The Army-Navy Game

TigerBlog watched his favorite annual non-Princeton-included athletic event of each year Saturday afternoon.

That, of course, is the Army-Navy football game.

Well, he watched most of the Army-Navy game. He did check on Tennessee-Vanderbilt, and he was able to see Vandy's Sarah Fuller kick an extra point in the first quarter.

Fuller, who became the first woman to play in an FBS game two weeks ago when she kicked off in a 41-0 loss to Missouri. This time around, she was called on to kick the extra point after the Commodores' first touchdown, and she did so without much issue.

It was a feel-good moment to be sure. And to see the way she was congratulated by her teammates couldn't help but make TB smile.

As for the Army-Navy game, it's extraordinary from start to finish. Actually, it's incredible before the start until after the finish.

Before the start, there's the national anthem. If you've never seen a game at a service academy, TB recommends going to one as soon as the opportunity arises. 

And then watch the players, and the other students in the stands, as the anthem is played. It'll give you chills.

The game Saturday featured a rendition of the national anthem sung by members of the respective school's glee clubs. And it featured everyone on both sides as they saluted the flag. 

It's a reminder of who it is who is playing in the game, and it's a reminder of what the players and their classmates have signed up for.

The game Saturday was moved to West Point because of the COVID pandemic. Princeton should have played there earlier this year, but hey, that's another story that TB has mentioned before. 

One of the best parts of the game was when Army linebacker Jon Rhattigan said that he had two brothers who played college football, but neither was able to say "Go Army, Beat Navy." One of his two brothers is Joe Rhattigan, who was a two-time second-team All-Ivy running back at Princeton and a member of the 2013 and 2016 Ivy League championship teams.

This fact, or at least that Joe had played at Princeton, was mentioned on the broadcast.

There is another Princeton connection to the Army-Navy game. 

The first Army-Navy game was played in 1890, and the teams rotated hosting the game for the first four years. They did not play from 1894-1898 (TB has no idea why), and when the series resumed in 1899, the game was held in Philadelphia.

Since then, the teams have played the overwhelming majority of their games in Philadelphia. Until yesterday's game, the only other time they played at West Point was in 1943.

Between 1900 and Saturday, there were as many games played in Princeton as there were at West Point. The game in Princeton was played in 1905.

That was nine years before Palmer Stadium was built, which means the game was played at University Field. The game finished in a 6-6 tie, and it was called because of darkness before it reached its end.

The most interesting thing about that game?

There were three United States Presidents in attendance. The President at the time was Theodore Roosevelt, and he was there. He took a train from Washington, D.C., that morning, in fact.

The next President was William Howard Taft, who in 1905 was the Secretary of War (which is now sort of the Secretary of Defense). And the President after Taft was Woodrow Wilson, who in 1905 was the president of Princeton University.

Taft, by the way, is the only person who has ever been the President of the United States and the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Army-Navy game Saturday was played in a dense fog, and it wasn't a game that had explosive offenses (the teams combined for 12 first downs; the 2018 Princeton team averaged 26.7 all by itself). Army did enough to get itself a 15-0 win, marking its first shutout of Navy since 1969.

It's not the score of the game or who wins that makes it such an incredible game to watch. It's how hard every player goes on every play. It's what the game means to so many people stationed all over the world, many in dangerous posts. 

And it is, as TB said before, that these players will shortly be joining those people around the world.

It's just awe-inspiring to watch it each year.

The Four-Time Olympian

The monthly Department of Athletics staff meeting was held yesterday morning.

As it was December's meeting, that probably would have meant that the annual Holiday Party would have been held last night, presumably in the lobby of Jadwin Gym.

With the current pandemic situation, the meeting was on Zoom. As for the Holiday Party, it's on hold for now, though Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan has said that the party will happen at the first available date, which of course will make it a holiday unto itself.

The meeting yesterday, though, did feature a dance contest. 

And, of course, there was an "ugly sweater" contest. There were too many people in Santa hats to count, and there were all kinds of, um, interesting outfits. 

Special merit goes to women's soccer head coach Sean Driscoll and his Olaf outfit. And to Brad Hunt, the women's cross country head coach, who had a sweater and hat that were light up with Christmas lights, which probably explains why he also needed to be wearing sunglasses with it. Lizzie Pannucci, Manager of Intercollegiate Programming, also had a hat with lights on it.

Executive Associate AD Anthony Archbald went full-on Santa Claus, complete with falling snow in his background. Stacie Traube from the football staff stood out with a green Santa hat.

Nobody, though, could top Chas Dorman, the Assistant AD for Communications. He had the most colors represented, some of them quite randomly placed, between his Santa hat and sweater. There are a lot of words that can describe his outfit, though "understated" is not one of them.

If you know TigerBlog, it probably doesn't shock you to know that he was not wearing any sort of holiday sweater. 

His contribution to the staff meeting was to put together a women's athletic history trivia quiz that Mollie could use during the meeting. This year is, of course, the 50th anniversary of women's athletics at Princeton.

He came up with 15 trivia questions. He could have come up with 10 times that many if he had to, since there is so much amazing history to women's athletics at Princeton. 

TB's colleague Kim Meszaros turned it into a contest during the meeting. The winner was Mike Thibault, the hockey equipment manager, followed by the advancement duo of Brendan Van Ackeren and Mason Darrow in second and third. 

Here's a sample question:

How many Princeton women have lettered in three sports (excluding cross-country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field)? A) 11, B) 17, C) 24, D) 38.

The answer: B, 17.

Here's another that wasn't part of the contest: Who is the only Princeton athlete who has ever made four Olympic teams? 

As you (hopefully) know, TB is in the process of writing a book on those first 50 years of women's athletics. Each month he's been posting an excerpt from the book, which will be finished in the spring.

This month's excerpt was put up yesterday, and it features the woman who is the answer to that question. The only four-time Olympian in Princeton history was Anne Marden, a rower from the Class of 1981.

Marden first qualified for the Olympics in 1980, which was the year that the President Jimmy Carter led a United States boycott of the Games due to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.

She then won a silver medal in 1984 in the quad and then another silver in the single in 1988. In 1992 she might have won a gold, but a bug she caught slowed her just enough that she finished fourth.

Looking back on it now, it's easy to look at the two medals and realize that her Olympic experience worked out just fine for her. During the 1980 boycott, though, there was no way for her to know that there was ever going to be a second chance to make it to the actual Games themselves, let alone two more after that.

For some, by the way, 1980 was their one and only chance.

TB has spoken to two women from Princeton (Marden and Carol Brown) who would have rowed at the 1980 Games. Both of them have won Olympic medals (Brown won a bronze in the eights in 1976), and yet the frustration of what happened in 1980 has stayed with them.

TB knew Marden's name as being a four-time Olympian, but he'd never spoken to her before he Zoomed with her a few weeks ago. Marden grew up in Concord, Mass., and went to Phillips Exeter before attending Princeton, and she and her husband have been living in England for pretty much her whole adult life.

She was easy to talk to, and her story from being a 15 year old who liked to, in her words, "hang out and smoke cigarettes" is a great one. 

Like all the rest of the women TB has written about so far, he was totally impressed with Marden and was thrilled to be able to write about her.

You can read the excerpt HERE.

The Right Stuff, Redux

TigerBlog has told you this story once before, so indulge him again.

On the other hand, it's possibly you don't remember it, since it was back in 2011.

When TB was a student at Penn, he spent a lot of time going to the movies in a little theater on 40th Streeet, next to Smokey Joe's, whose website claims that if you've ever attended or worked at Penn, you've probably been there. TB would have to concur, and in fact he'd guess that's probably close to 100 percent true.

Anyway, one night his friend Ed Mikus Jr. asked him if he wanted to go see the movie "The Right Stuff," which TB knew had something to do with astronauts. He also knew it was three hours long, and he doubted he could sit through a movie that lasted that long, at least he thought at the time.

He went anyway. Back in those days, there were no cell phones, and TB didn't have a watch, so he had no idea how long he'd been watching. At one point, though, he noticed someone else's watch, and it said that the movie was past the 2:30 mark.

All these years later, and TB still remembers the astonished feeling he had at knowing how quickly the time had gone by. He would have guessed before he saw the time that it had been about 30 minutes in, not 30 minutes from the end.

The movie remains one of the best he's ever seen. It's mostly about the original seven Mercury astronauts, but it begins on Oct. 13, 1947, the day before Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, a previously unimaginable accomplishment that many thought would result in certain death.  

Pretty good stuff, right? Or is that, the right stuff?

Chuck Yeager died this week at the age of 97. He lived 73 years past when he broke the sound barrier, and he joins those seven Mercury astronauts are some of the greatest American heroes of all time.

As TB said, he told you that story back in 2011. It was back on April 13, 2011, in fact.

TB didn't remember the context of why he wrote that in the first place. When he went back and checked it out again, he connected it to the Princeton-Rutgers men's lacrosse game of the night before.

That game saw Princeton defeat Rutgers 11-10 after trailing 8-3 in the third quarter on what was one of the most miserable weather nights you'll ever see. Also, both teams were sub-.500 that year, which for Princeton was a season known mostly for two things: 1) a staggering number of injuries and 2) the emergence of freshman Tom Schreiber as a world class star.

TB wrote this after the part about the movie:

The game was delayed by lightning for 75 minutes, and it was played in really strong wind, temps that fell as the game went along and periods of heavy rain. This was the 89th meeting in the series, and - with Rutgers at .500 after a loss to Marist and Princeton at 2-6 and battling injuries that have crippled what was a promising season - this figured to be one of the least memorable of all of them. The fact that almost nobody was there to see it made it even more likely that the game would be an afterthought. But that's the beauty of sports. You never know when you're going to stumble across a game that starts out with no expectation and then ends up being not only exciting to the very end but also historically unprecedented.

As TB reread that, he was struck by the notion of what he said about the beauty of sports. It's so true.

There are two kinds of great games. There are the big ones, where two teams play for first place or a championship or something tangible. And there are the other ones, where the records and standings might not suggest that something special is about to happen and then you get to see something extraordinary.

The first kind you know is coming and the buildup is there leading up to the start. Often those games don't live up to the hype.

The other kind gives no sense that it's about to happen, and that makes it even more special. When TB thinks back to that night at Rutgers, he remembers sitting in his car during a massive thunderstorm waiting to hear if the game would be played at all. The idea that he was about to see one of the best games he'd ever see never entered his mind.

There have been a lot of games like that in TB's time here. Maybe there haven't been many that approached that Rutgers game, but there have been so many nights where TB had no expectations of anything out of the ordinary and suddenly he found himself watching a masterpiece.

It's part of what makes working in sports so great.

It's also part of what TB is looking forward to the most when the games start again, having that feeling of being struck once again by the magnificent capabilities of athletic competition.

For now, he's waiting patiently, hoping it'll come around soon enough.

And as for "The Right Stuff?" If you've never seen it, make sure you watch. It's worth your three hours, even though it won't seem nearly that long.

A Tiger In Salzburg

The big game in college basketball this past weekend was supposed to be No. 1 Gonzaga against No. 2 Baylor.

The game was to be played in Indianapolis. It was going to be televised by CBS. 

And the announcers? Bill Raftery was to be the color commentator. And the play-by-play was to be done by Tom McCarthy, the Philadelphia Phillies/NFL announcer whose roots are in Princeton football and basketball and whose son Patrick does play-by-play for, among others, Princeton men's basketball.

TigerBlog was excited to watch. He was looking forward to Raftery's call after the opening tap, in which he will mention the team that falls back and defense and throw it to the play-by-play guy in something of this manner: "And Tom McCarthy, Baylor goes man-to-man" in his very, very emphatic style.

And then TB was looking forward to hearing Tom on the game.

Unfortunately, a positive COVID test forced the game to be postponed just before it was to begin. For his part, McCarthy was already sitting courtside at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

As always, McCarthy's attitude was positive and upbeat. Still, that was rough, flying out to Indiana but then not being able to do the game, any game, let alone a game between No. 1 and No. 2.

The game would not have been McCarthy's first college basketball game in Indianapolis, of course. He was the play-by-play man for Princeton when it beat UCLA in the old RCA Dome in the opening round of the 1996 NCAA tournament.

When Toby Bailey's last-chance jump shot went long, ending the Tigers' 43-41 win, McCarthy's call was "there'll be a new champion in the NCAA!" It was picked up by pretty much every radio station around the country, including leading "The Mike And The Mad Dog Show" on WFAN in New York.

By the way, every time TB has seen a replay of Bailey's shot, he's had the same reaction - he thought it was going in when it left his hand, and that would have forced overtime.

That game was in 1996, as TB said. A few weeks later, there were four winners of the Roper Trophy as Princeton's top senior male athlete. One of them was Jesse Marsch, a men's soccer player.

Marsch went on to a long career as a player in Major League Soccer, and since then, he has gone down the path of coaching on the professional level.

Today is a huge day for Marsch.

He is currently the head coach of FC Salzburg, a team in the Austrian Bundesliga. This year, under Marsch's direction, FC Salzburg won both the league title and the Austrian Cup.

The win in the Austrian Bundesliga advanced the team to the UEFA Champions League. Today is the final day of the Group stage for FC Salzburg, who takes on Atletico, from Madrid.

That game will be played in Salzburg and begins at 3 Eastern time (that's 9 pm in Salzburg). It's basically a play-in game into the knockout round of the final 16 teams.

Salzburg is Group A, which has already been won by Bayern Munich. Lokomotive, from Moscow, cannot advance. That leaves Salzburg and Atletico.

Salzburg currently has four points to the six for Atletico, so a tie would put Atletico through to the knockout round. Atletico beat Salzburg 3-2 in their first meeting.

No matter what happens, Marsch has established himself as an extraordinary coach, something not easy for Americans to do in Europe. TB found an NBC Sports article that included this in advance of the game:

Jesse Marsch will match wits for Diego Simeone in what will be one of the highest-profile club matches managed by an American in the history of world football.

The article also mentions three other American coaches who have succeeded in Europe. One of them, obviously, was another Princetonian, Bob Bradley. You can read the story HERE.

Marsch is definitely cut from the same mold as Bradley, and current Tiger head coach Jim Barlow, for that matter. They're all intense and passionate about soccer, extremely loyal (especially to their Princeton roots), very intelligent, very deep thinkers and completely humble. 

And they're just really good people. 

So good luck to Jesse today. 

Oh, and the other three 1996 Roper Trophy winners? 

David Patterson (football), Ugwunna Ikpeowo (track and field) and Reed Cordish (tennis).

There's Always One

There's always THAT guy, right?

In this case, That guy is John Mack. As you recall, Mack was a 10-time Heptagonal track and field champion and a Roper Trophy winner in 2000.

TigerBlog wrote yesterday about universally beloved athletes, and he came up with Usain Bolt as an example of that. Of course it took until all the way to 9:37 yesterday morning for TB to get a text from Mack that said: "I rooted against Usain Bolt."

Mack's best 200 meter time, by the way, was 21.12, which is the fourth-best in Princeton history. The record of 20.69 was set by Steve Morgan at the 1986 IC4A meet, which makes it the longest-standing Princeton men's track outdoor record.

Augie Wolf's records in the field events of shot put and discus are a few years older.

As recently as the 1950s, Morgan's 200-meter time would have been the world record. The first time a runner went under 20 seconds was when Tommie Smith did so at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, shortly before the most important social justice moment in athletic history, when he and silver medalist John Carlos raised their clenched fists in what Smith called in his autobiography "a human rights" salute.

The current world record, by the way, was set in 2009 by none other than Bolt, who ran a 19.19. 

Mack's best event was the 400, and his best time there was 46.68. For the entirety of his Princeton career, he tried to chase down the record of 46.44, set by Dick Edmunds at the 1960 Olympic Trials. It was Tom Hopkins who would eventually catch Edmunds, when Hopkins ran a 46.23 in 2012, a mere 52 years after Edmonds first set the record.

That's a long run, as the record holder, if you'll pardon the pun.

It's amazing how small the differences are between a record that could stand that long and the challengers who came so close to it. Mike Eddy came within five one-hundreths of a second of the record in 2011, and Royce Reed came slightly closer than Mack did when Reed ran 46.57 in 1999.

Those time differences are not even real in normal human existence.

On the women's side, the longest standing outdoor track and field records both date to 1983. Not shockingly, they belong to two of the programs all-time best runners.

One of them is the 3,000 meter run, whose record is held by former Olympian Lynn Jennings. Her time? 9:01.70.

What is the next-best? 

Laura Cattivera ran a 9:18.60 in 1989, followed by Katie McCandless and her 9:19.45 in 1992. The best time this century was 9:20.74 in 2014. 

That's a huge gap still, considering all the great distance runners Princeton has had in the last 37 years.

The other record from 1983 was set at the AIAW championships that year in the 400 hurdles, an event in which Sally Anderson ran a 58.19. Sally Anderson is now Sally Willig, by the way, and she is a highly accomplished geologist.

Only one person has gotten within a second of the record that Anderson set, and that was fairly recently, when Carly Bonnet went 59.12 at the 2019 Heps.

There is also a record for a field event that dates to the 1980s. Not surprisingly, it's the shot put record that Deborah Saint-Phard set in 1987, a mark of more than 54 feet that nobody has approached (second-best is four feet behind, in a 2011 performance by Thanithia Billing).

If you're really looking for distance in a record, try the hammer throw. 

The second-best thrower in Princeton history is, by Kennedy O'Dell, who went 196-10 in 2018. That leaves her 34 feet (more than 10 yards) short of Julia Ratcliffe, whose 134 Princeton throws all were better than any one at Princeton - or in the Ivy League, for that matter - has ever done.

In conclusion, TB isn't sure if John Mack was serious about not rooting for Usain Bolt. Maybe he was.

When he asked him, Mack responded with a link to a story that said that of the 10 best 100-meter sprinters of all time, only three had never been charged with a doping offense, and Bolt was one of the clean ones.

So did Mack actually like him after all? His response was "nah."

There's always one.

The GM

Who is the professional athlete whom you've watched who would have the highest universal approval rating among the team's fans?

For that matter, among the opposing team's fans? 

TigerBlog has been trying to think. If you'd asked him this 40 years ago, he would have said Julius Erving. Who didn't like Dr. J? He was exciting to walk. He played with flair. He played with joy. He was a winner. He came across as a really likable guy.

As an aside, when TB was doing student radio at Penn, he made arrangements with the 76ers PR staff to tape a halftime interview with Julius Erving. Back then, the Sixers practiced at Temple, and on the day the staff arranged, TB headed over to McGonigle Hall along with another student broadcaster to meet with the Doctor.

It's been awhile now since TB has felt awed or intimidated around any athlete, but back then, as a college student, he definitely was star-struck. His biggest memory from that day is sitting in the stands, interviewing one of the most famous athletes in the world, and then having him hang out for a few minutes afterwards having a casual conversation.

Any time TB saw Erving on TV after that, his first thought was of what a really nice guy he'd been to him that day.

Is there a more contemporary athlete? 

TB might have said Peyton Manning perhaps? He'd say maybe Eli Manning, but there were too many people who were critical of Eli's play in later years. That has to be part of it.

In fact here would be the criteria:

* great athlete (actually more than simply great)
* plays with obvious love for the game
* seems quite likeable
* you root for him or her even if they aren't on your team

The likeability part lets out Michael Jordan, who would get perfect scores on everything other than likeability.

So what athlete best fits all that? TB knows the clear winner:

Usain Bolt.

Who could ever root against him? 

So how does this apply to Princeton? Well same question, restricted to Princeton Athletes. 

Suppose you graded on a scale of 1-25 for each of the four categories. Your average Princeton athlete would score in the high 80s to low 90s (don't say "grade inflation).

Who would get perfect scores? 

TigerBlog thinks of a group of maybe 10 or so that he's seen in the last 30 or so years. And if you needed to then sort out the ones with a perfect score, who would be at the top?

TB has written this many times before. The most beloved Princeton athlete he's seen here has been Chris Young, the basketball/baseball player. 

Maybe it's because there's a sense of "what if" with Young, with the way he zoomed in to the Princeton landscape and was gone after two years. Maybe it's because in many ways he's a larger-than-life figure, with his 6-10ish height.

Maybe it's his personality and the way he was so engaging with the fans. For TB, Young will always be the Princeton athlete who always had time for every fan, whether they were little kids or whether they had graduated from Princeton in the 1940s.

Maybe it's all of those things.

Either way, as a Princeton athlete, Chris Young was something of a mythical figure, someone who seemed almost too good to be true. It made him so easy to root for as a Tiger, and that has never stopped in his post-graduate years.

TigerBlog remembers going to watch Young pitch against the Single-A Lakewood Blue Claws in his first professional season. He remembers getting the MLB package on Direct TV to be able to watch Young when he came up with the Texas Rangers.

Mostly he remembers rooting hard for Young in the 2015 World Series, when Young was the fourth starter for the Kansas City Royals, who won the Series over the Mets four games to one. Young was the winning pitcher in Game 1, with three riveting innings in a game that went 14 innings.

The news came last week that Young, who pitched for 13 years in the Major Leagues and had been working in the MLB front office, was now the general manager of the Texas Rangers. Young has been living in Dallas, so it works out well for him, his wife Liz (a  former Princeton women's soccer player) and their three children.

And for Princeton fans? They're now Texas Ranger fans.

Once again, Chris Young is impossible to root against.

Lisa And Theresa

The latest edition of the "First 50" podcast was released yesterday.

It features two of the great women athletes Princeton has ever seen. How good was the first one?

Consider her resume:

* three-time first-team All-American
* NCAA champion
* two-sport athlete
* Ivy League Player of the Year
* Ivy League Rookie of the Year
* three-time first-team All-Ivy League after being second-team All-Ivy as a freshman
* von Kienbusch Award winner

And the second one? Consider hers as well:

* three-time first-team All-American
* NCAA champion
* two-sport athlete
* Ivy League Player of the Year
* Ivy League Rookie of the Year
* three-time first-team All-Ivy League after being second-team All-Ivy as a freshman
* von Kienbusch Award winner

Yes, they're remarkably similar. 

TigerBlog didn't realize just how similar they were until he wrote up some notes for his co-host, Mollie Marcoux Samaan, in advance of the podcast. 

The two women are Lisa Rebane Ewanchyna ’96 and Theresa Sherry ’04.

TigerBlog saw both of them play a lot of their games, and he can tell you from firsthand observation that certain players just have the ability to get to the goal when most others could not. Call it ferocity or savviness or grit or instinct or whatever you want, but both of them had a lot of it.

There have been five women who have been a three-time first-team All-American in women's lacrosse at Princeton. Rebane and Sherry were two of them. 

For those who are wondering, the other three were Amory Rowe ’94, Cristi Samaras ’99 and Rachael Becker ’03. 

For Rebane and Sherry, the similarities go way deeper.

For instance, Rebane was Princeton's all-time leading goal scorer when she graduated with 162 goals (she still ranks fourth all-time). How many goals did Sherry score? Yup, 161.

Sherry is seventh all-time at Princeton in draw controls. Rebane is eighth. Sherry had three more for her career.

There's more.

In fact, you can make a very strong case that the two biggest goals ever scored for Princeton women's lacrosse came in two Final Four overtimes, both against Virginia. 

The first was in 1994 in the semifinals. Princeton had led 13-10 before UVa score three times in the final two minutes to tie it. The Tigers were able to regroup and pull it out 14-13.

The other goal was in the 2003 NCAA final. In this one, Princeton needed a late goal in regulation to force the OT. Once there, Princeton won it 8-7.

Who had the goal in 1994? Rebane. Who had the goal in 2003? Sherry. Rebane, by the way, added two more goals in the 1994 championship game, which Princeton won 10-7 over Maryland. 

Sherry's other sport was soccer, in which she was also an All-Ivy League player. She was a member of three Ivy League championship teams and four NCAA tournament teams inn her falls.

As for Rebane, she was also a first-team All-American in field hockey, as well as a three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection. That's six first-team All-Ivy selections and four first-team All-American selections. That's not too bad.

She also was a two-time Ivy League champion in field hockey, making two NCAA appearances as well. 

Both have been very involved in coaching in their professional careers. TB was interested to hear what they said about their philosophies, and of course what they said about what they took from their Princeton lacrosse coach, Chris Sailer.

Rebane's freshman year was 1992-93. Sailer's first year at Princeton was 1987, meaning it was Year 6 for her when Rebane first played for her.

Sherry came through the program a decade later. Sailer is still here. 

What did they see from their coach back then? Are they surprised she is still coaching today? What have been the main reasons for her sustained success?

Well, you can listen to the podcast. In fact you can listen to it here.

If you want the archive of all of the podcasts so far, you can hear them all at goprincetontigers.com/50years. You can go there for all kinds of content related to the 50th anniversary celebration.

The podcast with Rebane and Sherry was the fifth in the series. There will be another one in two weeks, and then there will be more after the new year.

Football, Fun And Intense

As videos about Princeton Athletics go, you're not going to find one too much better than the one that Cody Chrusciel put together about how Princeton Football Associate Head Coach Steve Verbit has been coaching his five-year-old son's flag team.

It's great. HERE, see for yourself.

It's just a really nice story that's told really well. It's a total feel-good situation, with a love of football that was able to override the COVID shutdown as best as possible. 

At first it struck TigerBlog as extraordinary that Matt Verbit has a five year old. Then he remembered that Verbit graduated in 2005, which makes him somehow in his mid-30s. 

It became more about much time flies than anything else. Was that really 15 years ago already?

If you forgot about the career that Matt Verbit had, he's one of three Princeton quarterbacks who ever threw for more than 5,000 career yards. In fact, he stands in third place all-time at Princeton with 5,202 career yards, trailing only Chad Kanoff (7,510) and Doug Butler (7,291). 

He's also tied for seventh all-time at Princeton with 25 touchdown passes. Also if you forgot, he also spent some time playing for the men's basketball team.

And now he has a five year old. 

In contrast to the wholesomeness of watching the little kids do flag football drills, there was, at the other end of the intensity spectrum, the 2018 Princeton-Dartmouth football game. That game was quite possibly the best Ivy League football game TB has ever seen (and if not the best, then certainly in the top three), but it was without question the absolute most intense Ivy football game he's ever seen.

TB was the PA announcer for that game. He watched the replay of it on NBC Sports Philadelphia last week, which was the first time he's seen it since he watched it on that day more than two years ago.

It's always interesting to rewatch a game, especially one you've only seen live, because you have your memories of how it played out and yet you always see something (or things) that weren't how you remembered. 

For instance, TB didn't remember how windy it was that day. He also remembered Princeton's long drive from the third quarter into the fourth quarter did a lot to change the game. What he didn't remember was that it was 23 plays.

Princeton trailed 9-7 and took over on its three-yard line with 4:31 left in the third quarter. More on that in a second.

What TB did remember is how effortless it was for both teams to drive the length of the field and score a touchdown on the first drives of the game. At that point, it seemed like the game would simply be about which team would get that one stop in what would be a 50-47 game.

As TB wrote after the game:
Here were the combined results of the remaining drives: 10 punts, one safety, three turnovers on downs, one fumble and one interception. Oh yeah, and one touchdown, the game-winning one, on the second rushing touchdown of the day from John Lovett, with 6:33 to go in the game. After the 150 yards the teams had on those first drives, there would be 373 more yards of total offense between the two. That's it. And 91 of those came on one of the most extraordinary drives you'll ever see.

Princeton's 23-play, 91-yard, nine-minute march was extraordinary. And, watching it again, TB wished he could remember what he was thinking when Dartmouth got a stop on its six-yard line on a fourth-down play to end it.

Was he thinking that was Princeton's best chance? Was he thinking "get a stop and get it back in good field position?"

The latter is what happened. Princeton's defense shut down the Big Green again, and the Tigers took over on the 34. 

The first play on the next drive saw Collin Eaddy stopped for a four-yard loss. This confused TB as well, since he wrote last year that Eaddy had a very long streak of not being tackled for a loss (Eaddy, by the way, is currently Princeton's career leader in yards per carry at 5.8, one-tenth of a yard better than Keith Elias).

Had TB missed that negative-yardage play? Nope. There was a facemask penalty against the Big Green, something TB also forgot. 

Four plays later John Lovett was in the end zone. Princeton had itself the lead, and the defense never let up.

Watching it again was somewhat like watching "Apollo 13" for the first time. You knew how it was going to end, and yet it was still dramatic.

Of course, it was nothing like watching it the first time around. Princeton's 14-9 win propelled the Tigers to a 10-0 season. 

It was not an easy win at all. 

It took every ounce of toughness and intensity the Tigers could muster to pull it off. 

Thank You

Another TAGD has come and gone, and TigerBlog joins everyone at Princeton Athletics in thanking all of those who once again showed their generous support.

As TB always says, it's always a good idea to invest in the athletes who come through Princeton. They won't let you down.

TB has said this before after TAGD, and it seems appropriate to put it out there again:

Mostly, it's a sign of faith in the direction of the current programs, a message of approval for the athletes - and a reaffirmation of what the Princeton experience meant to so many people who have competed here through the years. Princeton Athletics clearly appreciates it.

The day provided its usual fun, with the social media presence between the different teams and the competition between the different Friends' groups. This year also featured a photo mosaic, where anyone and everyone Princetonian could submit their own pictures of the Tigers through the years.

There were a lot of familiar faces in that mosaic. Basically anywhere TB clicked he saw people he knew, celebrating all of the great things about Princeton Athletics.

The most interesting part is that they weren't just in-game celebration pictures. In fact, TB would guess that there were more non-game pictures.

And of course, all of the pictures added up to a great reflection of the great tradition that is Princeton Athletics and what it has meant, and continues to mean, to everyone in those pictures. There's something really special about being a part of something that has so much history, so much tradition and so much success while also being fully committed in the present day to continuing everything that has made it so great in the first place. 

It's about winning. It's about fun. It's about values. It's about education. It's about learning. It's about loyalty. It's about friendships.

Those are the things that have kept TB here all these years, and those are the reasons why he would never have wanted to be a part of any other athletic department in the country. There's just something so special about Princeton, and it grabbed him from the earliest days that he was exposed to it.

TAGD is a reminder of all of that. And if that's how TB feels, as someone who has worked here for a long time, he can imagine that those who actually competed here feel those same emotions, only more so.

The social media presence yesterday was great, with so many different posts and so many featured people. 

TB actually spent a good deal of his afternoon checking them all out. In some cases he matched faces he'd never met with names he knew. In others, he was taken back to some of the great moments he's seen here.

The original TAGD grew out of the 150th anniversary of the first Princeton Athletic event, which was a baseball game against Williams in 1864. TB had no idea what to expect, and clearly what's happened in the last seven years has far exceeded any reasonable expectations.

On the other hand, maybe he shouldn't really be all that surprised. After all, this is Princeton, a place where loyalty is the defining characteristic and where the experience that decades of athletes have had has been so life-changing and so formative.

And so even in this most different year, Princeton Athletics got incredible support from those who want to share that experience with the current generation. 

And again, maybe nobody should be surprised about that.

The main difference between this TAGD and other TAGDs is that, of course, there are no athletic events currently being played. In every other year, TAGD either fell on a game night, or in between them.

For TB, maybe that was the best part of yesterday's TAGD, and especially the mosaic and the social media presence. They were a reminder of what Princeton Athletics look like at their best.

And, even more importantly, a reminder that those days will return.

So once again, thank you to everyone who participated in TAGD. 

And if you want to see the leaderboards and the mosaic and the social media board, you can get to the TAGD website by clicking HERE.

It's TAGD 7

Tiger Athletics Give Day Website

Among TigerBlog's absolute least favorite words to write are any variation of "Princeton lost."

As he researches any number of different things, he's often taken back to the stories he's written after games in any number of sports. In the case of a crushing loss, just reading those stories can take him back to the time he wrote them, and he can feel the sheer frustration of what it was like to have to do so in the moment.

There should be some sort of rule where if your team loses a really tough game, then the entire story can simply be "go away," and therefore the reader will know the day didn't go well.

It would be like being part of a really awful corporate meeting, maybe one where you figured you were about to be promoted only to find out that the person you dislike the most is the one who actually gets the job. And then you have to go back and write about that person for the company newsletter.

Grrrr.

You would think that writing a story about a bad loss would be quick. Just get to the point. Get it over with. Close up your computer. 

But no. The ones after the big wins are the ones where the words just fly. The tough losses are the ones where you stare at your computer and it takes you seemingly forever to write one paragraph.

Ah, but as TB has often said, he's been lucky to be at Princeton all these years, where the good wins outnumber the bad losses by a lot. 

Writing "Princeton wins" is a lot more fun.

Anyway, to the list of words that he never wants to write again you can add "in a normal year." Oh, is he tired of writing those words.

He's tried not to do it too often since the COVID pandemic began and Princeton sports had to be put on hold. He's tried not to dwell on what would have happened on any given day, but it hasn't been easier.

It's been more difficult in real life, to be honest. There hasn't been what would have been a gameday yet where TB hasn't imagined where he would have been and what he would have been doing compared to what he was doing.

Today is TAGD, which is Tiger Athletics Give Day. It's the seventh edition of TAGD, a wildly successful and unifying event that has seen Princeton Athletics raise funds in support of its 17 Friends Groups and 37 varsity teams.

So with the understanding of just how much he hates to write those words, here he goes again: In a normal year, TAGD has a different build-up and a different feel.

This of course isn't a normal year.

Still, it doesn't diminish from all of the positives about TAGD. First, as TB said, it's a very unifying occasion, bringing together for a 24-hour period all of the alums and current athletes and reminding everyone of the common bond that is shared among those who compete and have competed for Princeton.

The theme of this year's TAGD speaks to that: Stronger Together. At a time when it's easy to feel isolation, remembering that there is something that is shared among a large group of people is important. 

As Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan said in her letter to the community (the full letter is on the TAGD webpage, linked above):

These past few months have been challenging and tested us all in ways we never expected. I have been so inspired by our student-athletes and coaches, who demonstrate day after day what it means to be part of a team that cares deeply and is committed to one another. I also want to thank our alumni and supporters, whose continued passion, dedication and support of our Tigers and our mission of Education Through Athletics demonstrate to our student-athletes and coaches how strong their “Team Around the Team” really is. In that vein, we look forward to coming together as a united Princeton Athletics team as part of TAGD, like we have for the past six years. TAGD has been a tremendous vehicle for our department, as it has become an annual tradition on National Giving Tuesday. We are humbled by and grateful for the year-over-year engagement and financial support. If there is anything that this initiative, as well as the ongoing challenges related to the pandemic have shown, it is that we are STRONGER TOGETHER.

TAGD is an investment in the education and the experience of the Princeton student-athletes. They are wonderful young men and women who give back on that investment with their own loyalty to Princeton later on but more importantly with the way they live their lives, armed with the lessons that they've been able to learn as undergrads. 

Yes, they can be a bit cliched, but words like "Education Through Athletics," "Achieve, Serve, Lead" and "Be A Tiger" have real significance. They're about values, clearly defined and articulated values, and they are the ultimate goal here is all about.

And so yes, this year is not a normal year. 

But it's still TAGD. So have some fun with it. Thank you again for all of your support.

And remember what is is that "Stronger Together" speaks to.

In this non-normal year, it's more valuable than ever.