Kicking Off With The Crimson

The Ivy League football standings are pretty interesting right now.

You have one 2-0 team (Harvard). You have one 0-2 team (Columbia). You have six 1-1 teams. 

Also, you have six weeks of the season to go, with nothing but league games left to be played. 

Princeton has had to wait a long week to get back at it, after its tough 28-27 overtime loss to Brown last Saturday in Providence. The Tigers get back at it tomorrow at 1, when they kick off against that lone unbeaten, the Crimson.

If there's been one constant to this season, it's been that the forecast in the beginning of the week has called for rain. All week long, it's said there's a chance of rain, like a 70 percent chance of rain. That's been the case every Saturday.

Ah, but the hourly forecast now suggests that the rain will end well before the 1 pm kickoff, just like it did for the Lafayette game. So get there, plan your tailgate and watch one of college football's oldest rivalries. 

You'll note that TigerBlog said one of the oldest (the first meeting between the schools was in 1877). It's not one of the most played. 

Princeton and Harvard, in fact, meet for the 115th time, which is a mere 30 fewer times than Princeton has played Yale. Why is that? It's because tensions between Princeton and Harvard flared mightily in the 1800s, and the schools dropped each other after a near-riot in 1896.  

The series resumed in 1911, just in time for Harvard to have to line up against Hobey Baker. The teams didn't play again between 1927 and 1933; during all of that time, Princeton ended its season almost every year against Yale. In fact, one condition of restarting the series with Harvard was that Yale could continue to play its final game of the season against Harvard and, well, you know what happened there. 

By the way, here's a little trivia question for you: The three most-played rivalries in college football are Lafayette-Lehigh, Princeton-Yale and Harvard-Yale. What is fourth and fifth on that list (hint, No. 4 is an FCS rivalry and No. 5 is the most-played FBS rivalry). 

TigerBlog will give you a few paragraphs.

In the meantime, he'll talk about AJ Barber. The Princeton junior wide receiver has put up these numbers so far this year:

Weeks 1-3: eight catches, 84 yards
Week 4 vs. Lafayette: seven catches, 156 yards
Week 5 vs. Brown: eight catches, 142 yards, one touchdown

In fact, for his career prior to the Lafayette game, Barber had 329 receiving yards and one TD. Now he has 298 more yards with another TD in two games.

Barber ranks fourth in the Ivy League in receiving yards per game and eighth in total receptions. He's up to 26th in receiving yards per game in the FCS, and that's after averaging 28 yards per game the first three weeks. That's called heating up.

Oh, and as for the trivia answer, No. 4 is William & Mary-Richmond, who play for the Capital Cup, and No. 5 is Wisconsin-Minnesota, who play for Paul Bunyan's Ax.

Meanwhile, back at the Princeton-Harvard game, the Crimson have the No. 1 scoring offense in the Ivy League and the No. 1 rushing offense in the Ivy League. In the FCS, those numbers are sixth and third.

Princeton, on the other hand, ranks second in the Ivy League in scoring defense and first in rushing defense. Nationally, they are third and second in those two categories. 

Harvard averages 41 points per game. Princeton allows 15 per game. Those are wildly dissimilar numbers.

Princeton has won the last five in the series. The last time Princeton went that long without losing to Harvard was 1977-81, when the Tigers were 3-0-2. The last time Princeton won at least five straight against Harvard? That was 1947-53.

Those rather symmetrical Ivy standings will have a shakeup this weekend. In addition the Princeton-Harvard game, you also have Columbia at Dartmouth, Penn at Yale and Brown at Cornell. 

No matter what, things will look a bit different come tomorrow night. 

Of course, for Princeton, any football game against Harvard is special.