The Football Poll

PRINCETON FOOTBALL 2025 TICKETS 

TigerBlog has a quiz for you today. 

First, though, this weekend marks the first full weekend of the NFL preseason. There are three games Thursday, one of which is Cincinnati at Philadelphia. 

As far as preseason games go, that's not a bad one. Philadelphia is the defending Super Bowl champion, while Cincinnati has a reasonable chance to make that claim a year from now. If nothing else, Cincinnati features former Princeton wide receiver Andrei Iosivas, who enters Year 3 in the NFL with 51 career receptions with 10 career touchdown catches. 

Also speaking of the NFL, Princeton will have a big connection to one of the CBS broadcast teams, as Tom McCarthy and Ross Tucker will be together again on TV. TigerBlog is pretty sure he doesn't have to remind you of their Princeton roots. 

Tracy Wolfson and Amanda Balionis will be CBS sideline reporters (Wolfson is part of the No. 1 team), and both of them got their start covering Princeton games. 

Okay, ready for your quiz? 

TigerBlog will give you a year and a number and you have to tell him what those numbers represent. Here you go:

2006 - six
2013 - five
2016 - five
2018 - two
2021 - one

And the answer is? 

Well, in the last 20 years, Princeton has won five Ivy League football championships. Those years are the ones listed. 

The numbers next to them? That's where Princeton was picked to finish in the league's preseason media poll. 

The league championships Princeton won before that came before the league had official preseason predictions. 

This year's poll was released yesterday, and Princeton was chosen to finish fifth. As you can tell, in three of the last five years that Princeton has won the football title, it was chosen to finish fifth or lower. 

In other words? The poll is fun, and it's always good to be picked high — but it doesn't really matter in the end. 

There was a tie way back when that one of the best days of each year was Ivy League football media day. Each of the eight coaches and the media would gather in Connecticut, either at Lyman Orchards Golf Club or at Yale's golf club. 

Ah, the pressure that came along with that media day. There was no choice but to get the football media guide in time, and oh did you not want to be the only league school that failed in that mission. 

Fortunately, TigerBlog never did, though he cut it close pretty much every year. He'd usually have to detour to the printer to pick up the first few cartons of books.

Once in Connecticut, there were usually Ivy League athletic communications meetings the day before and then the media day. After that was the highlight: a round of golf. 

Or most of a round anyway. The last time TB played at one of the media days, he had his 8-iron slip out of his hands on a follow through off the tee of an elevated par 3 and then watched as it majestically helicoptered into the water trap. That was his club, not the ball, which landed on the green. 

TB just picked it up and never putted. He next played golf 20 or so years later.  

These days, the in-person media day and the media guide are relics, memories of an obsolete time. They might be memories, but they are great memories.  

Media day was also a sure sign that football season might not be right around the corner but that it was certainly on the horizon. In its place now comes the release of the poll, which conjures up some of those same feelings of the coming fall. 

Opening Day for Princeton Football 2025 is Sept. 20, when San Diego comes to Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. The Tigers are at Lafayette the next Saturday, Sept. 27, and then home the following Friday for the Ivy opener against Columbia. 

From there, the sprint through the season will be well underway.