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Well, it's May already, which means of course that it's time to talk Princeton football.

The 2018 season, as you recall,  ended somewhat perfectly. Actually, you don't need the "somewhat" in there.

Princeton went 10-0 in 2018, winning its third Ivy title in six years and second in three years. The Tigers were unbeaten for the first time in 54 years and had the highest-scoring offense in Ivy League history, with 47 points per game and eight games of at least 40 points.

Princeton also proved it could win when the points weren't coming as easily. The biggest game of the year was in Week 8, when the Tigers defeated Dartmouth 14-9 in what essentially was the Ivy League championship game. Dartmouth finished its season 9-1.

So what's next?

Well, for starters, a history lesson.

Princeton and Rutgers played in the first college football game, back on Nov. 6, 1869, in New Brunswick, on the site where the College Ave. Gym now stands. A week later, the teams met in Princeton.

From the Princeton Companion:
The twenty-five players from each college played in their street clothes, and the several hundred spectators stood around on the side or sat on a wooden fence. There were no coaches, no officials, no programs -- the Rutgers Targum, on which we chiefly depend for the record of the game, tells us that Princeton's first goal was made ``by a well directed kick, from a gentleman whose name we don't know, but who did the best kicking on the Princeton side.'' The Targum is equally silent about the identity of the first wrongway player in American football history, a Rutgers man ``who, in his ardor, forgot which way he was kicking,'' and scored for Princeton instead of Rutgers. By agreement, the home team's style of play was used, and Rutgers won, 6 goals to 4; a week later, Princeton won the return match on its grounds, 8 goals to 0. 

The 2019 season will mark the celebration of 150 years of college football, and obviously Princeton will be mentioned often. Perhaps as a way of honoring that first game, TigerBlog should write a similar sentence in a story this year:
"He ran for a touchdown. No idea who it was, but it looked good."

That would go over really well, he's pretty sure.

TB has always wondered what that first game must have looked like. He's seen drawings, but is that how it actually was?

And what if you brought the players from that day back to see what the sport has become in the last 150 years? Or what will it look like 150 years from now?

Meanwhile, back in 2019, Princeton will have five home games this  season, and one game at Yankee Stadium. That game, the Nov. 9 game against Dartmouth, will be during the week of the 150th anniversary.

Princeton will open the season Sept. 21 at home against Butler. After that, it's a trip to Bucknell, a place where TB saw one of the two muddiest football games he's ever seen, a 10-6 Bison win in 1996. The other was in 1990, when Trenton State College defeated Ramapo 9-0, by the way.

Princeton is then home on back-to-back Saturdays against Columbia and Lafayette, and then it's six Ivy games to end the year: at Brown, home against Harvard, at Cornell, the game against Dartmouth in Yankee Stadium, home against Yale and at Penn.

As you remember, the Ivy schedule change last year saw the Tigers at Harvard and Yale. This year, both are home.

This happened in 1886 as well. TB will make one prediction for Princeton's 2019 season - the scores against Harvard and Yale will be different than they were that year, when the Tigers defeated Harvard 12-0 and tied Yale 0-0.

Yeah, 1886 was the only other time this has happened, when Princeton played both at home.

Anyway, why talk Princeton football in the earliest days of May?

Because season tickets went on sale yesterday. TB included the link above for season tickets (which are $44 for faculty, staff and children and $59 for alums and the general public) and the link for Yankee Stadium tickets.

It's already well past the halfway point between the end of last year's 10-0 season and the start of the 2019 season. Opening kickoff will be here shortly.

Princeton football 2019. The 150th anniversary season.

Tickets on sale now.