The Princeton football team has a winning percentage of .250. Last week, Colgate annihilated the Tigers, 34-6. The coaches' best options for this weekend's game are a hobbled second-string quarterback and a freshman third-string quarterback.
Things are going just fine.
Oddly enough, despite having a terribly trying start to the season, Princeton's hopes are not dashed. In fact, the Tigers are in a good position to make a run at their season's chief goal. The Tigers may have lost by 28 points last weekend, but at least they are still undefeated in the Ivy League.
Princeton scored its one victory against Columbia two weeks ago, leaving it with a 1-0 conference record.
"If there's a good way to be 1-3, we're the best way right now, because we won a league game," head coach Roger Hughes said. "I told the kids last night, 'Hey, it's a six game season. We just have to play well every week.' "
The Tigers' final six games represent a jump in importance and an obligatory leap in intensity over their first four. Like most of the Ivy teams, Princeton has no more games against non-league foes. This is the point at which the teams are supposed to have their kinks worked out to prepare for the key segment of the year, so an assessment of the state of the league is in order.
The truth is that no team has played well enough to be called the league's clear favorite. Princeton's position is remarkably common in the league. The average Ivy league team has played very well at times, but has come up short at others.
Big Red Machine
The team with the best claim to the favorite's spot is Cornell, which is the only Ivy team with two league wins. Both wins came by only one point, however, including an improbable comeback from a 28-point deficit last week to beat Harvard, 29-28. The unconvincing wins are complimented by big losses in the Big Red's two non-conference games.
Aside from Cornell and Princeton, the only other undefeated team in the Ivy League is Penn. The Quakers stomped Dartmouth, 48-14, in their only Ivy League game. Just like the Big Red, however, Penn failed to solidify its case in non-league games, dropping two games to bring its record to 2-2.
There is perhaps only one team that has made a clear statement in the Ivies thus far — Dartmouth, although the Big Green would rather not hold their claim to fame. Dartmouth (0-4) is the only Ivy team.with a winless overall record. Yale (3-1), Brown (3-1), Harvard (2-2) and Columbia (2-2) have all played well enough to contend, but not well enough to be a favorite, leaving a mess of contenders for the Ivy crown.
Parity
"On any given Saturday, any Ivy League team can beat any other Ivy League team, given the level of talent and the level of competition," senior offensive lineman John Raveche said.
To attempt to clear this traffic jam, if need be, one can incorporate the legendary transitive property of college athletics, which reads like this: If Team A loses to Team C by x, and Team B loses to C by x plus 10, then A is better than B. This analysis might give Princeton hope, because the Tigers lost to Lehigh by only two points. The Mountain Hawks stomped league-leader Cornell, 35-16.
Comparing scores in this fashion can be a dangerous practice, however. Given enough research, a very bored man could probably prove that Lincoln Tech should be a serious threat to Virginia Tech in the Division I polls.
In other words, Princeton cannot make assumptions about its Ivy League games based on the non-league schedule. All the Tigers can be certain of is that they are undefeated so far.
So despite the early bumps in the football team's Patriot slate, it's the Ivy League that matters most. And on that count, Princeton's not out.
"I think we had one of the toughest out-of-league schedules of anyone, playing Lehigh and Colgate," Hughes said. "Hopefully that's going to translate to the fact that we're a better team."
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