Football program calls it quits

This article is a part of The Daily Princetonian's annual joke issue. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

After 138 years of storied history, the football team has decided to retire, it announced today.

Citing a desire to go out at the top of its game, the venerable program — home to 28 national champions, a Heisman winner and the 2006 Ivy champs — seemed worn out but refreshed at a the prospect of a new life in retirement as it made the decision.

Current players cited joy at the release from the daily annoyance of lift and practice, while alums seemed to be eagerly anticipating what new forms their association with Princeton football would take.

"This really is going to be a nice slow saunter into the sunset. It's been decades since we've had any kind of national prominence, and it doesn't look like we'll be regaining any, either," the press release said. "We feel we've grown beyond just being about this one little game, and we're excited to pursue other opportunities that play more to our strengths."

It is believed that the goal of the Department of the Athletics is to keep inviting alumni to campus on every other Saturday in the fall — with extended home stands when the foliage is "near peak," as the release says — for the same festivities that would normally accompany the current games. Though there won't be an actual team or even a game played, analysts aren't expecting attendance to drop at these events, as surveys have consistently listed "hobnobbing," and "inflated feelings of self-worth" as the primary lures of Princeton football games, followed closely by "decent conversation starter at reunions" and "opportunity to drink without spouse getting mad."

With this change, like that of its grade deflation policy, Princeton is looking to jump ahead of moves made by its peers and set a new standard among Ivy-group universities. In recent years, Harvard and Yale have taken steps to curtail drinking at their annual football matchup, effectively eliminating the unseemly presence of undergraduates at the prestigious New England social event.

Though some outcry was expected to come from the players themselves over the disbanding of their team, they seem unanimous in supporting the decision. Happy to go out on such a positive note when they weren't ever going to make it in the NFL anyway, they seemed eager to be able to actually spend time in the stands on Saturdays learning about the Wall Street jobs that had been lined up for them upon graduation.

"I still get to say I was a football player and we won Ivies, but now I don't have to deal with practice and crap," sophomore wide receiver Blake Sturkin said. "I guess maybe it sucks for the recruits, but whatever."

Head coach Roger Hughes has said he plans to take some time off from football, wanting to help consult Princeton's remaining coaches on increasing their focus on what he considers the proper weighting between scholastics and athletics in the lives of the scholar-athletes they lead.