The Adman Of Denver

For the fourth time in his life, TigerBlog received a jury duty notice in the mail.

He had to go online and fill out a long form that asked the kinds of questions you would expect (Is there any reason you couldn't impartially judge a case) and one that you wouldn't (what's your favorite book?).

Guess what TB answered for that one. HERE it is.

It took about 15 minutes to fill in all of his answers. When he hit submit, he was told to log back in after 4 on the day before he was scheduled to see what time to report.

The big moment came Wednesday afternoon, since he was supposed to go in yesterday. When he logged on, he saw this message:

"You are not required to report. This concludes your jury service."

And so, once again, TB has not been called to be on a jury. He's now 0 for 4. He's had the same thought each time: "It might be interesting to see what it's all about."

Maybe next time, though not for at least three years. The closest he's come is when his number was picked for a civil case but one of the party's lawyers dismissed him before he took two steps towards the jury box. TB regrets not asking why.

Seriously. Would you be judged by TigerBlog?

Anyway, the original plan for today was to talk about TB's experience on jury duty. At one point, he considered what he would do if he ended up on a case where he was sequestered. Would the judge allow him to write about Princeton Athletics every day? 

In need of something else to write, TB found it in the news of the new president of the Denver Broncos. It's none other than Damani Leech, Class of 1998, one of Princeton's best defensive backs of all time.

#BroncosCountry Let’s Ride!!! https://t.co/Pxn4yIPnhJ

— Damani Leech (@dleech9) August 11, 2022

TigerBlog has always been a huge fan of Damani Leech, and he'll of course be rooting for the Broncos going forward. This is what team owner and CEO Greg Penner said about him:

"Damani is highly regarded throughout the National Football League for his leadership, strategic vision and collaborative spirit. As a former college player with executive experience at both the NFL and NCAA levels, Damani understands the value of teamwork and knows what it takes to win—on and off the field. Most importantly, he leads with integrity, empathy and respect. I'm confident Damani will help the Broncos grow across all areas of our business and make our staff, partners and fans proud of this organization."

Integrity, empathy and respect. Teamwork. They're all the perfect words to describe him.

TB can't really talk about Leech without mentioning two non-football things first.

Back in the 1990s, when publications were a huge part of what was done in the Office of Athletic Communications and technology hadn't yet caught up, it was required to actually make prints of photos, size them proportionally to the hole left in the layout and then drive them over to campus printing (at the Forrestal Village) to have them scanned.

Eventually, the OAC got an actual scanner in its office. The first picture that TB ever scanned was one of Damani Leech.

Also, TB's first experience ever with auto-correct involved Leech. He typed in Leech's name, and it auto-corrected to "adman." TB tried it again yesterday, and again it came back "adman."

The adman, as it were, has spent the last eight years working for the NFL, including three years as the CEO of NFL International. His resume also includes 17 years of working at the NCAA office in Indianapolis.

Leech was a three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection. Here's the list of Princeton defensive backs who have been first-team All-Ivy League three times: Damani Leech.

Leech is also one of two Princeton players to have at least six interceptions in two different seasons (the other is Frank Leal in 1988 and 1989). Leech is also one of only two players in Ivy League history to have at least 20 career interceptions (the other is Princeton's Dean Cain, who had 22).

Now Leech joins a long line of Princeton alums who are in senior management roles for professional teams. It was great to see the news.

Freaky

By now, TigerBlog is pretty sure you've seen the clip from the Little League regional.

If you haven't, you can see it here (tissues not included):

"Hey, you're doing just great"

Oklahoma little leaguer gets hit in the head and then comforts the pitcher who is shaken up afterward pic.twitter.com/hYYLiy511K

— Jomboy (@Jomboy_) August 9, 2022

That's about as good as it gets. 

The number of views from that Twitter feed was approaching 20 million yesterday. 

Prior to that, the most-viewed clip from the Little League tournament was of a crushed home run and accompanying bat flip, which is about 180 degrees from the one of the young man who was hit by the pitch and then consoled the pitcher.

By the way, maybe TigerBlog is getting a bit old, but he can remember a time when a bat flip, or anything that showed up a pitcher, would never have happened, especially when the pitcher involved was, say, Bob Gibson or Steve Carlton or Jack Morris. Or really anyone. 

Flip your bat after hitting a home run against Gibson? Well, first of all, almost nobody did. But if you did and flipped your bat? You didn't want to come to the plate the next time, that's for sure.

Now? It's a regular thing. TB liked the other way better.

TB has always been a big fan of sportsmanship, something that has been vanishing from the professional athletics landscape through the years. Perhaps the Little League clip might resonate with some of them? 

The batter's name, by the way, is Isaiah Jarvis, and the pitcher is named Kaiden Shelton. Jarvis' team was eliminated, while Shelton's team moves on to Williamsport, but some things are just bigger than winning sometimes. 

Maybe one day Jarvis will be a big-time college or pro athlete. Hopefully he gets there. And hopefully he never loses what he showed on the field the other day.

Either way, his is a name worth remembering.

Speaking of names, TB was not the only Princeton fan who was not shocked to see the name Andrei Iosivas included in a story in The Athletic entitled "College Football Freaks."

This is what the intention of the writer, Bruce Feldman:

It’s been almost two decades now since I began writing about the biggest Freaks in college football. Initially, there were 10 of ‘em. My premise was to spotlight the players who generate buzz inside their programs by displaying the unique physical abilities that wow even those who observe gifted athletes every day. The Freaks list is compiled with the help of many coaches, players and sports information directors, as well as NFL scouts from all over the nation.

Yes, that pretty much sums up Iosivas.

TB has said before that he can't imagine there's a sport that Iosivas wouldn't be able to conquer. He's pretty much the definition of an athletic freak.

The best part of the write-up on Iosivas is when his wide receiver position coach Brian Flinn talked about the pre-draft physical tests he'd have to go through and said this: "He will destroy them all."

As you probably know, Iosivas is a wide receiver who is a breakaway threat on any play and a world class decathlete who has run the fastest 60 in NCAA indoor heptathlon history. That's a lethal athletic combination.

This is from his write-up as well:

Iosivas bench pressed 370 pounds this month and has vertical-jumped 39 inches. His 60-yard dash time would, by his own estimation, translate into a 4.2-something 40.

A year ago, Iosivas caught 41 passes and averaged 17.1 per reception. There were nine players in the league who caught at least 40 passes a year ago, and of the other eight, none of them averaged even 14 yards per catch.

In fact, there was only one other player in the league who caught at least 30 passes and averaged at least 17. His name is familiar too: Princeton's Dylan Classi. 

Iosivas was one of two "freaks" from the FCS listed in the top 39, and the other is a Towson player who transferred from South Carolina. All but two of the others are Power Five players.

The entire story is HERE (subscription required).

What's In A Name?

TigerBlog has mentioned before the fact that he's had nine different titles in his tenure with Princeton Athletics.

Is that a record? 

Perhaps somewhat fascinating is the fact that one of the titles he's never had is that of "sports information director."

For years, decades, that was the only title for people who worked in college athletic communications. Sports Information Director — SID for short. 

Everyone in college athletics knew what the SID did. He or she (but mostly he) kept stats at games, worked to get media placements, produced pregame notes for the media, sent out postgame results, wrote the media guides and updated the record books. The traditional SID was a public relations/media relations specialist.

TigerBlog isn't sure when the first SID was hired and where, though he knows that it primarily was an offshoot of general university communications offices. In fact, it wasn't until Gary Walters in the mid-1990s lobbied the University that Princeton's Office of Athletic Communications became a part of the Department of Athletics.

The national organization of SIDs was established in 1957, when a group split away from the American College Public Relations Association to create its own sports-specific entity. It was to be called "The College Sports Information Directors of America," or, as it's usually known, "CoSIDA."

You might be most familiar with CoSIDA though its longtime sponsorship of the official Academic All-American program, the CoSIDA Academic All-American. 

Actually, beginning this coming year, that Academic All-American program is changing. Instead of needing a 3.2 grade-point average to be eligible, the minimum has been raised to 3.5. 

In the past, each individual school's communications office would nominate its athletes for the various sports, and those athletes would be placed on a district ballot. Voting would then be done by the SIDs in in each district, and the winners would then be announced and placed on a national ballot.

Beginning this year, anyone nominated will automatically be named All-District and advance directly to the national ballot. Depending on the sport, there are limits to how many athletes can be nominated.

TB likes this change. For one thing, he's guessing that a small percentage of those who could were actually voting. Also, it's a real achievement to be nominated, since you need a 3.5 and you need to be a starter or key contributor, and now that achievement will be recognized.

The big question now is whether or not it will be the CoSIDA Academic All-American team for the foreseeable future. 

Because the term "SID" feels so antiquated and a link to days and tasks that no longer apply in a digital, social media/video-driven world, the CoSIDA board is putting up for a vote for the organization's first name change since it formed 65 years ago.

Coming up on Aug. 31, the CoSIDA membership will vote on whether or not to change the name to the "College Sports Communicators."

Do you like it? 

TB isn't sure yet. He's fine with change, and he too agrees that the term "SID" is outdated. To many, it conjures up black-and-white pictures of men in jackets and ties along press rows and press boxes in front of typewriters with paper and pencils and scorebooks.

Of course, many of those in those pictures were pioneers of the profession and very worthy of respect. It's just that those days are long gone.

It wasn't long after TB started at Princeton that the major shift in the profession really began, and that of course was due to the growth of the internet. Now, instead of being a media relations organization, each college athletic communications office is its own media outlet.

If that change hadn't occurred, TB would have left the profession decades ago. The overwhelming majority of words that TB has written for Princeton Athletics has come in this format, something that didn't exist when he started and something he probably couldn't have foreseen.

So is it to be College Sports Communicators? Or is it to remain CoSIDA?

TB loves the idea that the organization is being proactive. He also loves that one of the key reasons for doing this is to help those who do so much to promote these colleges and universities get the respect that they deserve (but haven't always received).

TB will let you know how he votes and how the vote turns out.

Poll Day

PRINCETON FOOTBALL TICKET INFORMATION

The preseason college football coaches' poll was released yesterday.

Shockingly, the top three teams were Alabama, Ohio State and Georgia. Who could have seen that coming?

In fact, without looking, can you name the other seven teams in the Top 10? Of course you can, or most of them anyway.

Clemson? Check. Notre Dame? Check. Michigan? Check. They're the next three teams. 

The rest are Texas A&M, Utah, Baylor and Oklahoma. Okay, maybe you didn't go 10 for 10, but doing these rankings is not exactly difficult.

Say what you want about the Football Bowl Subdivision, how exciting it can be, how much money it generates, how important it is to so many people, but at the end, you're almost always left with the same teams.

The College Football Playoff has been contested eight times. Here are the winners: Ohio State, Alabama, Clemson, Alabama, Clemson, LSU, Alabama, Georgia. Here are the teams those teams beat in the final: Oregon, Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Alabama.

By contrast, of the last eight NCAA basketball championship games, there have been 12 different schools represented. Only one has won the title more than once in that span (do you know who it is?).

So that's the FBS. Is the FCS much different? Well, somewhat. There's one team that has won nine of the last 11 championships.

When the preseason FCS poll came out yesterday, that team — North Dakota State — received 52 of the 54 first-place votes. The other two went to South Dakota State, which has to absolutely hate North Dakota State, given that South Dakota State (preseason No. 2) is routinely a top three team but has never won a championship. 

Yesterday was a day of preseason football releases. In addition to those two, the Ivy League preseason poll was also released.

There were two teams who were tied for the top spot: Dartmouth and Harvard. Princeton, who tied Dartmouth for the championship last year, was picked third.

Here's the way the poll came out:

1. Harvard – 108 (8)
1. Dartmouth – 108 (4)
3. Princeton – 105 (4)
4. Yale – 83
5. Columbia – 67
6. Penn – 49
7. Brown – 29
8. Cornell – 27

Ivy League football is anything but predictable. In fact, since 2008, six of the eight teams have won at least one championship.

Since the start of the College Football Playoff, the same number of teams have won an Ivy title as have won the FBS title — five. That's five of eight in Ivy League football and five of 131 in the FBS. Even if you limit it to Power Five schools, that's still five of 65.

Does the preseason Ivy poll matter once the practices and games start? Obviously not, but it's still a fun thing to talk about. And it's a sign that the season is not that far away.

That's certainly how Princeton head coach Bob Surace feels:

"We are excited to once again be talking football and feeling the energy as preseason begins. There are eight teams around the League who have high expectations this year and think they have a chance to be in the top spot when the season ends in November. Our focus right now is on preparing for the challenges that await us this coming year, and making sure we have done everything possible to give our student-athletes their opportunity to win games and add to our program's legacy."

Princeton has won four Ivy League championships in the last eight years, including a year ago. For the fourth straight season, Princeton will have a new starting quarterback, as John Lovett was followed by Kevin Davidson, who was followed last year by Cole Smith.

You don't win four championships in eight years by being unable to replace your stars, though, and Surace and his staff have turned over the roster several times and still been at or near the top year in and year out. 

How will this year play out? You'll have to tune back in to find that out as the fall goes along. For today, though, the poll makes for a good conversation.

Oh, and the team that has won two of the last eight NCAA men's basketball championships? Villanova.

Silver And Silver

TigerBlog said last week that if you're a Princeton fan and you're not following Tiger photographer Shelley Szwast on Twitter, then you're missing out.

TB is proud to announce that Shelley had a nearly 20 percent increase in her following after that — but you're still missing out on a great opportunity for excellent Princeton Athletics content by not following her. She's at @split2ndphoto.

Go follow her. TB will wait.

Did you do it? Good. You'll be glad you did.

Speaking of Twitter, another great follow is TB's colleague Warren Croxton (@WarrenCroxton). If you follow him, you'll get equal parts Princeton sports, Philly sports and wholesome Baby Croxton stuff like this:

I’ve now reached the matching @WaltDisneyWorld family shirt stage of dad life. pic.twitter.com/trF7RVy6v0

— Warren Croxton (@WarrenCroxton) August 7, 2022

By the way, see that angelic little face (the baby's, not Warren's). Well, this conversation is about 12 years away (14 at the max):

Warren: "I booked our annual summer trip to Disney World!!!!!!"
Theresa: "Dad, you're so lame. I'm not going there again. I want to spend the week with my friends. They're going to the Shore."

This will be preceded and followed by eye rolling. A suitable number of years later, she'll be back in the mode for family trips.

TB saw something else on Twitter that was fascinating for him. It was this:

Here it is with the call: https://t.co/ZZj5oHPAzs pic.twitter.com/OoQh2xo6dm

— Honest☘️Larry (@HonestLarry1) August 7, 2022

TB remembers watching the race, watching the finish and seeing the hat. He once talked to former Tiger women's track and field coach Peter Farrell about the race and Wottle, and he knew all about him.

Wottle went on from winning Olympic gold in 1972 to coaching college track and field while serving as the Director of Admissions at Bethany College in West Virginia before spending 28 years as the Director of Admissions at Rhodes College in Memphis. 

Also, TB has no idea who Honest Larry is, but he's in New Jersey. Maybe he's a Princeton fan. 

He's definitely a Boston fan, that's for sure. 

Speaking of Princeton women's track and field, the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, ended yesterday. Princeton women's track and field program had an outstanding performance at the Games, as three different Tigers from three different countries all competed and all won medals.

It started with the bronze medal won last week by Obiageri Amaechi in the discus. Amaechi competed for Nigeria.

She finished seventh at the NCAA championships as a freshman in 2017 to earn first-team All-American honors, but her second-team effort from finishing 13th as a senior in 2021 might have been more impressive, given that it came after she spent most of the spring not knowing if she would be able to compete as the pandemic had shut things down.

Princeton women's track and field added two more medals over the weekend, and both were silvers.

In the hammer throw, former NCAA champion Julia Ratcliffe of New Zealand finished second to earn her medal. The gold went to Canadian Camryn Rogers, who finished fourth last summer at the Olympics in Tokyo, where Ratcliffe finished ninth. 

Rogers' winning throw was more than four meters better than Ratcliffe, whose runner-up throw was in turn 2.5 meters better than the rest of the field. 

For Ratcliffe, she now has three Commonwealth Games medals, with two silvers and a gold. 

Lizzie Bird, the British record holder for the women's 3,000-meter steeplechase who also finished ninth at the Tokyo Olympics, finished second in her event as well, with a personal best of 9:17.79.

Bird finished a little more than two seconds behind winner Jackline Chepkoech of Kenya, an 18 year old who set the Commonwealth Games record with a 9:15.69. Chepkoech's time was 14 seconds better than her previous personal best.

As for Bird, her fastest 1,000 meters in the race were the final 1,000, which she ran in 3:02.8, which was three seconds faster than her first 1,000 and six seconds faster than her middle 1,000. 

Princeton's Ed Trippas, from Austrlia, finished seventh in the men's steeplechase. Trippas was also an Olympian last summer. 

If you're counting, Australia won the most medals in the competition with 172, or six more than England. Canada, New Zealand and India were the next three countries.

Three Weeks To Go

The first Princeton Athletic event of the 2022-23 season is three weeks from today.

Three weeks. Twenty-one days. Princeton women's soccer, home against Colgate Friday night (the 26th) and Fairfield Sunday night (the 28th), both at 7. 

The next three weeks will see the campus begin to come back to life, as athletes from all the fall teams arrive to begin preseason training. Within four weeks Princeton will have six teams that have competed, as men's soccer, women's volleyball, field hockey, men's water polo and women's rugby get going one week after the women's soccer team. The cross country teams will be getting ready as well.

The football opener is still six weeks away, when the Tigers will be in Florida to take on Stetson. 

You can't tell by the weather in the Princeton area, of course, but the summer is starting to wind down a bit. Ah, but it's still a summer weekend, which you should take full advantage of, whatever it is you love to do this time of year.

In the meantime, TigerBlog meant to catch you up on a few items:

* First and foremost, TB apologizes to Obiageri Amaechi, who won a bronze medal in the discus at the Commonwealth Games while competing for Nigeria. Amaechi is a 2021 Princeton grad who was a two-time All-American and is the Ivy League record-holder in the discus. 

TB didn't realize that she was competing, so he omitted her from his piece yesterday about Princeton track and field at the games. She was omitted here, but not from the medal podium. TB apologizes for the first and sends congratulations for the second.

Elsewhere at the Commonwealth Games, Julia Ratcliffe is through to the hammer final after having the second-best mark in qualifying. Ratcliffe will go for a medal tomorrow, as will Ed Trippas in the 3,000-meter steeplechase.

Lizzie Bird, the British steeplechase record-holder, runs in the women's final this afternoon Eastern time and this evening Great Britain time.

* It was a great Princeton showing at the World U23/U19 Rowing championships in Italy.

Princeton's rowers combined to win 12 medals in all, with five each from the men's heavyweights and women's open and one each from the lightweight men and women. The Tigers won medals for Great Britain, the United States and Germany.

Princeton's history of rowing success on the international level is spectacular, especially at the Olympic Games. This kind of showing in such an important meet suggests that the future is looking good as well.

* TigerBlog doesn't know what he has to do to get you to follow Shelley Szwast on Twitter, but you're missing out. Shelley is at @split2ndphoto, and her feed is one great Princeton picture after another, with more Princeton enthusiasm than you'll find anywhere else.

“Ground control… we are preparing for launch… ‘22-‘23… over”.

“Roger that, Tiger”. 🐯🥎 #photographerpicks from ‘21-‘22 pic.twitter.com/u7rYMnc5da

— Split Second Photo (@Split2ndPhoto) August 3, 2022

Shelley has fewer than 100 followers. She needs to have at least 1,000 by the end of the fall season.

* Abby Meyers was honored with the Dolph Schayes Outstanding Achievement Award by the Jewish Sports Heritage Foundation.

This is only the third year of the award, which previously went to the Yeshiva men's basketball team and then endurance cyclist Leah Goldstein.

Who was Dolph Schayes, by the way? He was, among other things, the first-ever coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, something he did as a player-coach when the team moved from Syracuse to Philadelphia in 1963-64. 

Schayes, who was 6-8 and 220 and who passed away in 2015 at the age of 87, played college basketball at NYU, helping the Purple Violets to the 1945 NCAA championship game before falling to Oklahoma A&M. Back then, it was an eight-team tournament; NYU beat Tufts in the first round and then Ohio State (who beat Kentucky in the first round) in the semifinals. Oklahoma A&M defeated Utah in the first round and Arkansas in the semifinals. 

Schayes was also named one of the NBA's top 75 players of all-time a year ago.

Congratulations to Abby, by the way.

* TigerBlog mentioned that the football season is six weeks away.

This is the time of year for preseason publications and preseason all-league and All-American teams. Depending on which one has your guys on it, these teams are either insightful or silly.

That would make Phil Steele's lean to the insightful, as Princeton had two preseason All-Americans on his team. 

One is wide receiver Andrei Iosivas, who was a second-team selection. Also a gifted multi-event athlete who was a first-team All-American in the indoor Heptathlon last winter, Iosivas is an explosive deep threat who averaged 17.1 yards per catch while scoring five touchdowns last season.

As for Powers, he was the Ivy League's top punter last year, averaging 43.8 yards per punt. More than one-third of his punts traveled more than 50 yards. He has a big-time leg, and TB would not be shocked to see both players get NFL chances.

Phil Steele also released its All-Ivy League preseason team, which featured 11 Princeton players. Iosivas, Powers, tight end Carson Bobo, offensive lineman Henry Byrd and defensive lineman Uche Ndukwe were first-team picks, and running back John Volker, wide receiver Dylan Classi, offensive lineman Connor Scaglione, offensive lineman Jalen Travis, linebacker Liam Johnson and linebacker Michael Ruttlen Jr. were second-team picks.

* Have a great weekend everyone. Stay cool and safe. 

And set your calendars for three weeks from today.

Athletics In England

The Women's Euro Championship Game between England and Germany was the most-watched soccer game in the United Kingdom in 2022.

Keep in mind that includes any Premier League game, or the Champions' League, or World Cup qualifying. No men's game drew more television fans in the UK than the women's final. 

It also packed Wembley Stadium with 87,000 fans. In fact, the total attendance for the entire tournament more than doubled that of the previous event, in 2017. 

What other sporting event anywhere in the world can make the claim that its attendance this year more than doubled its pre-pandemic attendance?

England won the game 2-1 on a goal in extra time, after Germany had tied it late in the second half. The win was England's first ever in the women's Euro championship, an event that has now been held 14 times, with Germany the winner in eight of those.

TigerBlog watched most of the game and then the postgame ceremonies on the field. Mostly he wanted to see the reaction the players would have when greeted on the field by Prince William, who was there to help present medals and trophies. 

It was actually pretty funny. The first few women shook his hand cautiously. By the middle, there were mini-hugs. By the end, there were bear hugs.

For fans of English soccer, the men's national team has come close to winning a major championship, most recently last year at the men's Euro, where the English fell to Italy in penalty kicks in the final. For actually winning on the international stage, though, England's men still go all the way back to the 1966 World Cup.

And now the women have broken through. The Lionesses, as they're known, clearly captured the national attention that comes with winning on that level, with resulting stories about how this tournament will result in a growth in interest in playing among English girls. 

In fact, the members of the team sent an open letter to the next Prime Minister, requesting a special emphasis on introducing girls to soccer (they called it football). 

It also pointed out that the men have fallen short on so many occasions. Through in the fact that the tournament lacked the usual English rowdiness among the fan base and the endless flopping and arguing with the officials that plagues the men's game, and you were left with a wholly appealing product, one that brought an audience to the English women that would have been unimaginable not that long ago.

For TigerBlog, of course, the idea of having such a successful women's event and the subsequent joy it has brought to the next generation clearly resonates. His book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton was filled with stories about women athletes who didn't get to have that kind of experience or those sorts of role models and who instead had to be the inspiration themselves.

Speaking of sports in England, the Commonwealth Games have been going on all week, bringing in more than 5,000 athletes from nearly 50 countries. 

Of those athletes, there are three Princeton track and field athletes, representing three different countries.

The first to compete is New Zealand's Julia Ratcliffe, the 2014 NCAA hammer throw champion and 2021 Olympian. Ratcliffe will be in the women's hammer throw qualifying rounds this morning, with the final to be held Saturday evening (those are England times; in Princeton the qualifying round will be over when you wake up).

For the women's hammer, there are 17 athletes who are competing. Among that group, Ratcliffe finished fourth at the recent World Championships in Oregon, where she was 16th overall. 

At that event, Canada's Camryn Rogers was fourth, fellow Canadian Jillian Wier was ninth and Ratcliffe's New Zealand teammate Lauren Bruce was 13th. It should be a pretty competitive race, at least for silver and bronze, with Rogers as the prohibitive favorite for gold.

The other two Princeton track athletes are Ed Trippas, who will run for Australia in the men's 3,000 meter steeplechase, and Lizzie Bird, who will run for England in the women's edition.

The women's race will be tomorrow, with the men's race Saturday morning. As near as TB can tell, there's only the final for the steeplechase, with no preliminary rounds.  

The website for the Games does not list a start list, but both Trippas and Bird finished 20th in their events at the World Championships.

HERE is the link for all Commonwealth Games results.

The Rugby Schedule

The first mention of the sport of rugby in the Daily Princetonian was back in 1876. 

At the time, Princeton had three varsity teams: baseball, football and rowing. Shortly after that, track and field would make its debut.

Football back then, of course, bore little resemblance to the game of today, or even the game of only a few years later. Back then, the issue was what form the sport would take, whether it be the soccer version or rugby version.

When Harvard challenged Princeton to a football game in 1876 (seven years after the first football game between Princeton and Rutgers, a game that was a combination of rugby and soccer), it sparked a discussion of what to do next. The Daily Princetonian said this:

It is well known that Harvard's rules are essentially different from the rules which govern the game as played here. The President of the P. F. B. S. in reply proposed that an association be formed of the various Colleges, which should adopt a uniform set of rules, according to which the games played between members of the association should be governed. This seems to be the only way by which a satisfactory series of games can be played between Colleges who use almost entirely different rules

As an aside, that same issue referred to an intramural athletics meet this way:

The weather was fine, the attendance poor, and the games miserable.

Now that is writing.

Eventually, the rules for football were standardized, and scoring no longer involved kicking the ball into a goal. The new game wasn't quite rugby either.

The sport of rugby itself dates back to the early 1800s in England, where it first was played at a prep school called, appropriately enough, "Rugby." As the different schools on the prep and then university level began to play, the rules for the game also varied from venue to venue, only to be formalized by the middle of the century.

Fast-forwarding to this week, women's rugby officially joined goprincetontigers.com as the 38th Princeton varsity sport. 

It's been 24 years since Princeton added a varsity sport, when lightweight women's rowing joined on in 1998. That program has been overwhelmingly successful, including the last two IRA national championships.

Only once has Princeton gone more than 24 years between adding sports, and that was a 40-year gap between men's squash in 1931 and the first women's varsity team in 1971 (women's tennis). 

The new women's rugby page on GPT now features a roster, program history, the coaches and, of course, the 2022 fall schedule.

As for the history, this is pretty good stuff:

Princeton University Women’s Rugby Football Club was established in 1979 by Catherine Chute. The new team aspired to compete in the young world of U.S. women’s rugby, which was established only eight years earlier when four women’s teams emerged in 1972. Since then, the sport has grown quickly across America and Princeton women have continually played at the top levels of Division I competition. Princeton Women’s rugby won back-to-back national championships in 1995 and 1996 and advanced to the Final Four in 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2005.  More than 35 Princeton women have been named All-Americans in rugby. In 2011, 2012, and 2018, the women placed 3rd in the USA Rugby Sevens Collegiate National Championships.

The first official match for the new varsity team will be Saturday, Sept. 3, when the Tigers travel to take on Sacred Heart (it's always good to get the Pioneers a mention). The first home varsity match will be the following Saturday, Sept. 10, when Princeton hosts Army.

In all Princeton's first varsity schedule consists of eight matches, with home games against Army, Brown, Quinnipiac and LIU and road trips to Sacred Heart, Harvard, Mount St. Mary's and Dartmouth.

The full schedule with dates is HERE.

As for the roster, the first varsity team has 24 players. You can see the list HERE.

These are exciting times for Princeton women's rugby. Head coach Josie Ziluca has guided the program since 2019, which means she's led it as a club program and then through the pandemic.

Now she leads her team out as a varsity. 

Sept. 3 can't get here fast enough for the women's rugby team.

RIP Bill Russell

The NBA of TigerBlog's youth was a vastly different entity than the one of today.

For starters — actually for starters, in the middle and at the end — there was no three-point shot. The ability to get three at a time would start with the short-lived but wildly fun American Basketball Association, and it's unlikely that those who came up with the idea had an sense of what it would do to the NBA game of the 21st century.

When TB was a kid, the idea of seeing a three-on-one fast break end with a 23-foot jump shot was unthinkable. The game then was mostly about getting the ball inside, and as such it revolved around some of the greatest centers who ever played.

Any list of the greatest NBA big men has to start with three players: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. They were three different types of players, but they were dominant in every sense of the word. 

As you might have read, Bill Russell passed away over the weekend at the age of 88. His death was termed "peaceful" in the statement by his family, which seems somewhat fitting to the man who always seemed to be larger than life. 

Abdul-Jabbar's sky hook was the most unstoppable shot in basketball history. Chamberlain was an athletic freak that the game had never before seen (he was the conference champion in the high jump three times while playing basketball at Kansas and would have been an Olympic decathlon champion had Fred Samara coached him). 

As for Russell, he was the consummate team player, one who played basketball in a way that was almost artistic. He was famous for his shot-blocking ability, which more often than not ended up starting a fast break the other way, as opposed to throwing it out of bounds. 

He won two NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco, an Olympic gold medal in 1956 and then an astonishing 11 NBA titles with the Boston Celtics, the last two of which came as a player-coach in 1968 and 1969. 

TB will have more on the 1969 NBA finals in a second. First, here are some highlights of Russell to give you an idea of how he played:

He could score; he could dribble; he could pass; he could defend. Does that sound like the kind of center that someone you know would love?

Yes, it does. Pete Carril, to be exact.

Maybe that's why one of Carril's best quotes ever was this: "I want my centers to behave like Bill Russell."

The style of basketball that Princeton played under Carril came to be known as "The Princeton Offense," something that often made the Hall of Fame coach bristle. "It's not my offense," he'd say. "I got it from the Boston Celtics."

And the key was a center who could do everything. Carril's teams at Princeton featured a long list of such players, ones whom he taught to "behave like Bill Russell."

Oh, and as for the 1969 NBA finals? 

That year was Russell's last year as a Celtic, and the seventh game of the finals against the Los Angeles Lakers (a team with Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West) was his final game ever as a player. Boston won that game 108-106, and Russell had six points, 21 rebounds and six assists. That's a line that Carril, who was then the Princeton coach, must have loved.

Ah, but who was the Lakers' coach that year? That would be none other than Butch van Breda Kolff, who coached Princeton before Carril (and coached Carril at Lafayette) and led the Tigers to the 1965 NCAA Final Four. In that game, van Breda Kolff famously left Chamberlain on the bench as his team tried to come back from nine points down in the final minutes. Led by West, the Lakers almost did.

When the lead was cut to two, Chamberlain, who had come out of the game as the comeback began with a knee injury, motioned to van Breda Kolff that he was ready to come back into the game, only to have van Breda Kolff tell him to sit down (with an expletive or two thrown in). 

That would also be van Breda Kolff's final game as Lakers' coach.

So rest in peace Bill Russell. Basketball is at its best when players behave like he did. 

Welcome To August

Welcome to August, and the story of why TigerBlog never became a farmer.

First, though, his is the definitive backstory for August:

It was originally named Sextilis in Latin because it was the sixth month in the original 10-month Roman calendar under Romulus in 753 BC, with March the first month of the year. About 700 BC, it became the eighth month when January and February were added to the year before March by King Numa Pompilius, who also gave it 29 days. Julius Caesar added two days when he created the Juliun Calendar in 46 BC, giving it its modern length of 31 days. In 8 BC, it was renamed in honor of Emperor Augustus. Commonly repeated lore has it that August has 31 days because Augustus wanted his month to match the length of Julius Caesar's July, but this is an invention of the 13th century scholar Johannes de Sacrobosco.

At least that's what it says on Wikipedia. 

TigerBlog wonders why those ancient emperors decided to add months and change the length of months. Does that make January and February expansion months? Can people today randomly change the calendar? If someone named June became President, could she add two months to the sixth month and delete one each from the seventh and eighth? 

Also on Wikipedia it says that there are 23 separate month-long observances, ranging from the quite serious (Children's Eye Health and Safety Month, Neurosurgery Outreach Month, National Black Business Month) to the rather amusing (National Happiness Happens Month, National Panini Month, National Dippin' Dots Month).

For the record, TigerBlog does not like Dippin' Dots.

While not listed on Wikipedia, it's also National College Athletics Return month. This month starts out quiet and peaceful on college campuses. By the end of the month, there will have been hundreds of college athletic events involving thousands of athletes.

Before TB looks ahead to the rest of August, it's worth a quick shout-out to July, the only only month of the year where there are no scheduled Princeton Athletic events. 

The 2021-22 athletic year ended for Princeton with the NCAA track and field championships, which ended on June 11. The first athletic event of the 2022-23 year for Princeton will be a women's soccer home game against Colgate on Aug. 26 at 7 pm, followed by a home game against Fairfield two days later, also at seven.

That's 25 days away. The gap between the end of last year and the start of this year will be 77 days, which means the halfway point was Day 39, or July 19.

The average Princeton Athletic year has around 700 total events. This year, there will be 38 sports, as women's rugby makes its varsity debut. 

If you work in college athletics, you have to be excited when you get to this time of year. If you're not, you're probably in the wrong business. 

You have to be excited by the coming year, with its endless possibilities and eventual storylines. You have to love the games and knowing that what you're doing is helping the experience of those who participate in them.

You have to be okay knowing that your job won't be 9-5, Monday through Friday. Not everyone is okay with that. Not everyone is okay with doing that kind of job for an entire career.

For TB, he's never even considered anything else. 

It will be 39 years since he first came to the newspaper business. He remembers how he felt clearly: This is fun. Do this for a few years. Get a real job.

It's like Pop said as he looked back on a lifetime in baseball in "The Natural": "I always meant to be a farmer."

Maybe TB never meant to be a farmer, but he did not back in the mid-1980s think that he'd still be doing this all these years later. And yet here he is. 

Why? It's because of how much he loves August 1st, knowing that the campus will be coming back to life this month and that the games are going to be starting soon. 

And that is why he never became a farmer.