TigerBlog and his friend Todd stopped off to eat at a place that they'd been to many times before. In fact, they'd often go out of their way just to eat at this restaurant.
Both ordered fish tacos. When they came, TigerBlog noticed that the tortilla had what appeared to be some brownish spots on them.
At first, TB figured that it was some of the sauce that had leaked through the tortilla. Quickly, though, he realized something wasn't right.
Not quickly enough, as it would turn out.
Todd had already taken three bites of his own when TB realized what the brown spots were. Mold.
As in yuck.
Fortunately, Todd handles situations like this better than TB does. Touching the plate alone made TB use three Clorox wipes and about a quart of hand sanitizer. Todd, who actually ate three bites, sort of shrugged it off with a comment like "it's not that much different than eating yogurt," which, by the way, is something TigerBlog does not eat.
The waitress was fairly apologetic. The manager came over and tried to say he had no idea how this could happen. He also offered something else as a replacement.
When TB and Todd politely declined - with the implied suggestion that eating anything else there that day would result in immediately puking - the manager gave the two a card for $10 off the next time they were there.
All of this begs a few questions.
1) would you ever go back there, knowing that you've gone for years and liked it?
2) should TB and Todd have tipped the waitress (they did)?
3) TB shudders to ask this, but what else goes on in food preparation at restaurants that the customer doesn't know about? For instance, suppose the fish taco part had been put on the tortilla shell and then the person preparing it noticed the mold. Would he/she simply have scraped off the fish taco part and put in on another tortilla?
Anyway, TB is happy to report that Todd didn't get sick last night. And TB ended up having Corn Flakes for dinner.
So let's go back to question No. 1 for a second.
Would you ever go back there?
Princeton Athletics exists first and foremost as an educational venture for its athletes and to provide those athletes with the best possible experience they can have. There is also the little matter of competition and trying to win championships, something that obviously is a huge part of college athletics and goes without saying.
There is also the entertainment factor, though.
College athletics are big business, and while Princeton isn't quite on the level of, say, North Carolina or Texas when it comes to that, it's still very much in the business of entertainment.
Princeton sells tickets for five sports: football, men's basketball, women's basketball, men's hockey and men's lacrosse. Those five sports brought the following totals to campus this past year:
football - 39,918
men's basketball - 34,667
women's basketball - 14,499
men's hockey - 28,928
men's lacrosse - 11,120
Add that all together and it comes to 129,132 fans for those five sports. That's a pretty good number.
There are also 33 other sports for which tickets are not sold and for which no official attendance numbers exist. Still, some of those sports draw very well. If you want to say that those 33 sports at least equaled the number of the five tickets sports, then that's 258,264.
That's a lot of people who come here each year for athletic events. Some are parents of players, obviously.
Most, though, come for the entertainment value.
And it begs the questions: If you give them one moldy tortilla, will they be back?
No, not an actual moldy tortilla. A figurative one.
If fans who come here have had really good experiences for a few years and then have an awful one, will they be unlikely to return?
The people in athletic department spent a lot of time talking about our events and how they're run, and the people in charge of putting on events here work very hard.
Still, are there things we're overlooking, and what would they be?
TigerBlog isn't sure if he's ever going back to that restaurant.
He'd hate to think there are people out there thinking the same about Princeton athletic events.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Baseball Update
There are three commercials that TigerBlog cannot stand, and they seem to be on every break of every show that TB watches these days.
The first two are for insurance, and they're both actually part of a series of commercials, all of which TB hates.
The first is from Geico, where the first part of the commercial plays out some trite expression and then the guys with the little guitars make a bad pun, like "people who save with Geico are happier than a camel on Wednesday" or something.
Then there's the "like a good neighbor State Farm is there" ones, where the people are in some sort of situation and they sing the jingle and the State Farm person comes and saves the day, while the people without State Farm are left with some other jingle that doesn't help them.
Both were clever the first time. Both are just over-the-top tedious now.
Even worse are the Kentucky Fried Chicken "we ate the bones" commercials. While you were eating, did you not notice there were no bones? Plus, in 2013, 99% of all chicken eaten is boneless chicken, even though it often is better with the bones, especially on a grill.
Anyway, all of those commercials are hellish to TB.
Perhaps, though, that's part of the point.
TB's favorite commercial of the last year or so was the one where the guy walks into the convenience store with the ski mask on and the clerk says he doesn't want any trouble. Now that's a great commercial.
Except if you ask 100 people what that commercial was for, how many will say Volkswagen? If you ask about the other three, everyone will get it right.
TB was bouncing through the channels last night when he came across all three of those commercials in about a 30-second span. Each time he would change the channel, there would be another one.
Eventually, he stumbled upon the Mets-Diamondbacks game, just in time to see a batter named "Young" who was at the plate for the Mets.
TB hasn't watched an entire inning of baseball on TV this season, and he doubts he will watch much more between now and the end of the year. Like most people (or not), TB has watched way more of Major League Lacrosse on television than he has Major League Baseball this season.
Anyway, when TB saw "Young," he immediately thought that the Mets had somehow gotten Chris Young (the other Chris Young). Then he found out it was actually Eric Young Jr., and he couldn't believe it.
Just last week, TB was talking about how he'd really feel old when the son or daughter of a former Princeton athlete that he covered shows up as an athlete here, and now here was Eric Young Jr.
Okay, it's not quite the same thing. But it was still a bit freaky.
Eric Young was a football and baseball star at Rutgers back when TB was covering Rutgers for the newspaper. He went on to a long career in the Majors, where he played for basically every team.
Rutgers baseball was one of TB's favorite teams to cover back then. Fred Hill Sr., still the Scarlet Knights coach, is one of the nicest and most sincere people TB has met in college athletics, and his teams were always very successful. Hill took RU to five NCAA tournaments in the eight or so years TB was covering them.
Young (Sr.) was one of several future Major Leaguers that TB covered, or saw play against Princeton. He once saw Penn's Doug Glanville, for instance, hit three triples in a game at Clarke Field, something that isn't easy to do.
TigerBlog is sort of rooting for the Pittsburgh Pirates this year. After all, it's been awhile since the team has even had a winning record, let alone made the postseason.
As always, he'd like to see the Braves do well and the Yankees do poorly.
For the most part, he roots for Princeton's two Major Leaguers, Ross Ohlendorf and Will Venable.
Ohlendorf has been moved to the Washington Nationals' bullpen, and he doesn't have a huge body of work so far this year. Ohlendorf made one really good start, beating the Rockies, and has now made two relief appearances.
In his three games, Ohlendorf is 1-0 with a 2.13 ERA and a 0.87 WHIP, which stands for walks + hits per innings pitched.
As for Venable, he's finding himself in the middle of baseball's most balanced division, the NL West, where only 3.5 games separate first from last. The AL East has eight games between first and last; the other four divisions are all 10.5 games or way more.
Venable's Padres were expected to be one of the worst teams in baseball this year, but they are three games away from .500, where they've hovered all year. They are also only 2.5 games out of first.
As for Venable, he is hitting .221, but with 10 home runs (best on the team), 29 RBIs and nine stolen bases (second on the team). He's also one of the top defensive outfielders in the National League.
So TB can root for San Diego and Washington. And to make sure the Yankees fade away.
And that'll be about it, baseball-wise for this year.
The first two are for insurance, and they're both actually part of a series of commercials, all of which TB hates.
The first is from Geico, where the first part of the commercial plays out some trite expression and then the guys with the little guitars make a bad pun, like "people who save with Geico are happier than a camel on Wednesday" or something.
Then there's the "like a good neighbor State Farm is there" ones, where the people are in some sort of situation and they sing the jingle and the State Farm person comes and saves the day, while the people without State Farm are left with some other jingle that doesn't help them.
Both were clever the first time. Both are just over-the-top tedious now.
Even worse are the Kentucky Fried Chicken "we ate the bones" commercials. While you were eating, did you not notice there were no bones? Plus, in 2013, 99% of all chicken eaten is boneless chicken, even though it often is better with the bones, especially on a grill.
Anyway, all of those commercials are hellish to TB.
Perhaps, though, that's part of the point.
TB's favorite commercial of the last year or so was the one where the guy walks into the convenience store with the ski mask on and the clerk says he doesn't want any trouble. Now that's a great commercial.
Except if you ask 100 people what that commercial was for, how many will say Volkswagen? If you ask about the other three, everyone will get it right.
TB was bouncing through the channels last night when he came across all three of those commercials in about a 30-second span. Each time he would change the channel, there would be another one.
Eventually, he stumbled upon the Mets-Diamondbacks game, just in time to see a batter named "Young" who was at the plate for the Mets.
TB hasn't watched an entire inning of baseball on TV this season, and he doubts he will watch much more between now and the end of the year. Like most people (or not), TB has watched way more of Major League Lacrosse on television than he has Major League Baseball this season.
Anyway, when TB saw "Young," he immediately thought that the Mets had somehow gotten Chris Young (the other Chris Young). Then he found out it was actually Eric Young Jr., and he couldn't believe it.
Just last week, TB was talking about how he'd really feel old when the son or daughter of a former Princeton athlete that he covered shows up as an athlete here, and now here was Eric Young Jr.
Okay, it's not quite the same thing. But it was still a bit freaky.
Eric Young was a football and baseball star at Rutgers back when TB was covering Rutgers for the newspaper. He went on to a long career in the Majors, where he played for basically every team.
Rutgers baseball was one of TB's favorite teams to cover back then. Fred Hill Sr., still the Scarlet Knights coach, is one of the nicest and most sincere people TB has met in college athletics, and his teams were always very successful. Hill took RU to five NCAA tournaments in the eight or so years TB was covering them.
Young (Sr.) was one of several future Major Leaguers that TB covered, or saw play against Princeton. He once saw Penn's Doug Glanville, for instance, hit three triples in a game at Clarke Field, something that isn't easy to do.
TigerBlog is sort of rooting for the Pittsburgh Pirates this year. After all, it's been awhile since the team has even had a winning record, let alone made the postseason.
As always, he'd like to see the Braves do well and the Yankees do poorly.
For the most part, he roots for Princeton's two Major Leaguers, Ross Ohlendorf and Will Venable.
Ohlendorf has been moved to the Washington Nationals' bullpen, and he doesn't have a huge body of work so far this year. Ohlendorf made one really good start, beating the Rockies, and has now made two relief appearances.
In his three games, Ohlendorf is 1-0 with a 2.13 ERA and a 0.87 WHIP, which stands for walks + hits per innings pitched.
As for Venable, he's finding himself in the middle of baseball's most balanced division, the NL West, where only 3.5 games separate first from last. The AL East has eight games between first and last; the other four divisions are all 10.5 games or way more.
Venable's Padres were expected to be one of the worst teams in baseball this year, but they are three games away from .500, where they've hovered all year. They are also only 2.5 games out of first.
As for Venable, he is hitting .221, but with 10 home runs (best on the team), 29 RBIs and nine stolen bases (second on the team). He's also one of the top defensive outfielders in the National League.
So TB can root for San Diego and Washington. And to make sure the Yankees fade away.
And that'll be about it, baseball-wise for this year.
Monday, July 1, 2013
The Times Regrets The Tennis Coverage
Harry Chaykun was a copy editor at the Trenton Times on the day nearly 30 years ago when TigerBlog wrote his first-ever story in the newspaper business.
He knew very little about what he was doing, and he mostly tied to imitate what he had read in the past and what he thought worked. It was a very basic, simple story about a high school football game that even the people who played in it probably don't remember.
Anyway, TB wrote his story on the little word processor that they had in the newsroom back then, and after submitting it, he went up to Chaykun, the copy editor who was reading it.
TB asked Chaykun what he thought, hoping for some nice, encouraging, positive feedback.
Chaykun never looked up, never even paused what he was doing. Without ever glancing in TB's direction, he uttered these words, seared into TB's memory long ago, words that continue to inspire him all these decades later:
"I'm still awake."
Chaykun, known as "the Hawk" in the newsroom, is one of TB's all-time favorite people. TB learned much of what he knows about sarcasm from the Hawk, which means he had to have been a pretty good teacher.
Even now, TB can't help but laugh when he thinks about to so many nights in that newsroom and so many hilarious offerings from Chaykun, usually at the expense of someone there, mostly Harvey Yavener.
TB remembers one time when he was covering high school tennis and he made, egads an error. In the newspaper business, this leads to a correction, or at least is supposed to, and these corrections usually end with something like "the newspaper regrets the error."
Chaykun wrote a very simple correction that day: "The Times regrets the tennis coverage." Ah, it still makes TB laugh.
Speaking of corrections, there is the little matter of the story TB put up Saturday about Princeton's finish in the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup.
In the original version, TB mentioned that Princeton received spring points in women's water polo, men's and women's track and field, men's golf and women's lacrosse.
It omitted women's open rowing, which finished third nationally and accounted for 85 Directors' Cup points.
TB went back and added it, and he is sorry for making the mistake in the first place. Lori Dauphiny, Princeton's women's open rowing coach, was her customary gracious and classy about it all.
Meanwhile, Princeton finished 35th for the year, after finishing 39th last year and 38th the year before. In the 20 years there has been a Directors' Cup, Princeton has been in the top 40 15 times.
Princeton has also never finished lower than 63rd and has only been out of the Top 50 three times in 20 years. Princeton was again the top Ivy finisher (17th time in 20 years) and the highest ranking non-BCS school, as well as the only FCS school in the top 56.
To TB, those numbers are extraordinary.
The Directors' Cup awards points based on NCAA championship participation and success. You could make the case that Princeton benefits from the fact that the points structure doesn't really recognize a difference between winning men's basketball and co-ed fencing and that there really is an emphasis on broadbased athletic programs, which is certainly applicable to Princeton.
On the other hand, Princeton is competing against schools whose athletic budgets dwarf its own. And if you look at the schools that Princeton defeated for NCAA championships this year, they were names like North Carolina and Maryland in field hockey, Penn State, Ohio State and Notre Dame in fencing and Arkansas, Texas A&M and others in track and field.
Much was made this year of Louisville's great athletic success, which included the NCAA championship in men's basketball, NCAA runner-up in women's basketball, a BCS bowl win and a spot in the Colleg World Series.
For its efforts, Louisville finished 38th, three spots behind Princeton.
Stanford won the Cup again. The Cardinal didn't win the first one but have won the last 19. The top five was Stanford, Florida, UCLA, Michigan and Texas A&M. The next five: Penn State, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Georgia.
In other words, those are the real heavyweights of college athletics.
For Princeton, a 35th place finish is definitely worth celebrating.
He knew very little about what he was doing, and he mostly tied to imitate what he had read in the past and what he thought worked. It was a very basic, simple story about a high school football game that even the people who played in it probably don't remember.
Anyway, TB wrote his story on the little word processor that they had in the newsroom back then, and after submitting it, he went up to Chaykun, the copy editor who was reading it.
TB asked Chaykun what he thought, hoping for some nice, encouraging, positive feedback.
Chaykun never looked up, never even paused what he was doing. Without ever glancing in TB's direction, he uttered these words, seared into TB's memory long ago, words that continue to inspire him all these decades later:
"I'm still awake."
Chaykun, known as "the Hawk" in the newsroom, is one of TB's all-time favorite people. TB learned much of what he knows about sarcasm from the Hawk, which means he had to have been a pretty good teacher.
Even now, TB can't help but laugh when he thinks about to so many nights in that newsroom and so many hilarious offerings from Chaykun, usually at the expense of someone there, mostly Harvey Yavener.
TB remembers one time when he was covering high school tennis and he made, egads an error. In the newspaper business, this leads to a correction, or at least is supposed to, and these corrections usually end with something like "the newspaper regrets the error."
Chaykun wrote a very simple correction that day: "The Times regrets the tennis coverage." Ah, it still makes TB laugh.
Speaking of corrections, there is the little matter of the story TB put up Saturday about Princeton's finish in the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup.
In the original version, TB mentioned that Princeton received spring points in women's water polo, men's and women's track and field, men's golf and women's lacrosse.
It omitted women's open rowing, which finished third nationally and accounted for 85 Directors' Cup points.
TB went back and added it, and he is sorry for making the mistake in the first place. Lori Dauphiny, Princeton's women's open rowing coach, was her customary gracious and classy about it all.
Meanwhile, Princeton finished 35th for the year, after finishing 39th last year and 38th the year before. In the 20 years there has been a Directors' Cup, Princeton has been in the top 40 15 times.
Princeton has also never finished lower than 63rd and has only been out of the Top 50 three times in 20 years. Princeton was again the top Ivy finisher (17th time in 20 years) and the highest ranking non-BCS school, as well as the only FCS school in the top 56.
To TB, those numbers are extraordinary.
The Directors' Cup awards points based on NCAA championship participation and success. You could make the case that Princeton benefits from the fact that the points structure doesn't really recognize a difference between winning men's basketball and co-ed fencing and that there really is an emphasis on broadbased athletic programs, which is certainly applicable to Princeton.
On the other hand, Princeton is competing against schools whose athletic budgets dwarf its own. And if you look at the schools that Princeton defeated for NCAA championships this year, they were names like North Carolina and Maryland in field hockey, Penn State, Ohio State and Notre Dame in fencing and Arkansas, Texas A&M and others in track and field.
Much was made this year of Louisville's great athletic success, which included the NCAA championship in men's basketball, NCAA runner-up in women's basketball, a BCS bowl win and a spot in the Colleg World Series.
For its efforts, Louisville finished 38th, three spots behind Princeton.
Stanford won the Cup again. The Cardinal didn't win the first one but have won the last 19. The top five was Stanford, Florida, UCLA, Michigan and Texas A&M. The next five: Penn State, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Georgia.
In other words, those are the real heavyweights of college athletics.
For Princeton, a 35th place finish is definitely worth celebrating.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Okay Smart Guy
The air conditioning stopped working in TigerBlog's car about three weeks ago.
TB called Ron, who is sort of the unofficial fixer of all OAC car problems, and he said TB should play with the dials for awhile, going back and forth from cold to hot, AC to defroster to heater and such.
So TB did that, and after about an hour of this, the AC started to work again.
It went from that point until Tuesday without incident, when it suddenly stopped working again. And so TB did the same trick, and again it worked. Until the next day, when it stopped again.
This time it gave out during a thunderstorm, while TB was driving three 16 year olds back from a lacrosse practice. To say that it created a rather unpleasant environment in the car is something of an understatement.
So, even though it started working again, TB took his car off to Ron this morning. At first Ron said he couldn't take it today because he had just gotten back from vacation, until TB pointed out that it's 90 degrees ever day around here and he really couldn't handle not have AC for an hour at a time on a hit-and-miss basis.
There was a time, of course, when cars didn't have air conditioning at all. In fact, according to Wikipedia at least, the first car air conditioners weren't readily available until the 1950s, and around 20% of cars in the 1960s had air conditioning in them.
This is not the 1960s though, and TB has come to rely on air conditioning. His fear today is hearing these words: "it can't be fixed." Coming in a close second is: "it can be fixed but it'll be expensive."
Anyway, TB had to get a ride in with a co-worker, and by the time they got to Jadwin Gym, they encountered something that TB has never seen before. Every single space in Lot 21 (the big one next to Jadwin) was taken.
Football camp is going on, which accounts for how many cars were in the parking lot, and out on the grass.
It doesn't account for how many of them drove past the two huge sandwich board signs at Lot 21, the small one in the front where athletic department people park. Those signs have a giant "NO" on them, as in no parking here if you don't have an athletics hang tag. And yet every spot was taken, which means that a handful of people saw those signs, said "this doesn't apply to me" and drove right in.
As a result, it took a few laps around the parking lot to see if someone was leaving, and finally it was Tyler Cordell, the women's basketball operations director, who left, giving up a prime parking spot.
TB wasn't prepared for such a crowded parking lot on a Friday morning in the summer. Usually the lot would be empty on such a day.
The extra time in the parking lot got TB thinking more about today's subject, which ostensibly is about how Peter Callahan was named a CoSIDA first-team Academic All-America in track and field.
Callahan, of course, was the one whose finishing kick gave Princeton wins in the distance medley relay at the NCAA championships and Heps, in dramatically stunning fashion.
As an aside, only CoSIDA, which is the national sports information directors' association, can use the term Academic All-America.
As another aside, TB knew a guy at Penn who used to say he had a 3.9 GPA, give or take a point. He actually had a 2.9 GPA.
Anyway, Callahan was Princeton's first first-team Academic All-America in a long time, as in all the way back to 2000, when both Susan Rea (soccer/softball) and Josh Sims (lacrosse) were honored.
When TB saw this, his first thought was Landis Stankievech, the Rhodes Scholar hockey player who had a nearly perfect GPA, wasn't a first-team Academic All-America? And he wasn't. He was third team.
TB's second thought is the same as it always is in these situations.
Do you want to publicize that this is something that hasn't happened in awhile?
On the one hand, it's impressive when someone does something here that hasn't been done in that long, given the quality of athletes and students who are here. On the other, it points out that it's been awhile.
This goes beyond an individual award like Callahans.
What about something like a team that hasn't won a championship in a long time? Or another team that hasn't matched an accomplishment in more than a decade?
Or even a stat.
The men's lacrosse team this year, for instance, had its highest scoring team in 10 years. Is it good to point that out or bad to say that it's been that long since the team up numbers like this?
TB has always wrestled with that, perhaps more than he should. Accomplishments, after all, are accomplishments, and something like how like it's been since such an accomplishment has been achieved adds historical significance to it.
TB just doesn't want to shortchange the teams and athletes who came in between such accomplishments.
Does it make the athletic program look bad that it hasn't had a first-team Academic All-America in 13 years?
That's the actual question here.
TB called Ron, who is sort of the unofficial fixer of all OAC car problems, and he said TB should play with the dials for awhile, going back and forth from cold to hot, AC to defroster to heater and such.
So TB did that, and after about an hour of this, the AC started to work again.
It went from that point until Tuesday without incident, when it suddenly stopped working again. And so TB did the same trick, and again it worked. Until the next day, when it stopped again.
This time it gave out during a thunderstorm, while TB was driving three 16 year olds back from a lacrosse practice. To say that it created a rather unpleasant environment in the car is something of an understatement.
So, even though it started working again, TB took his car off to Ron this morning. At first Ron said he couldn't take it today because he had just gotten back from vacation, until TB pointed out that it's 90 degrees ever day around here and he really couldn't handle not have AC for an hour at a time on a hit-and-miss basis.
There was a time, of course, when cars didn't have air conditioning at all. In fact, according to Wikipedia at least, the first car air conditioners weren't readily available until the 1950s, and around 20% of cars in the 1960s had air conditioning in them.
This is not the 1960s though, and TB has come to rely on air conditioning. His fear today is hearing these words: "it can't be fixed." Coming in a close second is: "it can be fixed but it'll be expensive."
Anyway, TB had to get a ride in with a co-worker, and by the time they got to Jadwin Gym, they encountered something that TB has never seen before. Every single space in Lot 21 (the big one next to Jadwin) was taken.
Football camp is going on, which accounts for how many cars were in the parking lot, and out on the grass.
It doesn't account for how many of them drove past the two huge sandwich board signs at Lot 21, the small one in the front where athletic department people park. Those signs have a giant "NO" on them, as in no parking here if you don't have an athletics hang tag. And yet every spot was taken, which means that a handful of people saw those signs, said "this doesn't apply to me" and drove right in.
As a result, it took a few laps around the parking lot to see if someone was leaving, and finally it was Tyler Cordell, the women's basketball operations director, who left, giving up a prime parking spot.
TB wasn't prepared for such a crowded parking lot on a Friday morning in the summer. Usually the lot would be empty on such a day.
The extra time in the parking lot got TB thinking more about today's subject, which ostensibly is about how Peter Callahan was named a CoSIDA first-team Academic All-America in track and field.
Callahan, of course, was the one whose finishing kick gave Princeton wins in the distance medley relay at the NCAA championships and Heps, in dramatically stunning fashion.
As an aside, only CoSIDA, which is the national sports information directors' association, can use the term Academic All-America.
As another aside, TB knew a guy at Penn who used to say he had a 3.9 GPA, give or take a point. He actually had a 2.9 GPA.
Anyway, Callahan was Princeton's first first-team Academic All-America in a long time, as in all the way back to 2000, when both Susan Rea (soccer/softball) and Josh Sims (lacrosse) were honored.
When TB saw this, his first thought was Landis Stankievech, the Rhodes Scholar hockey player who had a nearly perfect GPA, wasn't a first-team Academic All-America? And he wasn't. He was third team.
TB's second thought is the same as it always is in these situations.
Do you want to publicize that this is something that hasn't happened in awhile?
On the one hand, it's impressive when someone does something here that hasn't been done in that long, given the quality of athletes and students who are here. On the other, it points out that it's been awhile.
This goes beyond an individual award like Callahans.
What about something like a team that hasn't won a championship in a long time? Or another team that hasn't matched an accomplishment in more than a decade?
Or even a stat.
The men's lacrosse team this year, for instance, had its highest scoring team in 10 years. Is it good to point that out or bad to say that it's been that long since the team up numbers like this?
TB has always wrestled with that, perhaps more than he should. Accomplishments, after all, are accomplishments, and something like how like it's been since such an accomplishment has been achieved adds historical significance to it.
TB just doesn't want to shortchange the teams and athletes who came in between such accomplishments.
Does it make the athletic program look bad that it hasn't had a first-team Academic All-America in 13 years?
That's the actual question here.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Behind The Wheel
TigerBlog's car went past the 143,600-mile mark yesterday, and TB estimates that he's driven probably 143,500 of those miles.
His previous car - actually a minivan - retired with 155,000 or so on it. Before that, he never had a car reach 100,000, though he had three get to 90,000.
Add all that together, plus all the miles on all of the other cars he's had, and all the times he drove Princeton's cars, and he figures he's over the 1,000,000-mile mark. That would be more than 40 trips around the Earth at its equator.
TigerBlog Jr.'s career odometer sat at zero yesterday as TB let him take the keys yesterday morning.
An hour earlier, TBJ had passed his written test, which gave him a learner's permit. During the next six months he has to do at least 65 hours of driving, of which 10 have to be at night and five have to be in bad weather.
Then he can take his road test, and after that, presumably, be in charge of driving Miss TigerBlog wherever she has to go.
TB remembers the first time he was behind the wheel, a long, long time ago. His grandparents on his mother's side operated a driving school in Queens, and his grandfather taught TB to drive in one of those cars that has a break on the passenger's side as well.
What really stands out to TB from the first time he drove was that when he let go of the brake, the car moved without having to hit the gas. He found that somewhat startling.
Anyway, TB took TBJ to a big parking lot at a community park, one that had only two cars in it at the time. They belonged to parents with little kids who were on the playground there.
TB gave TBJ the keys and a brief tutorial on how it all worked. Then TBJ put the car in drive, went forward a bit and then slammed on the brakes, not realizing that in the braking world, a little goes a long way.
For 30 minutes, the two drove around the parking lot, making right turns and left turns, going to imaginary stop signs, getting the basics down.
There were a few times when he cut the turn too sharply, which would have meant wiping out someone's mailbox had it been on an actual road. For the most part, though, he was doing fine.
From there it was time to try the actual road. His first attempt was to make a right turn out of the park and then go about a half mile down the road to the middle school, where he made a right turn into that parking lot.
In all, he would drive for about two hours yesterday, and he would take out not a single mailbox or parked car, though he did have a tendency to drift towards the curb, something that needs to be corrected.
In all, it was a petrifying experience for TigerBlog.
As a parent, life becomes a series of milestones by your children, from learning to roll over and walk and talk to the first day of school to the first day of middle school to the first day of high school and on and on. Each time they take that big next step, it sends you back to the time when they were babies, and when they were helpless, and when they couldn't make a move without you.
It didn't seem that long ago that TBJ was a baby. And there he was yesterday, behind the wheel of a car.
It's moments like that that make a parent feel old. Turning 30 or 40 or even 50? Nah. Seeing your child in the driver's seat? Yup.
TB knows something that's going to make him feel way older than anything his own kids do, though.
One of these days, the child of a a Princeton athlete who competed here when TB was covering him or her will also come to Princeton as an athlete, and TB will feel ancient at that moment.
If it's already happened, he can't think of who it is.
TB first started covering Princeton athletics for real in 1989-90. If someone graduated that year, they'd be 45 or 46 right now. If they had a child at 28 then that child would be 18 now, and graduating high school.
When TB looks at it that way, then the floodgates of next generation Princeton athletes should be coming up relatively quickly.
If he goes by when he first started working here a few years later, well, then that backs up the timetable just a bit.
Either way, the day is coming.
There are all kinds of Princeton athletes whose parents (and even grandparents and great-grandparents) competed here. TB remembers receiving a letter - not an email but an actual letter - pointing out that a Princeton woman was a fourth-generation coxswain in her family, though the name and years escape TB.
There have been numerous Princeton lacrosse players whose fathers played here, but they were all before TB's time.
No, the day is coming when the son of a player TB saw play shows up on Princeton's lacrosse team, or the son or daughter of another Princeton athlete shows up on the roster of another team.
And on that day, TB will shake his head and say "wow."
And he'll really feel old.
His previous car - actually a minivan - retired with 155,000 or so on it. Before that, he never had a car reach 100,000, though he had three get to 90,000.
Add all that together, plus all the miles on all of the other cars he's had, and all the times he drove Princeton's cars, and he figures he's over the 1,000,000-mile mark. That would be more than 40 trips around the Earth at its equator.
TigerBlog Jr.'s career odometer sat at zero yesterday as TB let him take the keys yesterday morning.
An hour earlier, TBJ had passed his written test, which gave him a learner's permit. During the next six months he has to do at least 65 hours of driving, of which 10 have to be at night and five have to be in bad weather.
Then he can take his road test, and after that, presumably, be in charge of driving Miss TigerBlog wherever she has to go.
TB remembers the first time he was behind the wheel, a long, long time ago. His grandparents on his mother's side operated a driving school in Queens, and his grandfather taught TB to drive in one of those cars that has a break on the passenger's side as well.
What really stands out to TB from the first time he drove was that when he let go of the brake, the car moved without having to hit the gas. He found that somewhat startling.
Anyway, TB took TBJ to a big parking lot at a community park, one that had only two cars in it at the time. They belonged to parents with little kids who were on the playground there.
TB gave TBJ the keys and a brief tutorial on how it all worked. Then TBJ put the car in drive, went forward a bit and then slammed on the brakes, not realizing that in the braking world, a little goes a long way.
For 30 minutes, the two drove around the parking lot, making right turns and left turns, going to imaginary stop signs, getting the basics down.
There were a few times when he cut the turn too sharply, which would have meant wiping out someone's mailbox had it been on an actual road. For the most part, though, he was doing fine.
From there it was time to try the actual road. His first attempt was to make a right turn out of the park and then go about a half mile down the road to the middle school, where he made a right turn into that parking lot.
In all, he would drive for about two hours yesterday, and he would take out not a single mailbox or parked car, though he did have a tendency to drift towards the curb, something that needs to be corrected.
In all, it was a petrifying experience for TigerBlog.
As a parent, life becomes a series of milestones by your children, from learning to roll over and walk and talk to the first day of school to the first day of middle school to the first day of high school and on and on. Each time they take that big next step, it sends you back to the time when they were babies, and when they were helpless, and when they couldn't make a move without you.
It didn't seem that long ago that TBJ was a baby. And there he was yesterday, behind the wheel of a car.
It's moments like that that make a parent feel old. Turning 30 or 40 or even 50? Nah. Seeing your child in the driver's seat? Yup.
TB knows something that's going to make him feel way older than anything his own kids do, though.
One of these days, the child of a a Princeton athlete who competed here when TB was covering him or her will also come to Princeton as an athlete, and TB will feel ancient at that moment.
If it's already happened, he can't think of who it is.
TB first started covering Princeton athletics for real in 1989-90. If someone graduated that year, they'd be 45 or 46 right now. If they had a child at 28 then that child would be 18 now, and graduating high school.
When TB looks at it that way, then the floodgates of next generation Princeton athletes should be coming up relatively quickly.
If he goes by when he first started working here a few years later, well, then that backs up the timetable just a bit.
Either way, the day is coming.
There are all kinds of Princeton athletes whose parents (and even grandparents and great-grandparents) competed here. TB remembers receiving a letter - not an email but an actual letter - pointing out that a Princeton woman was a fourth-generation coxswain in her family, though the name and years escape TB.
There have been numerous Princeton lacrosse players whose fathers played here, but they were all before TB's time.
No, the day is coming when the son of a player TB saw play shows up on Princeton's lacrosse team, or the son or daughter of another Princeton athlete shows up on the roster of another team.
And on that day, TB will shake his head and say "wow."
And he'll really feel old.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Is That A School Record?
TigerBlog is pretty sure that no other Princeton men’s basketball player will ever score 58 points in a game, something that Bill Bradley did in the 1965 NCAA third-place game against Wichita State.
Considering that in the 65 years prior to that and 48 years since no one else has reached 40, let alone 50, let alone 58 points in a game, Bradley’s record seems pretty safe.
Then again, so does his 2,503 career points, another school record that no one before or since has even remotely approached. In fact, the last two seasons have produced the No. 2 (Ian Hummer) and No. 3 (Douglas Davis) scorers in program history. No other player in Princeton history has ever scored more than Hummer except Bradley, and Hummer still finished 878 points away from the record.
TB has always viewed the numbers Bradley put up as the most unbreakable in all of Princeton Athletics.
The most unbreakable record in sports is usually considered to be Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, set back in 1941. TB has always sort of figured that DiMaggio’s record is approachable, if for no other reason than it will only take someone 57 games to do it, and yet in the 72 years since, nobody has.
As an aside, if you’re so young that you’re removed from the legend of Joe DiMaggio, ask a parent or grandparent. In addition to his on-field performance, which incluces more career home runs than strikeouts, DiMaggio was viewed as the perfect role model for every kid who ever got a baseball glove.
What other athlete has ever inspired a lyric like he did, as Simon and Garfunkel said: “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
Anyway, to TB, Cy Young’s record of 511 career wins is actually the most unbreakable, since nobody is even going to make 511 career starts anymore, let alone with 511 games.
Most Princeton records are easy to find. They’re right there in the record book.
Of course, they require faith. Princeton’s record for goals in a men’s lacrosse game is 10, set by William Griffiths against Rutgers in 1951. At least that’s what the record book says. It was a little before TB’s time.
Then there are the records that are a little tougher to figure.
These records are limited to swimming and track and field and are more about what constitutes a Princeton record than the records themselves.
Greta Feldman ran a 2:03.something in the 800 (TB can’t find the exact time, but whatever it was it qualified for her the U.S.A. nationals) as part of the American milers series in Indianapolis two weeks ago.
Feldman’s time would have broken the Princeton record. Except Feldman graduated earlier this month.
So is it a record? Is the summer season now a continuation of the Princeton track and field season?
And hey, she was wearing her Princeton uniform when she did it. So is it a school record?
Or is it not, because she is a graduate?
TB isn’t sure.
He does know that there is no common thinking on the subject nationally. Some schools would recognize the record; others wouldn’t.
Track and Field News, which is basically the bible of the sport, says that collegians should be credited with records until August after they graduate. The U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches’ Association says just the opposite, that the athletes’ career ends at the NCAA championships.
TB would say that a school record should only count in an actual Princeton University competition and that the opportunity to set a school record ends with the end of the athletes' eligibility, which ends with the last competition senior year.
Then again, what if this had been a year ago?
What if Feldman had set this record at the Olympic Trials last summer, prior to her senior year? Would that be a school record?
The same is true for swimming.
When is a school record a school record?
Suppose, say, Tom Schreiber was playing in a summer league and went out and scored 11 goals in a game. Would that be a school record? No way.
So why would it be so different in the two individual sports?
TB isn't sure what the right answer is here. Is it from the start to the conclusion of eligibility? Should any event during the period of eligibility count, regardless of what the competition was?
Then there's the added factor of not knowing through the years what the policy has been or who made it. Does the existing list of records include events that were outside of Princeton competition? There's no way to tell in some cases.
Feldman's time puts her in the national conversation as she looks ahead to the 2016 Summer Olympics, and that was the goal all along.
A Princeton record?
She might have been a few weeks late for that.
Considering that in the 65 years prior to that and 48 years since no one else has reached 40, let alone 50, let alone 58 points in a game, Bradley’s record seems pretty safe.
Then again, so does his 2,503 career points, another school record that no one before or since has even remotely approached. In fact, the last two seasons have produced the No. 2 (Ian Hummer) and No. 3 (Douglas Davis) scorers in program history. No other player in Princeton history has ever scored more than Hummer except Bradley, and Hummer still finished 878 points away from the record.
TB has always viewed the numbers Bradley put up as the most unbreakable in all of Princeton Athletics.
The most unbreakable record in sports is usually considered to be Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, set back in 1941. TB has always sort of figured that DiMaggio’s record is approachable, if for no other reason than it will only take someone 57 games to do it, and yet in the 72 years since, nobody has.
As an aside, if you’re so young that you’re removed from the legend of Joe DiMaggio, ask a parent or grandparent. In addition to his on-field performance, which incluces more career home runs than strikeouts, DiMaggio was viewed as the perfect role model for every kid who ever got a baseball glove.
What other athlete has ever inspired a lyric like he did, as Simon and Garfunkel said: “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
Anyway, to TB, Cy Young’s record of 511 career wins is actually the most unbreakable, since nobody is even going to make 511 career starts anymore, let alone with 511 games.
Most Princeton records are easy to find. They’re right there in the record book.
Of course, they require faith. Princeton’s record for goals in a men’s lacrosse game is 10, set by William Griffiths against Rutgers in 1951. At least that’s what the record book says. It was a little before TB’s time.
Then there are the records that are a little tougher to figure.
These records are limited to swimming and track and field and are more about what constitutes a Princeton record than the records themselves.
Greta Feldman ran a 2:03.something in the 800 (TB can’t find the exact time, but whatever it was it qualified for her the U.S.A. nationals) as part of the American milers series in Indianapolis two weeks ago.
Feldman’s time would have broken the Princeton record. Except Feldman graduated earlier this month.
So is it a record? Is the summer season now a continuation of the Princeton track and field season?
And hey, she was wearing her Princeton uniform when she did it. So is it a school record?
Or is it not, because she is a graduate?
TB isn’t sure.
He does know that there is no common thinking on the subject nationally. Some schools would recognize the record; others wouldn’t.
Track and Field News, which is basically the bible of the sport, says that collegians should be credited with records until August after they graduate. The U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches’ Association says just the opposite, that the athletes’ career ends at the NCAA championships.
TB would say that a school record should only count in an actual Princeton University competition and that the opportunity to set a school record ends with the end of the athletes' eligibility, which ends with the last competition senior year.
Then again, what if this had been a year ago?
What if Feldman had set this record at the Olympic Trials last summer, prior to her senior year? Would that be a school record?
The same is true for swimming.
When is a school record a school record?
Suppose, say, Tom Schreiber was playing in a summer league and went out and scored 11 goals in a game. Would that be a school record? No way.
So why would it be so different in the two individual sports?
TB isn't sure what the right answer is here. Is it from the start to the conclusion of eligibility? Should any event during the period of eligibility count, regardless of what the competition was?
Then there's the added factor of not knowing through the years what the policy has been or who made it. Does the existing list of records include events that were outside of Princeton competition? There's no way to tell in some cases.
Feldman's time puts her in the national conversation as she looks ahead to the 2016 Summer Olympics, and that was the goal all along.
A Princeton record?
She might have been a few weeks late for that.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
What's Your Address?
TigerBlog remembers his first experience with a GPS.
It was during the 2007 NCAA men's lacrosse Final Four, which was held in Baltimore. John Cornell, one of only two people ever to hold the title "director of publications" at Princeton athletics, had left here to live in Annapolis, and he was in a car that TB was driving on the way to the Outback Steakhouse.
TB is pretty sure he had an Outback Special, and there was probably a Bloomin' Onion involved. As TB looks out over the bananas on his desk and thinks about the grapes in the fridge, well, those clearly were the good old days.
Anyway, it was the Outback in Glen Burnie, outside Baltimore, and TB isn't sure if Cornell had the GPS on his phone or as an actual GPS.
What TB does remember is being completely fascinated by the whole concept of the GPS.
How in the world did the GPS know exactly where TB's car was? And how did it know how to get to the Outback? And how did the GPS now exactly how much further it was down the road to the restaurant?
TB is also pretty sure that once he started to grasp the concept that it was all being controlled by satellites in space, his first thought was that the government would know where he was eating dinner. Ah, but this is a non-politcal blog.
Anyway, the GPS has quickly gone from being something out of science fiction to being a part of mainstream, everyday life.
Mapquest used to be the way to find an unfamiliar destination, and TB still uses the site for a general reference. The GPS, which TB resisted getting for as long as possible, is now the staple.
It's really a weird dynamic, one of complete faith in some modern technology, without any questions asked of the technology itself.
TB wishes he could go back to when he was a kid, sit his room with his manual typewriter and black-and-white TV that had no remote and only a few channels with an antenna on the roof, and have someone lay out for him where technology was going to be in a few short decades.
TB surmises that those born in, say, 1558 didn't have that much of a difference in what was going on by the time it was 1600.
The last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century saw huge jumps in transportation, communication, medicine and so many other areas, and that is nothing compared to what has happened in the last 60 years, or even two or three years for that matter.
As for a GPS, TB is amazed at how he simply goes wherever it tells him to, making this turn or that turn without giving it a thought.
This past weekend, TigerBlog Jr. and Miss TigerBlog were playing on fields about 30 minutes apart. TB went back and forth, and he found himself confronted with another oddity - the GPS took him one way from the first field to the second and then another direction from the second field back to the first.
Or people who came from basically the same area had their GPSs take them a different way.
Princeton Athletics has its own GPS-related issue to deal with, and that's the fact that none of the facilities has an actual street address.
For years, TB would tell people that if they wanted to mail something to Jadwin, the address was "Washington & Faculty Roads, Princeton, NJ 08544." That doesn't quite work with a GPS.
Neither does P.O. Box 71, Princeton, NJ, which is another mailing address for the athletic department.
Eventually, TB started estimating where on Faculty Road Jadwin would be, and he's pretty sure 1400 Faculty Road gets you here, unless on your particular GPS there is no 1400 Faculty Road.
Back when 609.258.3568 was the main number for the OAC, there were all kinds of "press here" options for the caller, including one for directions. That number hasn't been part of this office in a long time though.
There are directions on the webpage to the athletic facilities, and there are coordinates that can be entered into some GPSs. TB isn't sure if that's even an option for any new GPSs, now that he thinks about it.
He'll have to check his out later.
Phone calls asking for directions to facilities are rare, so people must be finding their way. And TB assumes they're using a GPS to do so.
Enter the address. Blindly follow.
What is coming next?
It was during the 2007 NCAA men's lacrosse Final Four, which was held in Baltimore. John Cornell, one of only two people ever to hold the title "director of publications" at Princeton athletics, had left here to live in Annapolis, and he was in a car that TB was driving on the way to the Outback Steakhouse.
TB is pretty sure he had an Outback Special, and there was probably a Bloomin' Onion involved. As TB looks out over the bananas on his desk and thinks about the grapes in the fridge, well, those clearly were the good old days.
Anyway, it was the Outback in Glen Burnie, outside Baltimore, and TB isn't sure if Cornell had the GPS on his phone or as an actual GPS.
What TB does remember is being completely fascinated by the whole concept of the GPS.
How in the world did the GPS know exactly where TB's car was? And how did it know how to get to the Outback? And how did the GPS now exactly how much further it was down the road to the restaurant?
TB is also pretty sure that once he started to grasp the concept that it was all being controlled by satellites in space, his first thought was that the government would know where he was eating dinner. Ah, but this is a non-politcal blog.
Anyway, the GPS has quickly gone from being something out of science fiction to being a part of mainstream, everyday life.
Mapquest used to be the way to find an unfamiliar destination, and TB still uses the site for a general reference. The GPS, which TB resisted getting for as long as possible, is now the staple.
It's really a weird dynamic, one of complete faith in some modern technology, without any questions asked of the technology itself.
TB wishes he could go back to when he was a kid, sit his room with his manual typewriter and black-and-white TV that had no remote and only a few channels with an antenna on the roof, and have someone lay out for him where technology was going to be in a few short decades.
TB surmises that those born in, say, 1558 didn't have that much of a difference in what was going on by the time it was 1600.
The last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century saw huge jumps in transportation, communication, medicine and so many other areas, and that is nothing compared to what has happened in the last 60 years, or even two or three years for that matter.
As for a GPS, TB is amazed at how he simply goes wherever it tells him to, making this turn or that turn without giving it a thought.
This past weekend, TigerBlog Jr. and Miss TigerBlog were playing on fields about 30 minutes apart. TB went back and forth, and he found himself confronted with another oddity - the GPS took him one way from the first field to the second and then another direction from the second field back to the first.
Or people who came from basically the same area had their GPSs take them a different way.
Princeton Athletics has its own GPS-related issue to deal with, and that's the fact that none of the facilities has an actual street address.
For years, TB would tell people that if they wanted to mail something to Jadwin, the address was "Washington & Faculty Roads, Princeton, NJ 08544." That doesn't quite work with a GPS.
Neither does P.O. Box 71, Princeton, NJ, which is another mailing address for the athletic department.
Eventually, TB started estimating where on Faculty Road Jadwin would be, and he's pretty sure 1400 Faculty Road gets you here, unless on your particular GPS there is no 1400 Faculty Road.
Back when 609.258.3568 was the main number for the OAC, there were all kinds of "press here" options for the caller, including one for directions. That number hasn't been part of this office in a long time though.
There are directions on the webpage to the athletic facilities, and there are coordinates that can be entered into some GPSs. TB isn't sure if that's even an option for any new GPSs, now that he thinks about it.
He'll have to check his out later.
Phone calls asking for directions to facilities are rare, so people must be finding their way. And TB assumes they're using a GPS to do so.
Enter the address. Blindly follow.
What is coming next?
Monday, June 24, 2013
13 More
Princeton University won 12 Ivy League championships in the 2012-13 academic year.
It's won 13 more since the year ended.
How is that possible, you might ask? Well, TigerBlog will get to that in a minute.
First, there's the little matter of 14 foods no one should ever eat. Or at least that's what the title of the article that TB's friend Todd emailed him this morning.
TB of late has been watching what he's been eating, and he's learned a great deal about food consumption during that time. Mostly, eating poorly is a bad habit, one that is breakable.
In fact, it doesn't really take that long to get past a, say, 1,000-M&M a week habit and get into a say, 14-banana a week habit.
What TB also has noticed is that he - and he can't speak for all of humanity here - gets into the routine of eating the same foods over and over again. Should it come out that bananas are bad for people, well, then TB is in some degree of trouble. The same goes for baked potatoes. And Corn Flakes.
So what foods shouldn't people eat?
Well, some of it is common sense, like the heading of "anything at McDonald's." Some of the other entries aren't as obvious, like corn, non-organic strawberries and sprouts.
And bread? When TB was a kid, he never would have imagined that bread could ever be on the avoid list.
And diet soda? Too many artificial sweeteners, which, as it turns out, is its own category as well.
Eating well + regular exercise = better health. It's not very tricky - except when what constitutes eating right is constantly evolving. Perhaps one day M&Ms will be on top of the list of what everyone should eat.
For now, that isn't the case, so it isn't worth worrying about.
Let's get back, then, to the 13 Ivy titles that Princeton has "won" since May.
Actually, they were Ivy League championships that Princeton won through the years, except they weren't reflected on the spreadsheet that TB was using.
TB has an excel spreadsheet, in fact, that lists Ivy champions through the years, from the start of official Ivy play back in 1956-57.
TB has no idea where the original list came from. All he knows is that he's been adding to it every year since he's been here, which could come across as throwing his predecessors under the bus, unless TB wants to add that he probably could have checked over all of the lists of winners at some point in the last 20 years.
Fortunately, someone else from the OAC (Kristy McNeil) did just that. TB isn't quite sure what started her on the project; perhaps it was just one of those things that can get done in the summer when there are no events, though TB never thought to do it himself.
The result are two lists that Kristy compiled and put on goprincetontigers.com.
The first is Ivy League championships won sport-by-sport.
The other is Ivy League championships won year-by-year.
In the course of her research, Kristy found out that Princeton has actually won 13 more Ivy titles than were previously listed, bringing the total number of all-time Ivy League championships Princeton has won to 430.
And by Ivy League titles, that means championships won since 1956-57, which is reflected on the year-by-year list. The sport-by-sport list is a little trickier, since some teams competed for league championships before the formal creation of the Ivy League while others didn't.
The first Ivy League championship that Princeton won was in men's squash, back in that first year of 1956-57. Princeton then won three spring titles - men's lacrosse, men's lightweight rowing, men's tennis.
The first officially recognized Ivy women's championship was in basketball in 1974-75, when the champ was determined by a tournament and there was no round robin, let alone double round robin.
Anyway, the 430 number should be the accurate one.
And hey, it was a pretty good week last week. It's not easy to win 13 more Ivy titles, especially when not a single game was played.
It's won 13 more since the year ended.
How is that possible, you might ask? Well, TigerBlog will get to that in a minute.
First, there's the little matter of 14 foods no one should ever eat. Or at least that's what the title of the article that TB's friend Todd emailed him this morning.
TB of late has been watching what he's been eating, and he's learned a great deal about food consumption during that time. Mostly, eating poorly is a bad habit, one that is breakable.
In fact, it doesn't really take that long to get past a, say, 1,000-M&M a week habit and get into a say, 14-banana a week habit.
What TB also has noticed is that he - and he can't speak for all of humanity here - gets into the routine of eating the same foods over and over again. Should it come out that bananas are bad for people, well, then TB is in some degree of trouble. The same goes for baked potatoes. And Corn Flakes.
So what foods shouldn't people eat?
Well, some of it is common sense, like the heading of "anything at McDonald's." Some of the other entries aren't as obvious, like corn, non-organic strawberries and sprouts.
And bread? When TB was a kid, he never would have imagined that bread could ever be on the avoid list.
And diet soda? Too many artificial sweeteners, which, as it turns out, is its own category as well.
Eating well + regular exercise = better health. It's not very tricky - except when what constitutes eating right is constantly evolving. Perhaps one day M&Ms will be on top of the list of what everyone should eat.
For now, that isn't the case, so it isn't worth worrying about.
Let's get back, then, to the 13 Ivy titles that Princeton has "won" since May.
Actually, they were Ivy League championships that Princeton won through the years, except they weren't reflected on the spreadsheet that TB was using.
TB has an excel spreadsheet, in fact, that lists Ivy champions through the years, from the start of official Ivy play back in 1956-57.
TB has no idea where the original list came from. All he knows is that he's been adding to it every year since he's been here, which could come across as throwing his predecessors under the bus, unless TB wants to add that he probably could have checked over all of the lists of winners at some point in the last 20 years.
Fortunately, someone else from the OAC (Kristy McNeil) did just that. TB isn't quite sure what started her on the project; perhaps it was just one of those things that can get done in the summer when there are no events, though TB never thought to do it himself.
The result are two lists that Kristy compiled and put on goprincetontigers.com.
The first is Ivy League championships won sport-by-sport.
The other is Ivy League championships won year-by-year.
In the course of her research, Kristy found out that Princeton has actually won 13 more Ivy titles than were previously listed, bringing the total number of all-time Ivy League championships Princeton has won to 430.
And by Ivy League titles, that means championships won since 1956-57, which is reflected on the year-by-year list. The sport-by-sport list is a little trickier, since some teams competed for league championships before the formal creation of the Ivy League while others didn't.
The first Ivy League championship that Princeton won was in men's squash, back in that first year of 1956-57. Princeton then won three spring titles - men's lacrosse, men's lightweight rowing, men's tennis.
The first officially recognized Ivy women's championship was in basketball in 1974-75, when the champ was determined by a tournament and there was no round robin, let alone double round robin.
Anyway, the 430 number should be the accurate one.
And hey, it was a pretty good week last week. It's not easy to win 13 more Ivy titles, especially when not a single game was played.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Director Of Athletics Erin McDermott
TigerBlog has been part of job interviews for all kinds of positions here.
There are certain common questions and answers, most notably the "where do you see yourself in 10 years, 20 years, etc?"
The answer is always the same. The end goal is always to become an athletic director.
Not everyone reaches that far, of course. Not everyone can.
In his time at Princeton, TigerBlog has worked with seven people who have left and become an athletic director. Actually, there are six ADs and one conference commissioner.
Amy Campbell and George VanderZwaag were on the staff at Princeton when TB first started there. Campbell would become the longtime AD at Bryn Mawr before returning to work in Nassau Hall; VanderZwaag left and became the AD at Rochester, where he still is.
After that was Jim Fiore, now the AD at Stony Brook. And Jim McLaughlin, the AD at Union.
Jamie Zaninovich went from Princeton to become the commissioner of the West Coast Conference - and one of TB's favorite tweeters. Mike Cross is now the AD at Bradley in the Missouri Valley Conference.
To that group of six you can now add the name of Erin McDermott, who was announced yesterday as the Director of Athletics at the University of Chicago.
McDermott is the Deputy Athletic Director at Princeton, where she has worked for the last 13 years. There is very little that goes on in Princeton's athletic department that Erin hasn't had a role in during her tenure here.
Erin arrived at Princeton in an interim position, as an athletic administrative newbie. She leaves next month, 13 years later, as a veteran with a list of accomplishments at Princeton that could fill several pages of a resume.
Her work here took her way beyond Princeton's athletic facilities, and she spent much of her time on the other side of campus - or way off campus, working in various NCAA capacities.
The climb from an interim position to an AD at a major Division III school requires a level of ambition, but Erin never looked at working at Princeton as a prerequisite to moving up. When she looks back at her career, she will, TB supposes, think back to her time here with great fondness.
Princeton's first goal, as a department, is to provide the best possible experience for the student-athletes, and this was always No. 1A with Erin.
No. 1B? That was a strict, unflinching adherence to the highest ethical standards.
Because of that combination, TB can see why she was such a natural fit for Chicago.
As an aside, the University of Chicago is featured in the movie "Adventures in Babysitting," a rather underrated comedy starring Elisabeth Shue. During one key scene, she and the three kids for whom she is babysitting stumble onto a fraternity part on the Chicago campus, where none other than Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes are playing.
Anyway, Chicago's athletic program used to be as big-time as big-time gets. The Maroons, as they are known, were founding members of the Big 10 conference, and the school owns seven Big 10 football championships, all of which came under the direction of head coach Amos Alonzo Stagg.
One of those seven came in 1922, when Chicago was the No. 1 team in the country before hosting the team that would eventually win the national championship that year. That team? Princeton, and its famous "Team of Destiny."
Princeton would knock off Chicago 21-18 in one of the most famous games in Princeton program history, and one of the most significant in college football history, insomuch as it was the first football game ever broadcast on radio.
Chicago left the Big 10 in 1946 after making a similar institutional decision as the one that led to the formation of the Ivy League several years later, though Chicago took the more drastic step to leave Division I.
Today, Chicago has 19 varsity teams (TB asked McDermott if the first thing she would be doing would be adding men's lacrosse), as well as more than 40 club teams and a huge intramural program.
And now it will be led by Erin McDermott.
She's a natural for the school, a liberal arts college that views athletics in the context of competition combined with its educational value and life lessons that its participants learn during their time there.
The school gets someone who will bring laughter and humor to the department every day, all while she sets extremely high standards for those who will represent that department, for those who work there and those who compete there.
Princeton says goodbye to one of the most loyal, hard-working and accomplished members of its campus.
TB wishes her the best.
He has no doubt she'll be an overwhelming success.
There are certain common questions and answers, most notably the "where do you see yourself in 10 years, 20 years, etc?"
The answer is always the same. The end goal is always to become an athletic director.
Not everyone reaches that far, of course. Not everyone can.
In his time at Princeton, TigerBlog has worked with seven people who have left and become an athletic director. Actually, there are six ADs and one conference commissioner.
Amy Campbell and George VanderZwaag were on the staff at Princeton when TB first started there. Campbell would become the longtime AD at Bryn Mawr before returning to work in Nassau Hall; VanderZwaag left and became the AD at Rochester, where he still is.
After that was Jim Fiore, now the AD at Stony Brook. And Jim McLaughlin, the AD at Union.
Jamie Zaninovich went from Princeton to become the commissioner of the West Coast Conference - and one of TB's favorite tweeters. Mike Cross is now the AD at Bradley in the Missouri Valley Conference.
To that group of six you can now add the name of Erin McDermott, who was announced yesterday as the Director of Athletics at the University of Chicago.
McDermott is the Deputy Athletic Director at Princeton, where she has worked for the last 13 years. There is very little that goes on in Princeton's athletic department that Erin hasn't had a role in during her tenure here.
Erin arrived at Princeton in an interim position, as an athletic administrative newbie. She leaves next month, 13 years later, as a veteran with a list of accomplishments at Princeton that could fill several pages of a resume.
Her work here took her way beyond Princeton's athletic facilities, and she spent much of her time on the other side of campus - or way off campus, working in various NCAA capacities.
The climb from an interim position to an AD at a major Division III school requires a level of ambition, but Erin never looked at working at Princeton as a prerequisite to moving up. When she looks back at her career, she will, TB supposes, think back to her time here with great fondness.
Princeton's first goal, as a department, is to provide the best possible experience for the student-athletes, and this was always No. 1A with Erin.
No. 1B? That was a strict, unflinching adherence to the highest ethical standards.
Because of that combination, TB can see why she was such a natural fit for Chicago.
As an aside, the University of Chicago is featured in the movie "Adventures in Babysitting," a rather underrated comedy starring Elisabeth Shue. During one key scene, she and the three kids for whom she is babysitting stumble onto a fraternity part on the Chicago campus, where none other than Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes are playing.
Anyway, Chicago's athletic program used to be as big-time as big-time gets. The Maroons, as they are known, were founding members of the Big 10 conference, and the school owns seven Big 10 football championships, all of which came under the direction of head coach Amos Alonzo Stagg.
One of those seven came in 1922, when Chicago was the No. 1 team in the country before hosting the team that would eventually win the national championship that year. That team? Princeton, and its famous "Team of Destiny."
Princeton would knock off Chicago 21-18 in one of the most famous games in Princeton program history, and one of the most significant in college football history, insomuch as it was the first football game ever broadcast on radio.
Chicago left the Big 10 in 1946 after making a similar institutional decision as the one that led to the formation of the Ivy League several years later, though Chicago took the more drastic step to leave Division I.
Today, Chicago has 19 varsity teams (TB asked McDermott if the first thing she would be doing would be adding men's lacrosse), as well as more than 40 club teams and a huge intramural program.
And now it will be led by Erin McDermott.
She's a natural for the school, a liberal arts college that views athletics in the context of competition combined with its educational value and life lessons that its participants learn during their time there.
The school gets someone who will bring laughter and humor to the department every day, all while she sets extremely high standards for those who will represent that department, for those who work there and those who compete there.
Princeton says goodbye to one of the most loyal, hard-working and accomplished members of its campus.
TB wishes her the best.
He has no doubt she'll be an overwhelming success.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
RIP, Tony Soprano
TigerBlog was on an elevator last night when a man he'd never seen before got on and announced that Tony Soprano had died.
The news was stunning.
Tony Soprano was really actor James Gandolfini, who died yesterday in Italy at the age of 51, apparently of a heart attack.
Until "Homeland" came along, TB's belief was that "The Sopranos" was the best TV show of all time, or at least the best drama.
In fact, it's TB's belief that "The Sopranos," which currently airs at 8 every weeknight on one of the HBO channels, is the best show on TV right now.
TB has seen every episode a million times, both when they aired originally and now are being repeated on HBO and when they ran in syndication on A&E, with all of the cursing edited out in somewhat creative ways.
TB was watching one of the episodes the other day, the one from Season 5 where Tony's cousin Tony Blundetto is released from prison. It ends with Tony Soprano as he stares at himself in the mirror, wearing his boxers and no shirt.
It's a fairly stunning moment, one that captures the grittiness of the show - and a character who in many ways changed television - perfectly.
Gandolfini was chosen for the part of Tony over two others, Steven Van Zandt, who would play Silvio Dante (and who is sort of famous for something else) and Michael Rispoli, who played Jackie Aprile, the boss whose death from cancer opened the door for Tony.
"The Sopranos" was a unquestionable great show, largely because it wasn't just about mob violence.
No, this was a show about everyday life, with all of the same issues of family, paying bills, going to therapy and ultimately getting ahead and achieving all the trappings of success. And then, just when it seemed like they were just another North Jersey family, the realities of what they did for a living would come crashing back down, leaving the viewers to wonder what it said about their own values that they liked this guy so much.
It was a great ensemble cast, with great writing, great storylines and great risk-taking, such as when it went out on a limb by killing off one of its best characters after Season 2.
Mostly, it was about challenging those who watched it to figure out why they were okay with everything that was going on, which on a weekly basis included extortion, drug-use, infidelity, murder and all of it. Those subjects weren't there to be gratuitous but instead to serve as a reminder of who we were really dealing with here each week and what they were really all about.
It was brilliant, creative and original. And it never would have worked without Gandolfini.
His presence all by itself elevated the show. And it was precisely because of his physical stature - huge, not exactly classically handsome - that he was so much more powerful on the screen and so much more believable as a mob boss.
And that's why the scene where he looks at himself in the mirror is so telling. He is so physically imperfect, and yet at the same time he loves what he says looking back at him.
Its the core of what the whole show is about. He loves what's looking back at him - and nobody in his life is going to be able to say anything to him to convince him otherwise. He is completely flawed as a human being but doesn't see himself that way. He indulges his every whim and takes what he wants, not caring who gets hurt along the way, even if it's someone he loves, or is supposed to love.
Gandolfini's performance was epic, so much so that it made it harder for fans of the show to envision him in any other role.
It also blurred the line between actor and character, so much so that it felt as if Tony Soprano had died yesterday. TB, by the way, doesn't buy into the idea that Tony is killed off at the end of the series, when the screen fades to make it seem like the cable went out.
In fact it was James Gandolfini who died yesterday, a man, not a character, one who died at just 51. If it was a heart attack, it's possible that the giant stature that he saw in the mirror in that episode of "The Sopranos" ultimately is what cut his life so sadly short.
Gandolfini was a New Jersey guy, one who grew up in Bergen County and attended Rutgers, from which he graduated in 1983.
TigerBlog spent some time Googling to see if there was any connection between Gandolfini and Princeton University. He didn't find any.
He has no memory of a time when Princeton University is mentioned during the series, let alone Princeton Athletics. Meadow, Tony's daughter, attends Columbia, but even through there there is no reference to Princeton that TB remembers.
But hey, maybe Meadow made a road trip down to Central Jersey for a Princeton-Columbia football game, and maybe Tony went as well.
Or maybe the real James Gandolfini, while he was a Rutgers student, came to watch Princeton-Rutgers basketball or some other event.
It's all speculation now anyway, after Gandolfini's death yesterday.
It was actually two deaths, that of an actor and the character his performance made so real that it's almost impossible not to think of Tony Soprano as a real person.
TigerBlog has seen very few TV characters where that was the case. Actually, he can't think of any others off the top of his head.
TigerBlog was shocked to find out James Gandolfini was dead.
Shocked, and very much saddened.
The news was stunning.
Tony Soprano was really actor James Gandolfini, who died yesterday in Italy at the age of 51, apparently of a heart attack.
Until "Homeland" came along, TB's belief was that "The Sopranos" was the best TV show of all time, or at least the best drama.
In fact, it's TB's belief that "The Sopranos," which currently airs at 8 every weeknight on one of the HBO channels, is the best show on TV right now.
TB has seen every episode a million times, both when they aired originally and now are being repeated on HBO and when they ran in syndication on A&E, with all of the cursing edited out in somewhat creative ways.
TB was watching one of the episodes the other day, the one from Season 5 where Tony's cousin Tony Blundetto is released from prison. It ends with Tony Soprano as he stares at himself in the mirror, wearing his boxers and no shirt.
It's a fairly stunning moment, one that captures the grittiness of the show - and a character who in many ways changed television - perfectly.
Gandolfini was chosen for the part of Tony over two others, Steven Van Zandt, who would play Silvio Dante (and who is sort of famous for something else) and Michael Rispoli, who played Jackie Aprile, the boss whose death from cancer opened the door for Tony.
"The Sopranos" was a unquestionable great show, largely because it wasn't just about mob violence.
No, this was a show about everyday life, with all of the same issues of family, paying bills, going to therapy and ultimately getting ahead and achieving all the trappings of success. And then, just when it seemed like they were just another North Jersey family, the realities of what they did for a living would come crashing back down, leaving the viewers to wonder what it said about their own values that they liked this guy so much.
It was a great ensemble cast, with great writing, great storylines and great risk-taking, such as when it went out on a limb by killing off one of its best characters after Season 2.
Mostly, it was about challenging those who watched it to figure out why they were okay with everything that was going on, which on a weekly basis included extortion, drug-use, infidelity, murder and all of it. Those subjects weren't there to be gratuitous but instead to serve as a reminder of who we were really dealing with here each week and what they were really all about.
It was brilliant, creative and original. And it never would have worked without Gandolfini.
His presence all by itself elevated the show. And it was precisely because of his physical stature - huge, not exactly classically handsome - that he was so much more powerful on the screen and so much more believable as a mob boss.
And that's why the scene where he looks at himself in the mirror is so telling. He is so physically imperfect, and yet at the same time he loves what he says looking back at him.
Its the core of what the whole show is about. He loves what's looking back at him - and nobody in his life is going to be able to say anything to him to convince him otherwise. He is completely flawed as a human being but doesn't see himself that way. He indulges his every whim and takes what he wants, not caring who gets hurt along the way, even if it's someone he loves, or is supposed to love.
Gandolfini's performance was epic, so much so that it made it harder for fans of the show to envision him in any other role.
It also blurred the line between actor and character, so much so that it felt as if Tony Soprano had died yesterday. TB, by the way, doesn't buy into the idea that Tony is killed off at the end of the series, when the screen fades to make it seem like the cable went out.
In fact it was James Gandolfini who died yesterday, a man, not a character, one who died at just 51. If it was a heart attack, it's possible that the giant stature that he saw in the mirror in that episode of "The Sopranos" ultimately is what cut his life so sadly short.
Gandolfini was a New Jersey guy, one who grew up in Bergen County and attended Rutgers, from which he graduated in 1983.
TigerBlog spent some time Googling to see if there was any connection between Gandolfini and Princeton University. He didn't find any.
He has no memory of a time when Princeton University is mentioned during the series, let alone Princeton Athletics. Meadow, Tony's daughter, attends Columbia, but even through there there is no reference to Princeton that TB remembers.
But hey, maybe Meadow made a road trip down to Central Jersey for a Princeton-Columbia football game, and maybe Tony went as well.
Or maybe the real James Gandolfini, while he was a Rutgers student, came to watch Princeton-Rutgers basketball or some other event.
It's all speculation now anyway, after Gandolfini's death yesterday.
It was actually two deaths, that of an actor and the character his performance made so real that it's almost impossible not to think of Tony Soprano as a real person.
TigerBlog has seen very few TV characters where that was the case. Actually, he can't think of any others off the top of his head.
TigerBlog was shocked to find out James Gandolfini was dead.
Shocked, and very much saddened.
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