Friday, July 26, 2019

Five Weeks To Go

So yesterday TigerBlog wrote about the 1930 Princeton-Yale football game after he found a ticket to the game at Palmer Stadium on his desk.

While there's still no update as to who put it there, there appears to be an update on one of TB's other questions about the game. What was the attendance?

The answer came from loyal reader Steven Feldman, Class of 1968:
According to the November 17, 1930 Daily Princetonian article about the game, 60,000 people attended the game. The capacity of Palmer Stadium was close to 50,000 so I am not sure how 60,000 people attended or how the newspaper decided on the 60,000 figure, but the game must have been a complete sellout. 

And there's the answer.

There were 60,000 people at Palmer Stadium that day to see a 1-4-1 Princeton team play a 4-1-2 Yale team. The Bulldogs followed up that game a week later by losing to Harvard 13-0; earlier that year Yale lost 18-14 to Georgia. 

The game against Georgia was played at the Yale Bowl. In fact, the only game Yale played that year that wasn't at home was the one at Princeton. 

TB's last question about the game, by the way, was what the weather was.

His colleague Greg Paczkowski once emailed him a link to a site where you can look up the weather from any day you'd like, but he can't find it. When he went back to all his old emails from Greg, he did find something weather related that was fairly fascinating as well.

It was a picture of snow removal from Sherrerd Field from March 2018.

That's a pretty setting, no? 

It was a Wednesday night. Three days later, Princeton played Rutgers on that same field in a men's lacrosse game. 

This is what the field looked like for the game:

That was a pretty good job by the grounds crew and facilities staff. Princeton won 15-14 in overtime, as an aside. 

The player pictured is rising junior longstick midfielder Andrew Song. TB put the video of Song's first career goal, in 2018 at Virginia, on Instagram yesterday. Song will bring five goals into his junior year. You can add "career goals by a longstick" to the list of things that TB wished he could easily look up, but he doesn't have anyway to do it.

The forecast this weekend isn't quite like last weekend's, when it was right around 100 degrees in the Princeton area, but it also does not have snow in it. 

This is the final weekend of July, which means a few things on the Princeton Athletics calendar.

First, the only month of the year with no Princeton sporting events is almost over. There are events in all 11 others, even if there's just one in August and very few in June.

Second, speaking of August, it rolls around in six days. That means that the first athletic event of the 2019-20 academic year will be five weeks from today, a women's soccer game at St. Joe's.

While on the subject of the calendar, the Princeton academic calendar changes after this year, with first semester exams to move before the Christmas break. This undoubtedly will have an impact on the athletic scheduling as well.

TigerBlog saw something that indicated that the Opening Ceremonies for the 2020 Summer Olympics will be held one year from this past Thursday. Those Games will be in Tokyo. 

TB is already looking forward to them. How will they be televised? Live swimming at 8 am local time to be on in primetime here? 

As for the rest of this week, what else is there? It's a Friday in the summer. The weather this weekend is supposed to be perfect. 

Hopefully everyone finds something fun to do. Summer things. 

Fall will be here soon enough. The snow can wait. 

1 comment:

Steven J. Feldman '68 said...

I want to answer your question about the weather for the November 15, 1930 Princeton-Yale football game. According to the Daily Princetonian football article on November 17, 1930, the game was played in a "heavy fog" on a "soggy turf." Also, the November 17th headline for the Princeton-Yale soccer game played on the morning of November 15 mentions that "Rain Bogs Field" and that the soccer game was played on
"rain-drenched Poe Field." The Friday November 14 and Monday November 17 mastheads of the Daily Princetonian also mention that the weather was going to be mild on both Friday and Monday, so it appears that the weather was also on the mild side for the football game. The Daily Princetonian did not print on Saturday or Sunday.