RIP, Glove

The Glove, as it was known in the OAC, passed away last week at the age of 180,000 miles.

No, it wasn't TigerBlog's car. It was a Honda Civic that belonged to Craig Sachson, who covers 12 of Princeton's 38 sports, including football. And its nickname was "The Glove," since the first three letters of the license plate were "GLV."

Craig had no time to mourn. After all, life goes on, and there are always new highways that need to be driven.

Literally.

TigerBlog has been in the same situation before. The old car is too far gone to fix, and so there is an immediate need for a new one. TB once had his old car towed to the dealer, which he think might have impacted its trade-in value.

TB doesn't like brand-new cars. They scare him.

TB's current car has 155,000 miles on it. He's fine with that. It's dirty, with its share of scratches on the paint. It's also missing one of the floor mats and has a slight divot in the floor itself.

Brand-new cars? Scary. Although they seem to have a nice smell and all, something that faded from TB's current car long before it was infested with kids and lacrosse equipment.

When you have a brand-new car, you're constantly worried about getting it dented or scratched. Or worse.

It's only normal. After all, it's a big investment, and you're sort of stuck with it for awhile. The last thing you want is to, say, hit a deer with a three-month old car.

There's a certain nervousness that goes along with driving a new car. And with leaving one in a parking lot, for that matter.

And so the next generation of "The Glove" is new on the scene. TB wishes Craig good luck with his car.

It'll be making its first two big road trips in the next two weekends, when Princeton heads to Brown and Harvard for football. This week it'll be parked outside Princeton Stadium as the Tigers host Lafayette in their final non-league game.

Ahead is that two-week stretch that will go a long way to defining the season. Consecutive losses will take the Tigers out of the league race. A split would put them in position to play for the league title; a sweep would be even better.

Before then, it's Lafayette.

Like every other sport, the goal in football is the league championship. Unlike basically every other sport, there are only three non-league games.

The first two are the first two weeks, when the season is new and there are all sorts of kinks to work out. Then there's the league opener, and then the prospect of six more league games.

Week 4 always means the last non-league game. Clearly Princeton would trade a loss on Saturday for a run in the league, but when you only play 10 games, you don't want to waste any of them.

Besides, Princeton is on something of a role here. It'll be interesting to see what happens next.

Princeton enters off back-to-back 50-point outings for the first time since 1907. The last time Princeton did it three straight times?

How about 1890, when Princeton reached 50 four straight times.

In fact, the last time Princeton reached 50 points twice in the same season, let alone back-to-back weeks, was 1951, the same year Dick Kazmaier won the Heisman Trophy.

Oh, and Princeton has scored at least 50 points twice in the last two games. Prior to that, Princeton reached 50 points twice in its previous 304 games.

Princeton is averaging 557.3 yards of offense per game, 280 through the air and 277.3 on the ground.

All those gaudy numbers are nice now, but it's only been three weeks. Three pretty exciting weeks, and TB thanks that had the Tigers played Lehigh without spotting the Mountain Hawks two games of experience and conditioning then the second half might have been different.

So next it's Lafayette and then the two big road games.

Is Princeton going to sustain this level of offense through the season?

And more importantly, will November be a big month for this team?

The game against Lafayette won't answer either question. The six weeks that follow will, especially the two that come up immediately.

Still, when there are only 10 chances to play in a season, you take advantage of all of them.

And with how exciting this team has been through three weeks, each Saturday is well worth a look.