If you want a bonfire, show up at games

Hughes will tell you the Ivy League is filled with parity: anyone can beat anyone on any given day. Take the past two years as examples. In 2006, Princeton spoiled Yale’s perfect Ivy season at the Yale Bowl, and last year a 7-2 Harvard squad shocked everyone by going on the road and destoying the much-vaunted Bulldogs, 37-6.

Some might say that all those examples demonstrate is that Yale chokes. Hard. And that might be true, but I think there’s a greater factor at work.

With a few exceptions, the juniors and seniors on the football team will tell you that their favorite football memory is beating Yale in 2006, taking the Ivy crown and getting the first bonfire in 14 years. But what they remember most clearly is being down two touchdowns at the half, coming back to win by three and most of all when the nearly 500 Princeton students who took the USG-provided transportation to New Haven rushed the field to celebrate the victory with the players.

I’m not saying that everyone needs to be at every game, nor do you need to be able to recite senior quarterback Brian Anderson’s completion percentage from his lone start last fall (70 percent, by the way), but if you want that grand bonfire celebration, it is critical that you support the team. Put another way, ask not what your football team can do for you, but what you can do for your football team.

But it isn’t just about the bonfire, the Ivy titles or being a part of the great tradition of Princeton football. Come to the games for yourself as well. Even if you aren’t a football fan, don’t have the first clue what a “down” is or just don’t get why they wear those tight pants, the excitement of games is contagious.

Two years in row, the Tigers have earned Top Play honors on ESPN. Those who were there remember the surge of energy in the crowd when fullback Rob Toresco ’08 pulled off his backyard-esque pitch to quarterback Jeff Terrell ’07 for the winning touchdown against Penn in 2006 and junior tailback Jordan Culbreath’s breakout touchdown run against Cornell last season.

Very little can bring a university community together like a winning sports team, and even less can inspire a team to over-perform like the support of the student body that team represents.

That’s why I can’t answer the question from page one. It really depends on you.

So if you want a bonfire, I suggest you head down to Princeton Stadium a couple weekends this fall and go to the games.

Be supportive of your peers, and remember to wish the football players you know luck in Saturday’s contest against The Citadel.

Go to the Tigers’ home opener next weekend against Lehigh before halftime because, really the tailgates aren’t that impressive.

Show up to the Harvard game — it’s the first Saturday of Fall Break — in your best orange and black and fill the student section from the opening kickoff until the final snap. After all, midterms are over. It isn’t like you have homework to do.

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Blackout Penn at the nationally televised matchup on Friday, Nov. 7. Ask the USG to bus you to the Yale Bowl, and honor the Class of 2009’s four-year effort at senior day against Dartmouth.

So before you ask me if “we” are going to get a bonfire, ask if you’re really a part of that “we.” Because if the nearly 5,000 Princeton undergraduates truly form that “we,” then I’m willing to bet we’ll see another blaze on Cannon Green before the year is out.