The Build Up To The Big One

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TigerBlog is wondering how many people who will be at the football game Saturday on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium between 7-0 Princeton and 7-0 Dartmouth were also at the 1993 game at Franklin Field between 7-0 Princeton and 7-0 Penn.

Whatever that number is, TigerBlog was one of them. That game, as you've probably heard by now, was the last time Princeton reached this point of the season unbeaten with a game against a fellow unbeaten.

The last time that happened in the Ivy League was in 2001, when 8-0 Penn played 8-0 Harvard, also at Franklin Field. TB was not at that game, a 28-21 Harvard win.

He'll get back to football shortly.

First, as TigerBlog has said many times before, among his retirement goals is to someday be known as "that nice old guy who's always out walking his dog." By his beach house, of course.

He envisions a medium-sized dog, by the way. Not some giant dog.

Earlier this week TigerBlog mentioned his colleague Macall Martin and her dogs. They are the biggest dogs there are, at least he thinks they are.

The first time he wrote about them, he called them "Great Danes," but then he wasn't sure he should capitalize the "G" and the "D." Actually, it looked correct, but then he thought maybe that was because he's seen the University at Albany written about so often. The Albany Great Danes.

As it turns out, the dogs are also Great Danes, not great danes. But cockapoos are just cockapoos and poodles are just poodles, not capitalized.

TigerBlog has always been great at grammar, but not as great at spelling and, apparently, capitalization. He also was never really great at remembering what all those other words about words meant.

You know? Like what are two consecutive words used together that have opposite meanings? Like "deafening silence." Those are oxymorons. Onomatopeia refers to words that sound like their meaning, such as "crash." He never can keep those straight.

Then there are homophones. Those are two words that are spelled differently and mean different things but are spelled the same. Like "hear" and "here."

TB will now demonstrate in a sentence: Courtney Banghart, the women's basketball coach, talks about, among other things, how long it took her to go from being a Dartmouth athlete and coach to being all in on Orange and Black in the current episode of "The Court Report" podcast, which you can hear HERE.

TigerBlog's own timeline went from being a Penn student to a Penn fan to someone who covers Princeton somewhat objectively to someone who rooted for Princeton to someone who works at Princeton. He started rooting for Princeton somewhere very shortly after he started covering Princeton, long before he started working here.

It was definitely all completed by that 1993 football game. Actually it was completed a few years before that, possibly the first time TB interviewed Bob Surace, who was then a center for the team and who now is its head coach.

Back at the 1993 Princeton-Penn game, TigerBlog remembers a lot about that day, and the week leading up to it, for that matter. There was a great deal of hype leading up to the game, as much as any game that TB can remember. He certainly did his part, writing about it every day the week before in the Trenton Times.

Back in those days, Princeton had a weekly media luncheon for each week of the football season. TB isn't exactly sure when those stopped exactly, but it was maybe 10 years or so ago. He does know that in all the ones he went to, the one before that Penn game was by far the most crowded. 

As for the game, Terrance Stokes, who went from Trenton High to Penn, set the Quaker single-game rushing record, going for 272 yards on a rainy day in a 30-14 win by the home team. Princeton never really got into a rhythm in that one and seemed to be a step off the whole time. Stokes had the most statistically wild game TB has ever seen, with 136 rushing yards in the first half and 136 more rushing yards in the second half.

Why talk about all this now, other than the fact that it's the last time Princeton had a game like this one? That game has nothing to do with this one. Not one of the players who will play Saturday was even all that close to being born yet in 1993.

Mostly, the game coming up Saturday got TB thinking back to the build up to that 1993 game. It was, as he said, unlike the build up to any other game he's seen with Princeton football.

Much of that can't be repeated, not with what's happened to the newspaper business, for instance. This week there will be videos and social media posts by both schools, a sign of these times as much as the media lunch was a part of those times.

But the emotions are the same.

There's this huge game at the end of the week. Each day it gets a little closer and the energy continues to build for it. 

In that respect, it's 1993.

Maybe TB would remember it differently had Princeton won that one. Maybe not.

Either way, what he remembers most about that game is how exciting it was to have an event like that.

The feeling right now, still a few days out, is the same.