After a hot start and tough stretch, the football team seems to be where you might have expected before the season started. Princeton has beaten the teams it was supposed to—Lafayette, Columbia, and Brown—and lost to more talented squads such as Lehigh and Penn.
The Tigers are a middle-class sort of team, not dwelling in the slums with the winless Bears or the hapless Lions, but not sipping Dom Perignon at the yacht club with the nationally-ranked Mountain Hawks or the Quakers.
And Princeton (3-2 in the Ivy League) plays Yale, also 3-2 in the Ancient Eight, and Dartmouth (2-3) in the final two weeks of the season. The Elis and the Big Green, along with the Tigers, drive minivans and join bowling leagues. Interestingly, Yale and Dartmouth are the only Ivy teams to own all-time winning records over Princeton.
The Tigers have a chance to distinguish themselves as upper-middle class. Sure, they can't reach the level of the best, but they might be able to get into one of those horrific gated communities that dot the nation these days. Princeton will be alone in third place with a win, and if it finishes the season in that position, that will be the Tigers best Ivy League showing since 1995.
But if things go wrong over the final two weeks, and Princeton ends this season on a three-game slide, you can be sure that some major changes will take place in the football program.
Saturday the Tigers take on Yale in the 125th edition of the Ivy League's second best gridiron rivalry. Both teams cannot win the conference title—it will be decided between Harvard and Penn, who play at Franklin Field this weekend—but there is still much at stake in New Haven.
Head coach Roger Hughes has learned the secret to keeping alumni off his back, and that's beating Yale. The Tigers have beaten the Elis the last two seasons, squeaking by at the Yale Bowl in 2000 and routing them at Princeton Stadium last year. Those two wins have made back-to-back three-win campaigns not nearly as painful as they could have been.
A win this year would give Princeton a winning season overall and in the Ivy League for the first time under Hughes.
There is also the matter of internet security, always an issue in heated college football rivalries. Unlike many of my fellow Princetonians, I think that Old Nassau's admissions staff is mostly to blame for this summer's scandal, which reached the front page of The (Eli-dominated) New York Times. But it's difficult for me to understand why Yale found it necessary to leak news of the inappropriate actions of Princeton's staff to the college daily.
Might it be part of that Yale inferiority complex? You know, the one fed by continually losing to Princeton in men's basketball, college rankings, financial aid packages?
Just something to think about.
The Tigers and Elis should be closely matched on the football field. The Ivy League's top running backs, Yale's Robert Carr and Tiger senior Cameron Atkinson, enter the game far ahead of the tailbacks in rest of the conference.
Carr has 191 carries—55 more than Atkinson, who is second in the Ivies—and 915 yards plus nine touchdowns. He is threatening to break the Yale sophomore rushing record, currently held by Dick Jauron, who is coach of the NFL's Chicago Bears. Atkinson has fewer yards—727—but averages 5.3 yards per carry, half a yard more than Carr.
Both teams needed to dig deep to beat Brown. Sophomore cornerback Jay McCareins intercepted two late passes to lead Princeton to victory, while the Elis trailed the Bears 13-0 in the first quarter and 20-14 going into the fourth quarter.
Penn, undefeated in the Ivies, scored over 40 points on the road in routing both the Elis and Tigers.
Junior quarterback David Splithoff, injured in Princeton's loss to Harvard, may return for the Tigers this week. If so, he should give the team a spark. Replacment Matt Verbit, a hard-throwing sophomore, has done an adequate job. Verbit, however, is more of a pocket quarterback, and the Tigers could use Splithoff's mobility for the final weeks of the year.
With or without Splithoff, I'll stick by my pre-Ivy season prediction. Keyed by a big day from Atkinson and tough run defense, Princeton will win this game by a touchdown and clinch its first winning season since 1997.
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