Game Week Already?

It's game week for the Princeton football team and its seven Ivy League rivals. Princeton, as a reminder, plays at the Citadel Saturday at 1 in the first meeting ever between the schools.

The football season, of course, is already nearly a month old, and teams from the NFL through all levels of college to high school and down through youth leagues have all played multiple games to date.

While one's instinct might be to be critical of the Ivy League way of waiting so long for the opening of the season, the good far outweighs the bad. Yes, it is a long wait from the first football games that are on TV in August until the Ivy kickoff in late September. Yes, Princeton has only one home game before Oct. 18, by which time a team like Ohio State will have played five home games.

Still, the rhythm of an Ivy League season is great. Ten weeks. Ten games. No bye weeks. No loss of momentum.

There's also almost a guarantee that when Nov. 1 rolls around, the league title will still be up for grabs among half the teams in the league. Even for the teams out of it by then, each week is its own mini-season, a chance to prepare and compete in rivalries that date back more than a century in almost every case.

As for this weekend's Princeton game, it can be heard on WPRB FM 103.3 and on goprincetontigers.com. Audio on the Website is free, as always. Ed Benkin is back as the play-by-play man for the Tigers, and Dan Loney will be the color commentator this year.