Complicated Relationships

Many relationships get complicated in retrospect; in the here and now it’s transactional or immediately gratifying; when we gain the perspective of time we can find early reflections of a future not yet passed or a series of uncomfortable contexts that we simply powered through.  

This is my relationship to Princeton University: I have gained a diverse and robust family of friends.  Despite nearly constant construction and renovation, there are spots on the campus that wormhole me back 40 years. A fall day contemplating gargoyles, gothic architecture, and paths you literally shared with Einstein and Nash and von Neumann thrills nerds of every dimension.   I’m all in on traditions and goofy arcana such as looking from the south of Nassau Hall towards Moore’s Oval with Points to see Nixon’s head in profile (try it).

It is also an elite university that has alumni who can fund such a valuable outdoor sculpture collection. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, especially  “The Great Gatsby” convey inherent classism and subtle discrimination (read Geoffrey Wolff’s “The Final Club“ for a more direct parallel story of “inherited good luck”) are layers I didn’t see or know – unwritten social behaviors and campus traditions that some previous orange and black generations (not mine) conveyed in private.  Princeton existed at my time with an implied ordering, much more complex than the differential equations I studied, with me walking around oblivious to this long-lived but subtle context.  Decades later, after realizing that so much of my social awkwardness was caused by these long-lived traditions did I identify the root causes.  Princeton as an institution has improved its inclusivity and access in the ensuing four decades, but my relationship to my time there remains, well, complicated.

I love Princeton despite these things, but must acknowledge them.  With the recent passing of hallowed basketball coach Pete Carril, I have to detangle another Gordian knot of complex relationships. They start in the center of a Venn diagram, representing our participation in sports, our alma mater’s public athletics teams, tradition, and my enjoyment of each in the space of my first semester.

Near the end of Freshman Week in 1980, we are exhorted to join the class for an “Honor Code Meeting.”  I have no idea what this encodes; it seems like a poor substitute for another beer-fueled party.  Unwritten was that it was our class’s evening with Fred Fox, “Keeper Of Princetoniana,” to learn traditions and song and be together as a class, for the first time and yet the last time before graduation.  Fox allowed us to celebrate our place, and his kept place, and simply arriving there – a raucous hour for not having achieved anything other than being in space and time (itself, therefore a bit of elitism).  We were the last class to be taught Old Nassau and the Cannon Song by “FF” as he passed away in our freshman year.  My introduction to tradition was hesitant, mildly incomplete and continues meandering into its fifth decade.

A second freshman tradition was the physical education requirement, one that could be fulfilled through any number of activities – racquetball as played on a squash court drew on my sole athletic ability at the time. Varsity team coaches were assigned to convey skills or at least take attendance – which is how I came to run into Pete Carril in the gym, seated near the steps leading down to the courts.  He had the quintessential Carril look – perpetually rumpled, as if roused from bed to sit in a folding chair, a crumpled newspaper in a firm grip (during games, that was a program), and an attitude that shook the foundation of Dillon Gym.   His sole words to the half dozen of us brave enough to endure his gaze: “Whether you’re here or you’re not here, you’re here, I’m not [expletive] taking attendance, so don’t bother me.”

Personally, I wasn’t sure if he was serious but over the next four years, and a decade post graduation, I learned Carril was always, always serious even if his turn of phrase turned humorous. One semester later, the Ivy Champion Tigers danced to the NCAA tournament where they were soundly defeated by Brigham Young and Danny Ainge, a name I would hear during my years in Boston with the reverence given to the “central ahh-tery” of the hub city. Watching that game on a small TV, perched on a roommate’s bunk, started my fervent following of March Madness.

Carril took the implicit traditions of college basketball – recruit height, get TV money and build a nationally known program – and turned them upside down.  Movement away from the ball, misdirection, passing and weaving and a ball tempo with the angular momentum of a second hand that raced past the minute hand shot pacing. He crafted the “Princeton Offense” that is a staple of NBA offenses today.  

I missed very few home basketball games as an undergraduate.  I follow Princeton basketball with an internet-enabled passion that has had me literally bouncing out of the husband chairs at Nordstrom, cheering for a last second tip-in to beat Harvard and make everything right in the world for one more season.  Carril’s methods, strategies and even grumpy demeanor are frequent reference points in my professional talks. His approach and edited-for-TV commentary are captured in “The Smart Take From The Strong,” the only sports book former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz claims to have read, after I gave him a copy as a parable of Sun’s position in the industry.

My longer-term Carril moment, much more so than the non-attendance check in Dillon Gym, occurs on my own couch in March of 1996.  I’m half a generation removed from my undergraduate days, with a small house, small children, and smaller windows of time in which to watch college basketball.  When Princeton faces defending champion UCLA in the open round of March Madness, with a tip off of 11:30 PM, I have no choice but to put on my last ratty good luck shirt and invoke traditions. After an hour of biting my tongue, miming plays echoing multiple miserable years of rec basketball, and jumping up and down as quietly as an aging nerd can, my wife checks on me around one in the morning convinced I’m having a health issue.

“Are you OK”?

“I’m great, Princeton is only down by a point against UCLA.”

Together we watch the ballet through to its final act, as Gabe Lewullis cuts to the basket, picks up a pass and puts in the winning shot as time expires. The simplest drill, the simplest finish to a complex play that started ten seconds and 40 minutes and an undergraduate education and an entire career earlier.

Carrill had announced his retirement before the game; that would be the last winning shot of his college coaching career.  Much has been written about that game, and the 1989 Georgetown game that “almost was,” and about Carril’s style, but that evening in 1996, before the internet and streaming sports and real time updates, forged a permanent allegiance between me, Princeton basketball, and Carril’s legacy as coach.  

Judging from the number of players, fans and University personnel who attended his memorial, I’m not the only one.

But yet I have had a complicated relationship with Carril as well – how can I lionize a man who told me to get lost?  Who had less than a single play’s duration of interest in my physical education because he had a (crumpled) newspaper to read?  Who was, at times, exasperated, verbally difficult, and definitely known to implore the referees from the sidelines?  Someone who referred to Gabe Lewullis as “phlegmatic” and forced him to ride the bench most of that last season before the shot that made Cinderellas believe?

I’m sure his first act in heaven was to throw his crumpled program because his arrival was a call that didn’t go his way.  Hat tip to Rich Gorelick, who broadcast so many of those games on WPRB-FM, for the imagery.  Whether he’s there, or not there, for those fans who celebrated his successes, he’s there so we honor his memory despite how things may have been phrased.

I deal with complex relationships by extracting the things I find inspirational: Motivation, however direct, for his teams that produced outsized results.  Reshaping a seemingly known approach to sport in the face of traditional constraints.  Celebrating the leafy, broad family tree of basketball players who represent his legacy on benches of their own. An appreciation for the more shadowed branches of that tree – those who learned, directly and indirectly, and who continue to coach in smaller leagues and divisions, and who impart his wisdom and methods to a new generation of players.   Such, too, is the growing tradition-infused family tree of Fred Fox ‘39, as we share personal histories and give egregiously informal campus tours to the next generations, passing on his love of the Best Old Place Of All.

I still don’t know all of the words to Princeton’s fight song but yet sing its chorus fragments to celebrate any minor victory from finding a good parking place to a well executed sports play, whether in the privacy of my home or watching the game in a crowd.

I generously place myself back in those intersecting circles, richer for the experiences to share.