Football season is in the air — the armchair quarterbacks return

A little more than a month ago, I noticed a change in, well, the atmosphere around me. Sure, the weather was either unbearably hot or unbearably wet here on the East Coast, but it was not a meteorological change. I was living at the time in the mountains of New Jersey (yes, New Jersey does in fact have mountains, and they are NOT mountains of trash), and the air quality was still quite good.

This change was the same one that I have felt for well over 10 years now. It was the fact that the month of August not only signifies the dog days of summer, but it most importantly signifies the beginning of the football season.

Having been involved with one of the greatest sports known to man in one capacity or another over the last decade or so, the start of football season is unmistakable. July turns to August, and suddenly the newspapers are talking about the professional, collegiate and high school camps. Little kids in youth football programs around the country put on their oversized pads for the first time. And the excitement begins to mount.

In the last two weeks, that excitement peaked. Two weekends ago, the NCAA launched the 2003-04 season, and a week ago from yesterday, the National Football League kicked off its season.

That evening, the New Jersey Jets, sans quarterback Chad Pennington, whose mangled hand hung limply at his side as he called in plays to the veteran Vinnie Testaverde, fell to the Washington Redskins.

Armchair quarterbacks like myself finally had a profession again.

And that, my friends, is the true reason we're here. Having now gotten my little tribute to football out of the way, it's time to get down to business. This is the weekly football column, home of armchair quarterback. Each week, I'll be weighing in on the glorious sport of football here at Princeton, around the college football world and in the professional realm (although some would argue that those are all pretty much the same thing, but that's for another column).

So, let's talk football.

This is now the fourth year of the Hughes Era (hereafter referred to as H.E.) at Princeton, and frankly I was looking forward to it. After booting Steve Tosches, the University community expected to see improvement. And by and large, Roger Hughes has taken the football program and continuously built on every success. That is certainly a compliment to his coaching ability.

In his first year, the Tigers were a mediocre team, pulling in only three wins. Of course, that was already on par with Tosches' last year, and with quarterbacks dropping like flies, it's a wonder the team did as well as it did. In the year 2 H.E., the team struggled with injuries, but with the season ending on a two-game win streak for Princeton, the team had managed to work out one kink — putting successes back to back.

3 H.E. was probably the most promising year yet, with the team winning six games while almost felling Patriot League powerhouse and nationally-ranked Lehigh in Behtlehem, Pa. And with talent assured in areas where seniors were graduating, hope remained for year 4 H.E., until grades started coming out.

Losing several key players to academic ineligibility has certainly hurt the team (and especially the defense). But I look at it differently. I see this as coach Hughes' first real challenge as the head coach of the Princeton program. Certainly he has faced hardship before, but those are the difficulties all college coaches face with teams. But now he faces the problem of coaching at one of the top academic institutions in America — what happens when players don't make the cut?

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So infrequently does one hear of a key player leaving a Division I-A football team on ESPN, but last semester and into the summer, it unfortunately seemed like a regular occurrence. Grades aren't padded here for those who participate in time-consuming extracurriculars, and athletes can't improve their GPAs by taking courses like "The Basics of Turf Management" or "Bowling Basics." No, a student has to put in long hours of hard work in order to make the grade, as every single one of us knows.

So now, Roger Hughes must make due without some of his top players. And fans of Princeton athletics everywhere, who haven't seen a bonfire in too many years to count, wonder "Where does he go from here?"