Alter fills in the gaps in Princeton football lore

By David Alter '73

There is a lot that Stephen Wood did not tell us in his article about Princeton football.

He did mention Snake Ames, Class of 1889, as a prolific scorer. He did not mention that Snake Ames and his teammate and classmate Edgar A. Poe were also teammates on the first ever All-American team which had five Tigers out of the eleven honorees, even though the team was selected by the Yale coach, Walter Camp. Neither did he mention that Snake Ames’ son, Knowlton Ames, Jr., Class of 1917, caught the first ever touchdown pass in Palmer Stadium. Neither did he mention that Snake Ames was one of those sad cases who lost it all in the 1929 market crash and committed suicide.

As some of my friends and classmates well know, my hopes of David Petraeus GS ’85 becoming thereal President (i.e., of Princeton) were dashed when the new guy was picked. I have nothing against the “new guy,” and that is something of a different story, but the mention of Snake Ames always makes me wonder if there is a connection between Ames and Petraeus. The name "Knowlton" is somewhat unusual and I generally (pun acknowledged but not really planned) think of it as a surname. Petraeus’ wife was born Hollister "Holly" Knowlton, so she comes from a family where they do not shy away from using family names as given names. Her father was General William A. Knowlton, who was Superintendent of the United States Military Academy when Petraeus was a cadet there. Interestingly, Holly Petraeus is a graduate of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., where the Washington Redskins held their preseason training camp for many years and not far from the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School where Jim Thorpe played and Pop Warner coached. Another interesting connection is that Dickinson was founded by a Princeton alumnus (and signer of the Declaration of Independence), Dr. Benjamin Rush, Class of 1760, of Philadelphia.

Back to Princeton football, the Team of Destiny was not supposed to be very good. By the way, that name was given to the 1922 Tiger eleven by Grantland Rice who was, perhaps, the greatest sportswriter of the 20th century and who has another curious connection to Princeton football. When Sewanee had what may have been the greatest single season in college football history in ’99 (1899 that is), their coach was Herman "Billy" Suter, a recent Princeton graduate of the Class of 1898 who had played on two national championship teams while at Old Nassau. The ’99 Sewanee team was not only undefeated and untied but they went on the road trip from hell and played five games in six days against Texas, Texas A&M, Tulane, LSU and Mississippi, winning all five games and shutting out all five opponents. Sewanee shut out all but one of its opponents that year. Only Auburn, coached by John Heisman from Brown and Penn for whom the Heisman Trophy was named, managed to score on them. Billy Suter did not stay in coaching very long and went into the publishing business where he became the publisher of The Nashville Tennessean newspaper where he gave Rice, a recent Vanderbilt grad, his first job as a sports reporter.

Mr. Wood did not mention that the 1921 Princeton team had been mediocre at best and that most of the players from that team who were thought to be good had graduated. Nor did he mention that the faculty had ruled the elected captain of the team ineligible before the season started. He did not really explain that Chicago was the reigning national power, coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg, who was the winningest coach in college football history until Bear Bryant came along and who had also been on that first-ever All-America team with Snake Ames and Edgar Allen Poe, and that Chicago had won a shutout game against Princeton in Palmer Stadium the previous year. He did not mention that the Princeton coach, Bill Roper, was only a part-time amateur coach who was a practicing lawyer in Philadelphia and who commuted by train to football practice. Later in his article, Mr. Wood did mention that Fritz Crisler was the Princeton coach in the mid-1930’s, but he did not mention that he played for Stagg at Chicago and that he was a graduate assistant coach under Stagg when the Team of Destiny came to town in 1922. He did not mention that before the season, Coach Roper (the fellow for whom Roper Lane was named) hung a banner with the motto of Johnny Poe (brother of Edgar Allen and the guy for whom Poe Field and the Poe Cup were named), saying “The team that won’t be beaten, can’t be beaten” on the team’s dining room wall. He did not mention that two of the stars of the Team of Destiny were Pinkie Baker of the Class of 1922 and Charlie Caldwell of the Class of 1924. He did not say that Pinkie Baker was perhaps the greatest ever supporter of Princeton freshman football and a staunch opponent of coeducation. He did not mention that Charlie Caldwell came to Princeton from Mercersburg, where his headmaster was William Mann Irvine of the great Princeton Class of 1888 and who had played for Princeton with Ames and Poe against Yale and Stagg.

As I noted, Mr. Wood quite appropriately mentioned the great Fritz Crisler coached Princeton teams of the mid-1930’s, but there is a lot that he left out. For instance, the 1933 national championship team beat Columbia in a 20-0 shutout and beat Yale in New Haven by 27-2 which, at that time, was the biggest ever margin of victory for Princeton over Yale. Princeton was invited to play in the Rose Bowl but declined to go (that pesky faculty again). The Rose Bowl’s second choice was once-beaten Columbia in which quarterback Cliff Montgomery of Natrona Heights, Pa., beat Stanford in Columbia’s greatest football moment. Mr. Wood did not mention that the 1935 Tiger team beat Yale 38-7, won another national championship and, so far, has three players and the coach in the College Football Hall of Fame. Sadly, the 1934 team lost to Yale 7-0 in Palmer Stadium. Yale played only 11 men in that game and, as far as I am aware, that was the last time a college team went through an entire game without making a substitution. The star of that Yale team was Larry Kelley, a graduate of the Peddie School in Hightstown, N.J., who was not able to get into Princeton but who was the second winner of the Heisman Trophy. That 7-0 loss to Yale was the only loss in football suffered by the great Princeton Class of 1936 during their four years at Princeton. Their freshman team was not only undefeated and untied, but also unscored upon.

Mr. Wood said Dick Kazmaier ’52 may have been the greatest athlete in Princeton history. I might not argue too strenuously against that, but you can be sure that Kazmaier would have. I can recall his talking about the real "skill position" in football being the center on a Charlie Caldwell-coached single-wing offense team. Yes, the same Charlie Caldwell who was mentored by William Irvine, Class of 1888, starred for Bill Roper on the Team of Destiny and for whom the Caldwell Field House is named. When Kazmaier was the tailback of the Caldwell single-wing team (certainly a "skill position"), his center was Redmond C. S. Finney of the great Princeton Class of 1951. Finney was for many years the headmaster of the Gilman School (successor to Carey’s School, the alma mater of Edgar Allen and all of the Poe brothers as well as W. Pepper Constable, captain of the 1935 national champion Tiger team) in Baltimore, Md. According to the Gilman web site, Reddy Finney is one of only two guys in NCAA history to be named a first-team All-American in two different sports (football and lacrosse) in the same academic year. The other one was some guy from Syracuse.