Touchdown Honda

When TigerBlog was a kid, there weren't too many ways to see highlights from Sunday NFL football. 

The best way, of course, was Howard Cosell's highlights at halftime of Monday Night Football — if you could stay up that late. There was also "This Week In Pro Football" on Saturdays, with Pat Summerall, Tom Brookshier and the greatest soundtrack ever. 

Here, check this out, from Week 1 of the 1973 NFL season:

Ah, TigerBlog gets teary from watching (and listening) to them. 

These days, of course, there are highlights everywhere, posted immediately on social media. Who needs to read the postgame story when you've already seen all of the highlights? 

Anyway, TigerBlog just wanted to share that with you before he vaults back into the 2026 football season. 

Before he gets to Princeton's 28-13 win at Wagner Saturday, he does have a few other things.

First, there was the death at the end of last week of Mike Ditka, a legendary tight end and even more legendary coach of Da Bears. He became a cultural phenomenon in a way few other football players ever have. He was also the head coach of the single most dominant team TB has ever seen, the 1985 Bears. Of course, there are those who would say that the real brains behind the team was defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, and the tension between the two of them was fairly well known.

Then there was the end of the game between Washington and the Giants yesterday, which ended in a 27-27 tie. It should have ended in a 30-27 Washington win, except the Commanders shockingly 1) ran a play when they were within range of a 40-yard field goal, 2) had no timeouts remaining and 3) went down in the middle of the field to allow time to expire. 

TB's favorite part of the game was this:

 

That's the coin toss before the overtime, and it's what it looks like when you send out a (Tremaine Edwards) and they send out their punter. By the way, Washington punter Tress Way is, if you can believe it, 6-1, 220, to give you a sense of how big Edwards is. 

Also, there was the whole "Trojan Horse" thing from Oregon, before its game against UCLA. Did they not realize that they played USC last week? Either way, UCLA won the game to improve to 5-0, making TB's friend and colleague and UCLA alum Andrew Borders quite happy. 

Meanwhile, there are the Tigers. Princeton's win on Staten Island Saturday made the team 3-1 on the season, with a 1-0 Ivy record with six league games to go. 

The win Saturday was the 87th as Princeton head coach for Bob Surace. The school record? It's 89 from Bill Roper, and it's stood since 1930. 

Then there is the touchdown machine that is Kai Honda. A week after rushing for 219 yards and four touchdowns in the win over Columbia, Honda had another big day, going for 103 yards and two more touchdowns. 

Through four games, he's putting up extraordinary numbers. First of all, he has 56 carries and eight touchdowns. That's one TD every seven carries. Not surprisingly, he leads the Ivy League in rushing touchdowns, and he's also leading the league and fifth in the FCS with 7.29 yards per carry. If you're wondering, the single-season record for rushing yards per carry is 6.4, by the great Keith Elias in 1992. 

Also of his 56 carries, only two have gone for loss. That's also a pretty good stat. 

Honda is on a pace for 20 rushing touchdowns, something only two players at Princeton have accomplished. One is John Lovett, who had 20 in 2018. The other is Philip King, who had 29 back in 1889.

Princeton once again ran it more times than it threw it (40-30), with Wyatt Becker and Ty Ciongoli a combined 15 for 30 for 198 yards and a touchdown (Becker to Josh Smith). Brady Clark punted three times for a 41.3 yard average, with all three punts inside the 20. 

The first of those six straight Ivy games comes up Saturday at noon, when Brown will be at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.