On Sale Now

Have you ever checked out the "today in history" page on Wikipedia?

On the top of the page is a yearly account of the biggest moments of that day throughout time, followed by people who were born on that particular day, people who died on that particular day and lastly holidays around the world that are celebrated on that day..

As an aside, TigerBlog is a big fan of how people are summed up in a very short description, complete with nationality, as in "so-and-so, American poet" or "so-and-so, English football player" or "so-and-so, fascist dictator."

Today is, what, Aug. 2, right?

If you go to today's page, you'll see that two big things happened in 338 BC and 216 BC and then only one important thing happened on Earth for the next 1,826 years. Since then, big stuff has happened more frequently, though apparently not in the last 20 years.

Then there are the famous birthdays.

If you look, you'll see that Myrna Loy, one of TB's favorite old-time actresses, would have been 105 today. Back on Aug. 2, 1924, Carroll O'Connor was born; he would go on to a long career in movies before playing the single most famous and important American television character of all-time, Archie Bunker, from "All in the Family," which also happens to be the most influential American television show of all time.

Among those still with us, actor Peter O'Toole celebrates his 78th birthday today. Lance Ito, who presided over the O.J. Simpson trial, is 60. Tim Wakefield and his knuckleball are 44. On and on the list goes.

Maybe you're looking for the perfect birthday gift for, say, Edward Furlong or Aaron Krickstein or Kerry Rhoades or Mary Louis Parker.

Or maybe you know someone whose birthday is today and who didn't make the Wikipedia list (of course, this being Wikipedia you can add them to the list).

Looking for something fun and really affordable?

How about Princeton football tickets.

Princeton plays six home games this year: Sept. 25 vs. Lafayette, Oct. 9 vs. Brown, Oct. 16 vs. Harvard, Nov. 6 vs. Penn, Nov. 20 vs. Dartmouth; season tickets cost $30, or $5 per game. Single game tickets are $8.

Think about that. Six games, for a total of $30. Not $30 per game, but $30 total.

Rutgers, who like Princeton played in the first college football game in 1869, sits 20 minutes north of here. Rutgers has seven home games this year (six on campus, one against Army at the New Meadowlands Stadium). How much do season tickets for the Scarlet Knights cost? How about $360 to sit along the sidelines and $290 to sit in the end zones. Single game tickets are $50 each.

Want to go to a game at the New Meadowlands Stadium? It's $25 - to park. That's before you bought one ticket, let along a hot dog.

Hey, what about the movies? Want to go to the MarketFair to see, say, the 7:30 showing of Inception? That'll be $10.50 please. For one ticket. Without popcorn.

Back during the last years of Palmer Stadium, ticket prices for Princeton home games were somewhere around $12-$15 each or so, which still isn't outrageous.

When the new stadium opened in 1998, the decision was made to have tickets cost $5 in an effort to get as many people as possible to be able to come to games. In fact, the first advertisement for the new stadium showed a tiger in Princeton Stadium, with the slogan "we want your tail in our seats."

As the years went on, the decision was made to keep ticket prices in the same basic area. Single-game tickets went up a bit in an effort to drive season ticket sales (though an argument can be made that by pricing tickets so low, the incentive to buy them in advance was destroyed), but all ticket prices have remained very, very low, by point of any comparison.

The idea is to get families to be want to come to games here, rather than going to the movies or other forms of entertainment. Another ad campaign featured this slogan: "Football. Family. Fun. For Five."

In fact, it's TB's belief that most people around here don't know how inexpensive Princeton football tickets are, because they assume college football tickets must be way over-priced, as that's the way the rest of the world does it.

Of course, TB also thinks that many of these same people don't realize that admission is free to all other fall home regular-season events (soccer, field hockey, women's volleyball, men's water polo, sprint football, cross country) - as well as 33 of the 38 sports here.

If former OAC member John Cornell had his way, it'd be that way for football as well, since he always advocated $20 per car to park but free admission to the games.

Still, charging $8 for single-game tickets and $30 for a six-game season ticket is a great idea.

See you at Princeton Stadium. Tickets - really, really inexpensive ones - are on sale now.