list.
So who was on the list? Well, No. 1 was Montgomery Burns from "The Simpsons," a show that TB has never once watched.
Checking in at No. 2 was Michael Scott from "The Office," and the story's analysis of the situation at the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin is pretty in-depth.
Taxi's Louie DePalma came in fourth. As with the others, a youtube clip was included with Louie's selection, but TB tried to find a better one.
Of course, there could have been any number, including this one, where Louie goes to Elaine's apartment to try to get his job back after Elaine had him fired for peeking at her in the women's lockerroom while she was changing. The best part is at the 4:35 mark.
It's not TB's favorite Louie DePalma clip. Actually, it's not even in the top five or so, but the pickings on youtube were sort of slim. The two absolute best Louie moments are when Nardo drives Tom Selleck up to Vermont as part of the two-part "Memories of Cab 804" episode and when Bobby Wheeler says he's leaving the garage after getting his big acting break on a soap opera.
For those who don't remember these two episodes, Nardo picks up Selleck - who is playing an art dealer; Nardo was trying to get into the art business - and she agrees to drive him to Vermont, a long way from New York City. As they drive, the two start to become obviously attracted to each other. When they get to Vermont, Selleck asks Elaine to spend the night with him, though he's leaving for Europe the next morning on an extended business trip.
When she says no, he realizes that he has to pay his fare, and he offers her a $100 tip. It leads to this exchange:
Elaine: "I can't take that. I'd feel like a call girl."
Tom Selleck: "But you didn't do anything."
Elaine: "Then I'd feel like a bad call girl. What would you have given me if I'd stayed the night?"
Tom Selleck: "A very warm memory."
As the two of them pause in silence after spending hours and hours together in the cab, Louie's voice crackles over the radio:
"You're better off with the hundred."
As for the one where Wheeler leaves, he mocks Louie and rips up his hack license, which leads Louie to say:
"You'll be back. They all come back. Only one guy ever made it out of this garage, and that was James Caan - and he'll be back."
Louie should've been No. 1.
When TB thinks of The Boss, he thinks of course of Bruce Springsteen.
Around here, though, the boss is Gary Walters, Princeton's Director of Athletics since the end of June 1994.
TB has said often that it would have been easy for Gary to come to Princeton back then and adopt a "don't rock the boat" approach, suggesting that things were going fine at the time and why change anything?
Instead, Gary has completely overhauled Princeton Athletics in the last 16+ years, leaving his stamp on every possibly area, from facilities to the coaching staff to the never-ending crusade to have athletics and athletes viewed on campus as co-curricular, as an extension of the educational side of the University.
These beliefs can be summed up in the department motto of "Education Through Athletics," a motto that is currently on display in a banner in Princeton Stadium that will shortly be joined by similar banners in other facilities.
The other part of that motto, though it's a tad long for a banner, is "an unmatched tradition of athletic success."
In Gary's time as Director of Athletics, Princeton has won 176 Ivy League championships, which is 69 more than the next highest school. In 12 of the 16 years since Gary became AD, Princeton has reached double figures in Ivy League titles.
Add to that 38 team or individual national championships during his tenure, and it's impossible to argue the athletic success of the department that he has overseen.
Sucking up on the eve of National Bosses' Day? Not at all.
TB has not always agreed with Gary's decisions and ways, and he's certainly been on the losing end of disagreements with him. Still, a little conflict and difference of opinion is a good thing, and TB has many times told Gary when he thought TB was correct and Gary was wrong - with varying degrees of success in getting his point across.
Still, you can't spend this quantity of time working for someone if you don't buy into the bigger picture of what it is they're trying to do and what their goals and values are. Eventually, it would just make you bitter and a bit nuts.
TB has often told people that Gary Walters has mostly been very good to him through the years. In all the time TB has worked for Gary, he can't remember too many days when he dreaded having to come to work.
Quite the opposite, actually. Princeton Athletics has usually been a fun place to work, with a lot more laughs than anything else. Laughs, and a constant vigilance towards having the best possible teams with the best possible athletes and coaches on them represent Princeton.
The boss has to get at least some of the credit for that, and TB's only known one boss since he's been here.
TB learned that tomorrow is National Bosses Day (on a Saturday?) when he was forwarded a link to a site that listed the six worst TV bosses of all time. TigerBlog cannot believe that Mr. Slate from "The Flintstones" and Mr. Spacely from "The Jetsons" - described by The Site That Knows All in not quite glowing terms - didn't make the list.
So who was on the list? Well, No. 1 was Montgomery Burns from "The Simpsons," a show that TB has never once watched.
Checking in at No. 2 was Michael Scott from "The Office," and the story's analysis of the situation at the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin is pretty in-depth.
Taxi's Louie DePalma came in fourth. As with the others, a youtube clip was included with Louie's selection, but TB tried to find a better one.
Of course, there could have been any number, including this one, where Louie goes to Elaine's apartment to try to get his job back after Elaine had him fired for peeking at her in the women's lockerroom while she was changing. The best part is at the 4:35 mark.
It's not TB's favorite Louie DePalma clip. Actually, it's not even in the top five or so, but the pickings on youtube were sort of slim. The two absolute best Louie moments are when Nardo drives Tom Selleck up to Vermont as part of the two-part "Memories of Cab 804" episode and when Bobby Wheeler says he's leaving the garage after getting his big acting break on a soap opera.
For those who don't remember these two episodes, Nardo picks up Selleck - who is playing an art dealer; Nardo was trying to get into the art business - and she agrees to drive him to Vermont, a long way from New York City. As they drive, the two start to become obviously attracted to each other. When they get to Vermont, Selleck asks Elaine to spend the night with him, though he's leaving for Europe the next morning on an extended business trip.
When she says no, he realizes that he has to pay his fare, and he offers her a $100 tip. It leads to this exchange:
Elaine: "I can't take that. I'd feel like a call girl."
Tom Selleck: "But you didn't do anything."
Elaine: "Then I'd feel like a bad call girl. What would you have given me if I'd stayed the night?"
Tom Selleck: "A very warm memory."
As the two of them pause in silence after spending hours and hours together in the cab, Louie's voice crackles over the radio:
"You're better off with the hundred."
As for the one where Wheeler leaves, he mocks Louie and rips up his hack license, which leads Louie to say:
"You'll be back. They all come back. Only one guy ever made it out of this garage, and that was James Caan - and he'll be back."
Louie should've been No. 1.
When TB thinks of The Boss, he thinks of course of Bruce Springsteen.
Around here, though, the boss is Gary Walters, Princeton's Director of Athletics since the end of June 1994.
TB has said often that it would have been easy for Gary to come to Princeton back then and adopt a "don't rock the boat" approach, suggesting that things were going fine at the time and why change anything?
Instead, Gary has completely overhauled Princeton Athletics in the last 16+ years, leaving his stamp on every possibly area, from facilities to the coaching staff to the never-ending crusade to have athletics and athletes viewed on campus as co-curricular, as an extension of the educational side of the University.
These beliefs can be summed up in the department motto of "Education Through Athletics," a motto that is currently on display in a banner in Princeton Stadium that will shortly be joined by similar banners in other facilities.
The other part of that motto, though it's a tad long for a banner, is "an unmatched tradition of athletic success."
In Gary's time as Director of Athletics, Princeton has won 176 Ivy League championships, which is 69 more than the next highest school. In 12 of the 16 years since Gary became AD, Princeton has reached double figures in Ivy League titles.
Add to that 38 team or individual national championships during his tenure, and it's impossible to argue the athletic success of the department that he has overseen.
Sucking up on the eve of National Bosses' Day? Not at all.
TB has not always agreed with Gary's decisions and ways, and he's certainly been on the losing end of disagreements with him. Still, a little conflict and difference of opinion is a good thing, and TB has many times told Gary when he thought TB was correct and Gary was wrong - with varying degrees of success in getting his point across.
Still, you can't spend this quantity of time working for someone if you don't buy into the bigger picture of what it is they're trying to do and what their goals and values are. Eventually, it would just make you bitter and a bit nuts.
TB has often told people that Gary Walters has mostly been very good to him through the years. In all the time TB has worked for Gary, he can't remember too many days when he dreaded having to come to work.
Quite the opposite, actually. Princeton Athletics has usually been a fun place to work, with a lot more laughs than anything else. Laughs, and a constant vigilance towards having the best possible teams with the best possible athletes and coaches on them represent Princeton.
The boss has to get at least some of the credit for that, and TB's only known one boss since he's been here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
