A Friday In July

The weather could not have been more perfect around here the last few days. Temperatures in the low 80s, not much humidity.

Last night at the pool, it was on the fringes of being chilly, with a low of 64.

It felt like September, not mid-July. It had the feel of an early-season sporting event on one of those days that reminds you that it's not quite fall yet but that the hottest days of summer are past.

In reality, it's still early summer, and five of the next 10 days in the forecast have temps in the 90s.

The midway point between the last athletic event of last academic year and the first athletic event of 2011-12 is actually still eight days away. For the record, Sept. 2 is opening day, with games in men's and women's soccer and field hockey.

There are few days in the world of college athletics quieter than a Friday in July.

Forget Saturdays during the school year. Sundays during the school year are way busier than Fridays in July.

TigerBlog remembers how FatherBlog would take most Fridays in the summer off from work, and there are many who follow that same plan to get a jump on the summer weekend. Were it up to TB, he'd take off every Wednesday in the summer instead of Fridays, since then he'd never work more than two straight days and, presumably, your average summer attraction is less crowded on a Wednesday than a Friday.

Actually, Lot 21 is actually jammed today, since there is a football camp going on outside and, TB thinks, a youth squash tournament going on inside.

Of course, there is work being done around here. At least TB assumes there is.

It's just quiet, that's all. And nothing seems to be all that pressing, as opposed to the non-stop crunch of college athletics in-season.

So far today, TB has had a talk with a co-worker about her upcoming 50th high school reunion. There was an impromptu "meeting" to decide a fairly trivial matter, and most of the meeting was spent talking about the ESPN.com story about the guy who did the "World Triathlon" and how hilarious the comments were.

Somehow, this segued into the fact that Douglas Davis' shot against Harvard made the ESPY's Top 10 Plays of the Year.

As an aside, the best person at doing "Plays of the Week/Year/Month/Day" ever has been, for TB's money, Warner Wolf. TigerBlog remembers watching one time when Angels' manager Cookie Rojas was ejected from a game in Yankee Stadium for arguing that it was raining too hard to continue playing, and he was tossed by all four umpires at the same time when he came out of the dugout with an umbrella.

What else?

TigerBlog has to finish the Year in Review for 2010-11 and some other written pieces for the annual fundraising calendar. He also wants to get the men's lacrosse recruiting class on the webpage and write up something about men's lacrosse All-America Chad Wiedmaier's coming trip to Africa.

Still, none of those are totally pressing for today at least.

On the other side of campus, Little Miss TigerBlog is at the summer camp at Dillon Gym. Yesterday was '80s day, and LMTB went with a "Flashdance" look, even though she had no idea that a movie of that name ever was made. In fact, she often refers to TB's tastes in music and movies as "not from this millennium."

Fridays at the camp feature the big dance competition, in which the three age groups - the 6s, the 7/8s and the 9/10s - all compete to be that week's winner. Apparently, LMTB needed hula skirts for today.

When TB dropped LMTB off this morning, Craig Schwartz, the camp director, asked him what he was going to be writing about today.

TB asked Schwartz was he'd recommend, and Schwartz ran through a few subjects. Most of them required way too much thought. So did some of the others that TB had in mind, so he'll just table them for today.

It's too quiet a day for that.

So TB will get back to the waiting stress-free tasks.

That's how it is on a Friday in July.

The President's Report

TigerBlog was at a meeting at Prospect House several years ago.

The meeting featured representatives from all of the various communications offices on campus, and it was in a room with a long rectangular table. TigerBlog sat down somewhat randomly at the far end of the table, and as the seats filled in, all but the one to his immediate left were taken.

Eventually, the featured speaker for the meeting walked in and, seeing only one empty chair, sat down next to TB. as the two had never met, she very politely extended her hand to TB and said: "hello, I'm Shirley Tilghman."

Obviously, TigerBlog knew who she was already, since she is the President of Princeton University.

TB has dealt with President Tilghman several times through the years and seen her at numerous functions. She always remembers TB by name, which TB assumes she multiplies out times the hundreds or thousands of people on this campus that she can similarly identify.

For someone whose background is as a scientist, Dr. Tilghman has always struck TB as a natural politician, someone who moves seamlessly from constituent to constituent, always smiling and pleasant.

In essence, it's a huge part of what being a college president is about, the ability to interact with people on campus from vastly different points of view, not to mention the alumni relations aspect.

There have been two Presidents of Princeton during TB's tenure here, Dr. Tilghman and Harold Shapiro before her.

TigerBlog's interactions with President Shapiro were more limited. TB was invited to a dinner at the President's house in 1996 with the rest of the men's basketball program after the UCLA win and Pete Carril's retirement, and TB did go to Dr. Shapiro's office to produce a first-person account of his memories and thoughts of Palmer Stadium for the game program from the final game there.

Back when Dr. Shapiro was the President (should TB be capitalizing that?), the Department of Athletics had to produce a document each summer called "The President's Report."

TB assumes that every other department did as well, and he wonders how much of this ever was read by anyone.

Anyway, this report consisted of charts, text, graphs, historical references and such, recapping the athletic performance of the previous academic year, as well as information like campus rec permits sold and club sports offerings.

The amount of time it took to put together was extraordinary, with charts of individual honors won by Princeton athletes and team-by-team seasonal reviews and on and on.

Through the years, that document - now called an annual report - has gotten to be much more bare bones, with mostly a statistical recap of what happened in the last academic year.

There is some valuable information there.

For instance, in head-to-head competition last year, Princeton teams went a combined 366-217-5, for a .627 winning percentage.

The women by themselves had an even better percentage of .656, with a combined record of 197-103-2. The men were 169-114-3 (.596).

Not surprisingly, the winter was Princeton's best season, with a record of 163-72-3, or a winning percentage of just under .700.

Princeton also had a winning record in head-to-head competition against all seven Ivy League schools. In fact, Princeton had a .581 or better winning percentage against each of its Ivy rivals.

Of course, it might be a bit surprising which school it was that played Princeton the toughest. Any guesses as to the school against which Princeton was 18-13?

Hint? Eight of those 13 losses came in men's and women's hockey and baseball.

The answer?

Dartmouth.

Four Princeton teams won at least 23 games this past year. The baseball team won 23 - and lost 24. Still, finishing below .500 is okay, considering that Princeton went 3-13 in its first 16 games and then 20-11 in its last 31, winning the Ivy title and advancing to the NCAA tournament along the way.

The women's fencing team went 24-3, and the basketball teams combined to go 49-12 (men were 25-7; women were 24-5).

All in all, it's great information to have an archive of, and TB has binders of these reports going back to the 1980s. As well as some nightmares of having to compile it all, at least before it was mercifully streamlined.

Boog And Bus

TigerBlog is pretty sure that the game was Trenton High vs. Atlantic City High, the first game that Tom McCarthy did on the radio back when he and TigerBlog worked together at the Trenton Times.

McCarthy, who covered high school sports primarily, was all excited the day of the game. He wanted to get into broadcasting, and this was Step 1 in the process.

The next day, TigerBlog and McCarthy stood in the same spot, talking about how it went when Harvey Yavener walked by, resulting in this actual conversation:

Yav - "Yeah, I heard you on the radio."
McCarthy - "What did you think?"
Yav - "Work on your writing."

It was Yav's way of saying that McCarthy was off to a good start.

Shortly after that, McCarthy left to the newspaper to take over in the front office of the fledgling Trenton Thunder, a Double-A baseball team in the Detroit Tigers' system that would be playing in a stadium being built around the corner from where TB was living at the time.

TB tried to tell McCarthy that it would never work, that nobody would ever come to see Minor League Baseball in Trenton and park their car there at night and all.

As TB has said many times before, he's never been more wrong about anything.

As it turned out, McCarthy was in the right place at the right time. The radio voice of the Thunder, he was able to use that as a stepping stone to the Major Leagues, where he is now the television voice of the Philadelphia Phillies, who have already won one World Series during McCarthy's time there.

His resume includes a time on WFAN with the Mets.

McCarthy will be inducted tonight into the Trenton Baseball Hall of Fame, becoming one of 16 members of that fraternity.

McCarthy - known by many as "Boog" for his former resemblance to the longtime Orioles' first baseman Boog Powell, and the fact that McCarthy used to play first base - has certainly come a long way since Trenton High vs. Atlantic City High.

His broadcasting career isn't limited to baseball.

He spent most of a decade as the basketball play-by-play man for Princeton, and he also did several seasons of Princeton football.

When TigerBlog looks back on his nearly 25 years of working at Princeton between the newspaper and the OAC, some of his very best memories are the times he spent with McCarthy, both the events themselves and the travel to and from them.

TigerBlog has spent more time on airplanes with McCarthy than with anyone else, to and from destinations as varied as Green Bay and Ames, Iowa, to Hawaii and Miami.

There were countless hours riding together in autumns and winters to Ivy League destinations, returning usually after a win but also after some excruciating losses.

The more that life in the OAC evolves, the further away from those days TB gets, and he knows he'll never repeat the relationship that he had with McCarthy.

As TB said, McCarthy is one of 16 members of the Trenton Baseball Hall of Fame. One of the other 15, a man named Bus Saidt, also was a former Trenton Times writer who also was a longtime Princeton football broadcaster.

In fact, as TB recalls, Bus was the No. 2 choice for the Phillies' radio spot when the job originally went to Harry Kalas in 1971.

Saidt, who was Yav's best friend, had two careers, first as an accountant for the City of Trenton and then as a sportswriter. While in his accounting days, Saidt would do Princeton football on the radio.

Saidt, in his early 40s, left the accounting business to become a full-time sportswriter. During his prime, Saidt would take the old Trenton Times car and head off to cover either the Mets, Yankees or Phillies, depending on who was home that night. Every night he'd be at one of them; during the winter, he'd write columns about almost anything.

Eventually, Saidt was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Bus (whose real name was Harold) was on the job at the paper every day up until his death in 1989, at the age of 68.

Saidt was a Trenton legend when TigerBlog first started in the business, and he could be ornery and intimidating at times.

Mostly, though, he was a kind man, one who constantly encouraged the army of young writers who appeared in the building in the mid-'80s.

The first story that TB ever wrote that appeared on the front page of the sports section was a Princeton High tennis match in the state tournament. Princeton High won the match in really dramatic fashion, and there was a huge headline on the top of section.

TB was all proud of himself when Bus walked in, picked up the paper, saw the size of the headline and snapped:

"What happened? The war end?"

TB has thought about Bus many times through the years, thought about his work ethic, the way he did his job, his relationship with Yav (who was touched hard by Bus' death).

As for McCarthy, he and TB are still friends, even if they don't talk as much as TB would like.

Still, TB couldn't be happier for anyone for how he's reached his lifelong dream.

Tonight, Boog joins Bus in one Hall of Fame. Maybe 25 years from now, he can join him in the other one.

Christian Lopez - Hero Or Fool?

Okay, let's talk about Derek Jeter.

The Yankee captain is one of the greatest shortstops of all time, and he was a sure-fire, first-ballot Hall-of-Fame selection before he got to 3,000 hits.

Having said that, TigerBlog can't stand the whole movement to deify Jeter and his "intangibles." Want to know what his primary intangible has been? The good fortune to play on a team with a, well, great fortune, one that enable it to spend nearly $2 billion more in salaries during Jeter's career than the next-highest team.

Like Mariano Rivera, Jeter's presence on the Yankees has enabled him to perform in the playoffs almost every year. Would other players have earned the reputation that Jeter and Rivera have had they been on the Yankees? Would, say, Paul Molitor (3,319 career hits) have become the poster child for "intangibles" instead?

Rivera has been, for the most part, lights out in his entire career, with a few major, major notable exceptions (vs. the Diamondbacks in the 2001 World Series, vs. Boston in the 2004 ALCS, for example). At the same time, the fact that he plays for the team he plays for has given him the opportunity that many others haven't had.

If TigerBlog had to choose between Jeter and Ozzie Smith, TB would take Smith every time. Smith, who had 2,500 hits in his career, won 13 straight Gold Gloves and was a 15-time all-star. He didn't have the power numbers of Jeter, but if there was a stat of runs saved + runs scored, Smith would probably be No. 1 all-time.

When Jeter homered the other day for his 3,000th hit, the ball was caught by a young fan named Christian Lopez, a recent college graduate who works as a mobile phone salesman.

Lopez, who played football at St. Lawrence and has student loans to repay, hauled in the ball and then smothered it like a fumble recovery, in his words.

Then, rather than try to squeeze every last penny out of the ball - a figure in the neighborhood of $250,000 - Lopez returned it to Jeter. In exchange, the Yankees gave him tickets for their remaining home games this year and a few other small gifts, as well as the opportunity to meet Jeter.

Lopez was immediately launched into the public eye for his noble gesture.

And almost as quickly, the backlash began.

TigerBlog listened to enough sports talk radio to be amazed at how many people called in ripping Lopez, calling him an idiot and sucker. In fact, out of every 10 calls on the subject, it was probably 8-2 in favor of the fact that Lopez had done something dumb.

TB would like to think he would have done the same as Lopez. And the cynic in TB thinks that Lopez' gesture in the long run will pay off more than simply selling the ball would have.

Still, is this where American society is now? A 23-year-old does something selfless, and the majority of society turns on him? Is America that jaded? Maybe it is.

As for memorabilia, TigerBlog has never been that big a fan of the whole concept.

One thing he does wish, though, is that Princeton had an athletic museum of sorts. As a department, Princeton Athletics is woefully short on old-time memorabilia, which is a shame, since there has to be so much great stuff out there.

Every now and then, TB will receive some stuff or an offer for some stuff, usually when an older alum passes away or when a class does a group project. Through the years, some good stuff has turned up, though not enough to create an actual museum.

And where would it be? The lobby of Jadwin would be great in terms of the number of people who would see it, but there is a question of space. Areas with more space attract fewer people who happen to be walking by.

When TB is offered old Princeton stuff, he always asks if there is old game footage, which would be his No. 1 choice.

Unfortunately, most of what people have is old game programs or tickets or printed stuff that Princeton already has archived.

Maybe one day it'll start to change, and some big collection of Princeton stuff will be unearthed.

Until then, one of the things on TB's wish-list here is a museum with Princeton memorabilia.

Oh, and Christian Lopez?

Good for him.

Abby = Good; Erika = Bad

It's really hard for a series of events to conspire to make the United States the sentimental choice of the rest of the world in any competition while another country becomes the bad guys.

Yesterday's Women's World Cup quarterfinal game between the U.S. and Brazil was one of those occasions.

The two people most responsible for this were Australian referee Jacqui Melksham and Brazil player Erika, whose performance was so reprehensible that TigerBlog can't imagine anyone who might want to ever name a child "Erika" again.

In fact, TB has no memory of a player who more disgraced a game's integrity than Erika did.

Think about it. Yesterday, Erika was just another unknown Brazilian player. Today, she is listed in Wikipedia under "Poetic Justice."

If you haven't seen it yet, with time winding down in the second overtime and Brazil ahead 2-1, an obviously faking and cheating Erika walked toward the U.S. goal and with, no one around her, dropped to the ground as if she'd been shot from the stands.

Writing in imaginary pain, she was eventually taken off the field on a stretcher, only to unbuckle herself and then sprint back to the sideline and quickly back into play.

If her goal was to kill time, it didn't work, as the ref added three minutes of extra time. If her goal was to rest her defense, that didn't work either, as the U.S. scored after two minutes of that extra time.

In fact, had she just kept playing, it's likely that Brazil would have won the game.

And it's not like the ref did the U.S. any favors before adding the extra time, not with the horrific call of a red card on the penalty kick and then the even more horrific call of a re-kick after Hope Solo saved the ball.

And then there was Marta's goal in extra time, where the play was clearly offsides.

Erika should be banned from international competition for what she did. And so should Meklsham, whose last four letters of her last name pretty much tell you what she turned the game into.

By the time Erika was turning herself into an international joke, the crowd in Germany had turned completely against the Brazilians and in favor of the Americans, which is a ridiculous thought.

Still, it all seemed lost before Abby Wambach headed in the most perfect cross of all-time, off the foot of Megan Rapinoe, to get the U.S. even at 2-2 with little more than a minute left before 'Sham would've ended it.

With the game tied, it took penalty kicks to decide the outcome, and a save by Solo was the difference as the U.S. advanced to Wednesday's semifinal against France.

The game itself was a classic, maybe the greatest in the history of the Women's World Cup.

It was made even better by Ian Darke, the announcer on ESPN who really stood out to TB during last year's men's World Cup.

It's amazing what an announcer can do to enhance a telecast when he's not trying to make himself bigger than the event.

TigerBlog has written several times that the British announcers he hears on soccer broadcasts are what American baseball announcers were like in the 1940s and 1950s and so, before the announcers became multi-media stars of their own and, to get there, had to be completely self-promotional.

TB had a thought of trying to get Darke to do some Princeton broadcast this year, though he's pretty sure that won't happen.

One thing TB would like to do is a podcast with Darke at some point this year, talking about his background in broadcasting, his approach, his preparation and all.

After that, TB would love to talk to him about his perspective on American sports and American television and then ultimately about Princeton athletics and the Ivy League.

TB has no idea what a big-time announcer from England knows about Princeton, but it would be fascinating to find out.

A goprincetontigers.com podcast with Ian Darke.

Coming in 2011-12.

TB hopes, at least.

An Ashton In The Crowd

When TigerBlog does the senior-athlete video each May, he puts the award winners at the end.

Usually, he'll end with the Roper Trophy and von Kienbusch Award recipients, alternating between the men and the women in alphabetical order. Prior to them, he'll put the Art Lane Award winners, the senior speakers and any others who won major departmental awards.

The one tricky part is that TB never knows the identity of the Class of 1916 Cup until the day before the senior athlete banquet, because that award - given to the senior athlete in the highest academic standing - isn't known until that day.

As a result, he has to find that athlete's picture and move it to the back.

By that point, TB has gone through the pictures a bunch of times, importing them, cropping them, labeling them and such. After awhile, he can begin to remember where the pictures are in their random order and start to ID them as "crew guy in funny hat" or "the two Michael A's," referring to the two open rowers named "Michaela."

Then, as TB walks around the Princeton Varsity Club banquet and sees the athletes - most of whom he'd never heard of prior to starting the video - as they walk around with their name tags on, and it's almost like seeing celebrities at the Oscars.

Every now and then as he does the video, TB stops and reminds himself that each picture in the video - on screen for 3.5 seconds - is actually an individual, unique in his or her experience, background and such.

TigerBlog had that same feeling when he saw on the home page that Ashton Brown of the women's open rowing team had won an NCAA postgraduate scholarship.

TB remembered her name from the video as one of the army of rowers who comprise the sport at Princeton with the most athletes. And, aside from her name, that was about all TB knew about her.

After going to the roster, TB learned that Brown was a Canadian, from Calgary. She attended the United World College prior to coming to Princeton four years ago.

While at Princeton, she majored in economics.

She also won an NCAA title as a member of the first varsity eight boat this past spring, after she helped Princeton win the Eastern Sprints in a race that gave the athletic program its record 15th Ivy League title.

The NCAA awards up to 174 postgraduate scholarships annually, 87 for men and 87 for women. The scholarships are awarded to student-athletes who excel academically and athletically and who are at least in their final year of intercollegiate athletics competition.

The one-time grants of $7,500 each are awarded for fall sports, winter sports and spring sports. Each sports season (fall, winter and spring), there are 29 scholarships available for men and 29 scholarships available for women. The scholarships are one-time, non-renewable grants.

TigerBlog, like the rest of the athletic department, is working on any number of issues for next year, issues that affect the big picture of the department.

At the same time, the feeling that TB gets when he goes through the banquet video should stay with everyone who works in college athletics.

People like Ashton Brown are more than just a face a crowd of Princeton Athletics.

They are Princeton Athletics.

Roll The Video

Back when TigerBlog was responsible for producing the football media guide each year, he used to tell himself that he would write update five player bios a day in March and April, so it wouldn't be such an arduous chore when the deadline time approached.

And, of course, in all those years, TB never once actually did that.

The football media guide was the primary chore for TB at this time of the summer for eight different summers. Once the Ivy League adopted its media day in Connecticut each summer (an event that no longer exists), TB had to get it done in time for that event - or suffer the unimaginable shame of being the only school not to have one done.

As far as TigerBlog remembers, no school ever showed up at the media day without its guide, though there were all kinds of occasions where the guides were finished with literally minutes to spare.

In Princeton's case, TB more than once had to get one box of printed guides from the printer on the drive to Connecticut, because he had cut it too close.

Back then, it took about three weeks to print a guide like the football guide, which was usually 144 pages. It'd be a week to get a proof print, and then two more to get it printed, bound and shipped.

Today, such a process could be completed in three days, rather than weeks - or even less.

Of course, it was important to get the football guide done so TB could start on the basketball guide, because if football season started before the basketball guide was mostly done, that was another nightmare.

TigerBlog thought back to those days as he watched Part II of the goprincetontigers.tv video of Princeton head coach Bob Surace and his former teammate, Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett, as they chatted outside Caldwell Fieldhouse.

The move to eliminate media guides - at least as recruiting tools - had many elements to it, especially:

* money - it cost thousands of dollars to print a football guide and tens of thousands to print all the guides that Princeton used to print

* arms race - schools, especially the major BCS conference ones, were producing 500-, 600-page guides that were hard-cover, all in the name of showing recruits the commitment they had to the sport

As a result, rules were passed that limited how may pages could be in a guide and then ultimately made it against NCAA policy to send them to recruits. Once that happened, the guides became true "media" guides.

From TB's perspective, the No. 1 reason to stop doing guides was that they had little value. All the information was available online, as opposed to the version that was printed and then became obsolete once the first play of the new season happened.

TB remembers diligently filling out opponents sections for guides, until it dawned on him that nobody would care how many returning starters the Week 7 opponent had or who its assistant coaches were.

As video technology increases somewhat hourly and makes it easier and easier to view - and produce - clips like the one of Surace and Garrett have much greater appeal to the audience that guides used to serve, with the possible exception of long-time media types.

Were you a recruit, would you rather see a picture of Jason Garrett in a book that you probably can't find five minutes after you get it, or be able to see a video of Garrett and Surace? In TB's mind, it's not even a debate.

One thing TigerBlog would love to do is get as many Princeton athletic icons on video as possible.

The video last year of 100-year-old Jack Bales was outstanding, and it also turned out to be invaluable, as Bales passed away last month.

It would be great to put together a big archive of similar videos, though the hard part is getting the subjects when they're spread out literally around the world.

When Princeton first went down the video path, TigerBlog had every confidence that it was the right decision and that it would be hugely successful.

In fact, he hadn't been that confident in one of his opinions since back when he said that minor league baseball would never work in Trenton.

Hey, at least this time, he was right.

Signing Off

When TigerBlog heard that New Jersey Network - a state-run public television network that fell victim to budget cuts - was no longer going to exist, his first thought took him back to the Hartford Civic Center.

Back in 1998, Princeton played in the NCAA men's basketball tournament in Hartford. As Tiger fans recall, that was the year that Princeton was the No. 5 seed in the East after going 26-1 during the regular season and climbing into the Top 10 nationally.

As a result, the media crush following Princeton was enormous that year. When it came time for the NCAA tournament, media credential requests were filtered through the schools' athletic communications offices and then forwarded to the host school, in this case UConn.

All through the early part of the week, more and more credential requests came through to TigerBlog, who was the men's basketball contact at the time. He would in turn forward them to UConn, each time saying something like "sorry, there's one more."

Eventually, the UConn people started to get a bit annoyed about the endless stream of requests, though in fairness to TB, there wasn't much he could do about it. After all, it was the media people who were trickling in with their requests, not TB.

At one point, the UConn person overseeing the media relations operation got so, uh, peeved that he called TigerBlog at home. TB answered the phone just as he got out of the shower and received a "dressing down" even though he was undressed.

Shortly before the start of the Princeton-UNLV opening round game, TigerBlog was sitting in his courtside seat in the media section.

Oh, and AUG (Angry UConn Guy) got even more angry at Princeton when Manish Mehta, now with the New York Daily News but then an intern in the OAC, took someone else's seat right at center court.

Anyway, one of the messenger types working there came up to TigerBlog and said that AUG was by the media entrance and needed to see TB at once.

When TigerBlog got there, he saw the bald head of New Jersey Network's Jerry Henry and his trusty sidekick cameraman standing by the media check-in, asking for credentials as if this game happened to be Princeton-Monmouth in late November, completely unaware of the fact that he might have had to request such credentials in advance.

AUG lit into TigerBlog again before letting Henry into the building, where he and his cameraman again violated the rules by trying to film highlights of the game while it was in progress, a major NCAA no-no.

NJN was on channel 23 and 52 as TigerBlog grew up, and there was a stretch in elementary school when each day, TB's class would watch a 15-minute show on NJN that featured kids in ordinary situations with a moral at the end. TB remembers being home sick one day in fourth grade or so and tuning into the moral show anyway.

NJN televised a lot of Princeton events in the '80s and '90s. The 52-51 Penn win over Princeton in the final game of the 1993 season - that was the first year of the Jerome Allen-Matt Maloney Penn teams - was on NJN. How does TB know? He was covering a different game that night, about six miles away, and watched the end of the Princeton-Penn game on a TV in the Rider athletic department before the other game started.

NJN had a steady stream of on-air people, though Henry was the one TigerBlog dealt with the most through the years. A former Marine, Henry was always laughing, always happy, always looking forward to talking to whatever Princeton athlete he was there to meet.

TigerBlog lost touch with Henry through the years, as NJN scaled back its coverage of Princeton.

Today, NJN no longer exists, like much of the media that TigerBlog dealt with when he first came to Princeton.

With the end of NJN, another link to the 1990s - a glorious time to be in athletic communications at Princeton - vanishes.

Runner Up

TigerBlog was following the same basic route as the Union army did, 148 years to the day earlier, a fact that didn't dawn on TB until he pulled into a Subway on Route 15 just north of Gettysburg.

A few minutes - and one Cold Cut Combo - later, TB went past the town where the Union met up somewhat by chance with the Army of Northern Virginia, and three days later, 8,000 soldiers were dead.

It was on July 1, 1863, that the Battle of Gettysburg began. When it ended on July 3, the Confederate Army was in retreat, never to return north of the Potomac. Though it was would take until April of 1865 - and thousands more dead - before the Confederacy surrendered, the winner of the Civil War was determined by that battle.

Had Robert E. Lee, to that point viewed as invincible, managed to break through in Gettysburg, who knows what might have happened. Instead, the North prevailed, saving the Union.

TigerBlog actually went to the battlefield at Gettysburg once, and to stand at a place where so many people died is quite a different experience. It's haunted, so to speak, not by ghosts per se but by the memory of what went on there.

It's especially true from the perspective on Little Round Top and Cemetery Hill, where the Northern army turned away "Pickett's Charge," as 12,500 Confederates tried to storm a hill and half never came back, the rest either killed, wounded or captured.

This trip, though, wasn't to Gettysburg. It just happened to go through the town, and it just happened to be on the day the battle started.

Had General Meade decided to chase Lee and his Southern army as it retreated south from Gettysburg, he might have caught up to them on a little patch of land in the town of Boyds. Had he done so, that land might now be sacred, just like the one in Gettysburg.

Instead, Meade decided to regroup and refresh, leaving Lee to make it back to Virginia and fight another day.

And so the land in Boyds is instead the Maryland Soccer Complex, a sprawling facility that this past weekend played host to the National Lacrosse Classic middle school tournament and which now through Friday is hosting the high school division.

The middle school tournament brought together 12 boys' teams and six girls' teams from different regions of the country. On the boys' side, there were two pools, featuring Long Island, Tennessee, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois and Rochester in one and Pennsylvania, Florida, Missouri, Maryland, Metro New York and New England in the other.

The teams were selected from regional tryouts. The high school event is a solid recruiting event, while the middle school one was in its first year.

The winner of the middle school tournament won the "national" championship, though it obviously was not a true national champion and the teams were not comprised of only the elite in middle school lacrosse. Still, there were some great players in the tournament.

Still, it was a very well-run event (including seminars on issues related to sports-parenting, fitness, nutrition and such), and there was an element of a middle school dance when the boys and girls teams mingled.

As for the level of play, it was extremely high.

Long Island needed to hold off New Jersey in the final game of its pool to advance to the final. Pennsylvania - a team that included TigerBlog Jr. - went 5-0 in its pool, with a one-goal win over Metro New York and a come-from-behind win over Maryland along the way.

This set up a Long Island-Pennsylvania final, and it turned out to be the single best youth sporting event TigerBlog has ever seen. There was a huge crowd, as the girls' finalists (Pennsylvania beat New Jersey) and families, as well as some of the boys' teams who had just played prior to the final, stayed to watch.

The game itself was tight throughout, as Long Island went up 3-1, Pennsylvania tied it at 3-3, Long Island went up 6-4 and Pennsylvania tied it at 6-6. LI took a 7-6 lead with about six minutes left and then held off two strong Pennsylvania challenges. The game ended as LI did a masterful job of playing keep-away in the box before Pennsylvania finally got it back with about 20 seconds to go, only to turn it back over and lead to a game-sealing LI goal with six seconds remaining, making the final 8-6.

It was an extraordinarily well-played game, especially considering the teams had almost no practice together.

On the other hand, the coaches were college assistants, and Pennsylvania was coached by a combination of Ohio State on the first day and Duke on the last two.

Watching the game, TB couldn't help but think that the skill level and physicality of most of the players was far beyond an average high school player, and of course it led to some obvious questions.

During the opening ceremony of the event, as 300 boys and 150 girls paraded by, TigerBlog was asked how many of these players he thought would eventually play at Princeton. This was followed up by how many of these players would end up in Division I.

With the way that some of them can run, shoot, dodge, defend, handle a long pole and everything else, it's hard to imagine that they're not going to be Division I players at some point. If TB had to guess, he'd say No. 24 and No. 22 on Long Island or the Maryland goalie are much of the way there, as well as a few from Pennsylvania and other teams.

In all, TB said of the 300 boys, maybe fewer than 20 would end up playing Division I.

The middle school kids are all high school blank slates right now. Every time TB was asked about his job and what the coaches ask potential recruits, the first answer is always about academics. Right now, none of these kids has taken one high school class.

TigerBlog is used to seeing Princeton athletes, or other Ivy League athletes, as the finished products they became. Like the middle school kids from this tournament, a few years ago they were kids with some promise, and they went through high school and achieved great things athletically and as students.

TigerBlog might save the rosters of the kids from this event this past weekend and go back in four years and see who is who.

Some will never play the game on the varsity level, for any number of reasons. Others will get to Division I.

The cool part is that it's really up to them.

Are they willing to work as hard as they can to make it happen, to take full advantage of the gifts they have been given? Some will. Some won't.

It was a great weekend for the kids involved in the event. Like the Confederacy at Gettysburg, will it be the high-water mark of some of their careers?

TB hopes not.

Everywhere he looked this weekend, TB saw kids with potential. It'd be a shame for them to waste it.

Any Given Saturday

Alexander Road, which connects Princeton to Route 1, was closed for the last few weeks, leading to massive traffic all around town.

Getting to Route 1 now meant mostly having to go down Washington Road, which was backed up to Faculty Road every minute of every day, as were the Princeton Pike and Route 206. The first few days were the worst, before everyone finally figured out a preferred alternate route.

Yesterday was the big re-opening for Alexander, and TigerBlog made his first drive along the newly renovated road expecting to find that the bridge had been straightened or something. Instead, it appears that the road is a bit wider, perhaps, and that's about it.

Later in the afternoon, TigerBlog was talking to a Penn State alum who was saying how much he likes to go back to his alma mater.

TB remarked that he'd been to the campus a few times, for lacrosse and basketball, and he wondered what in the world the traffic must be like for days when more than 100,000 people show up for football.

After all, it appears that there is one road in and one road out of State College. In TB's mind, it's the Alexander Road situation taken to a much higher degree.

The alum said that the Penn State people are used to it and that most of them come back the day before or simply tough it out.

TigerBlog has never been to a football game at Penn State, or any other BCS conference school other than Rutgers.

He's been to basketball games at any number of schools who play in the power conferences, and he's sat in most of the top arenas in Division I.

When it comes to big-time FBS football, nope. TB has never seen a game in person.

He once read a book called "Big 10 Saturdays," in which the author spent a week at each Big 10 school and detailed what it was like for the days leading up to the game and the hours immediately following it. The book wasn't about football per se; it was about the flavor of the game as an event, complete with local traditions, places to eat, etc.

It must be wild to be part of a regular-season football Saturday for a game on that level, where the event transcends anything else in American sporting culture.

And TB isn't talking about going to see, say, Auburn-Alabama or Notre Dame-USC or something like that. He's talking about any random game, like South Carolina at Mississippi or Baylor at Texas A&M, on an early Saturday in October.

What TigerBlog has seen is Ivy League football, probably more than 150 games worth. He's been to every campus numerous times, with of course more than half the games at Princeton.

The contrast between what TB sees in person and what he sees when he watches college games on television is rather obvious.

Rather than drawing full houses of 50, 60, 70, 80,000 or more, Ivy League football plays to smaller crowds in smaller stadiums. The fan bases aren't as large or rabid, and the money being generated from the games isn't, uh, corrupting.

It makes it more of a challenge for those who market the games, as rather than printing tickets and having them all accounted for for years down the line, there is a real effort to maximize attendance.

Still, there is something very appreciable about Ivy League football.

On the field, every week offers multiple rivalries that date back three centuries, and even teams that have fallen out of the league race can look forward to playing a long-time opponent. The league, top to bottom, is very competitive.

Off the field, the dynamics of the crowd are different. Instead of being dominated by male alums ages 25-50, the average crowd for Princeton football is more heavily weighted to local families with kids and alums who are slightly older.

For Princeton, the challenge is to provide the best possible experience for fans, so they'll want to come back again And to use football as a vehicle to introduce these fans to the rest of the athletic offerings at Princeton.

For those who work in Princeton Athletics and who have been there for years, it's hard to get a real fresh feel on the experience and what is appealing to the new fan and what isn't. The quest for feedback is never-ending, as beyond that, what's left is what Princeton has done for years - making its best guess.

As of today, practice for the 2011 season starts next month. It's a rather unique schedule this season, with three straight home games and then only two more home games over the final seven weeks.

As usual, Princeton will be trying to make decisions and reach conclusions about its marketing efforts for football and beyond. As usual, there will be too many variables to make any hard-fast analysis.

Other than this one: TigerBlog is pretty sure that going to a Princeton football game is fun.

And now that Alexander Road is reopened, traffic flow won't spoil that.